Sharp conditions for global stability of Lotka-Volterra systems with distributed delays (Q1019675)

The author studies the global attractivity of the positive equilibrium of the non-autonomous Lotka-Volterra system \[ \dot{x}_i(t)=r_i(t)x_i(t)\bigg[a_i-b_ix_i(t)-\sum^n_{j=1}l_{ij}\int^0_{-\tau}x_j(t+\theta) \,d\eta_{ij}(\theta) \bigg],\quad i=1,2,\dots,n, \] where \(a_i\), \(b_i\), \(l_{ij}\in \mathbb{R}\), \(\tau\geq 0\), \(r_i\) are positive continuous functions and \(\eta_{ij}\) are normalized functions of bounded variation, i.e., \(\eta_{ij}\in BV([-\tau, 0];\mathbb{R})\) with \(\mathrm{Var}_{[-\tau,0]}\eta_{ij}= 1\). The author also shows that such a criterion is sharp for the associated autonomous Lotka-Volterra systems \[ \dot{x}_i(t)=x_i(t)\bigg[a_i-b_ix_i(t)-\sum^n_{j=1}l_{ij}\int^0_{-\tau}x_j(t+\theta)d\eta_{ij}(\theta) \bigg],\quad i=1,2,\dots,n, \] in the sense that it provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the global asymptotic stability independently of the choice of the delay functions \(\eta_{ij}\). The global attractivity of positive equilibria is established by imposing a diagonal dominance of the instantaneous negative feedback terms, and relies on auxiliary results showing the boundedness of all positive solutions. This paper improves and generalizes some known results in the literature.