Harmless delays and global attractivity for nonautonomous predator-prey system with dispersion (Q1570153)

The authors consider the system \[ \dot x_1= x_1\Biggl[r_1(t)- \sum^m_{j=1} a_{1j}(x) x_1(t- \tau_{1j}(t))- \sum^m_{j=1} b_{1j}(t) y(t-\rho_{1j}(t))\Biggr]+ D_1(t)(x_2- x_1),\tag{1} \] \[ \dot x_2= x_2\Biggl[r_2(t)- \sum^m_{j=1} a_{2j}(t) x_2(t- \tau_{2j}(t)\Biggr]+ D_2(t)(x_1- x_2), \] \[ \dot y= y\Biggl[- r_3(t)+ \sum^m_{j=1} a_{3j}(t) x_1(t- \tau_{3j}(t))\Biggr]- \sum^m_{j=1} b_{2j}(t) y(t- \rho_{2j}(t)), \] with the initial conditions: \[ x_i(w)= \varphi_i(s)\geq 0,\quad y(s)= \psi(s)\geq 0,\quad s\in[-\tau, 0].\tag{2} \] Here, \(x_1\), \(x_2\) represent the densities of prey species in the patch 1 and 2, respectively, \(y\) represents predator species, confined to patch 1 (the prey species can disperse between two patch); \(D_1(t)\), \(D_2(t)\) are the dispersion coefficients, \(r_i(t)\), \(a_{ij}(t)\), \(\tau_{ij}(t)\), \(b_{nk}(t)\), \(\rho_{hk}(t)\) are nonnegative bounded continuous functions; \(\varphi_1(s)\), \(\varphi_2(s)\), \(\psi(s)\) are continuous on \([-\tau,0]\) in which \(\tau= \sup_{t>0} [\tau_{ij}(t)\), \(\rho_{kj}(t)\), \(i=1,2,3\), \(k= 1,2\), \(j= 1,2,\dots, m]\). If there exists a compact \(K_1\subset \text{int }\mathbb{R}^3_+\), such that every solution to (1) enters and remains in \(K_1\), then (1) is uniformly persistent. Under some conditions concerning only certain coefficients, the system (1) is uniformly persistent. There are established, also, some conditions under which system (1) admits a positive periodic solution which attracts all solutions.