Necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of periodic solutions of a Nicholson type delay system (Q2281299)

The authors consider a Nicholson-type system for two species with mutualism and non-linear harvesting terms. \[ \begin{cases} x'_1(t) = -\delta_1x_1(t) +\beta_1x_2(t) +p_1x_1(t-\tau) e^{\gamma_1x_1(t-\tau)}, \\ x'_2(t) = -\delta_2x_2(t) +\beta_2x_1(t) +p_2x_2(t-\tau) e^{\gamma_2x_2(t-\tau)}, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \( \delta_i, \beta_i,p_i,\gamma_i \) and \( \tau \) are positive constants for \( i= 1, 2, \) with initial values \( x_i(s)=\phi_i(s), s\in [-\tau, 0], \phi_i(0)0 \) where \(\phi_i\in C([-\tau,0], [0,+\infty)) \) for \( i=1,2.\) Sufficient conditions for the existence of a positive periodic solution are derived. For the special cases necessary conditions for positive periodic solution are provided.