Effect of parity on productivity and sustainability of Lotka-Volterra food chains (Q476811)

In this paper, the authors consider the following system of ordinary differential equations, which describes a general model for \( n\) interacting species of Lotka-Volterra predation type: \[ \begin{cases} \frac{d x_1}{d t} = x_1(a_1 -b_1 x_2), \\ \frac{d x_2}{d t} = x_2(-a_2 -b_2 x_3 + c_2 x_1), \\ \vdots \\ \frac{d x_j}{d t} = x_j(-a_j -b_j x_{j+1} + c_j x_{j-1}), \\ \vdots \\ \frac{d x_n}{d t} = x_n(-a_n + c_n x_{n-1}), \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(a_i, b_i, c_i, 1\leq i\leq n\) are positive real numbers, corresponding, respectively, to the net growth rate of species \(i\), the negative effect of predation on species \(i\) and the positive benefit received by species \(i\) from preying on species \(i-1\). The authors obtain the steady states of the problem (1) and prove that, under suitable conditions, all solutions \((x_1,x_2,\dots,x_n)\) with \(x_i(0)>0, 1\leq i\leq n\) remain bounded and one has \(x_i>0, 1\leq i\leq n.\) Also, they give other conditions for the steady states to take the form: \((x_1,x_2,\dots,x_{j},0,0,\dots,0)\) with \(x_i >0, 1\leq i\leq j\leq n\) and the solutions remain bounded. Furthermore, they illustrated their theoretical results with numerical examples.