Dynamics of a competitive Lotka-Volterra system with three delays (Q555422)

The authors study the following three-species Lotka-Volterra type competition system with three discrete time delays \[ \begin{aligned} \dot x_1(t)=&x_1(t)[r_1-a_{11}x_1(t)-a_{13}x_3(t-\tau_3)],\\ \dot x_2(t)=&x_2(t)[r_2-a_{21}x_1(t-\tau_1)-a_{22}x_2(t)],\\ \dot x_3(t)=&x_3(t)[r_3-a_{32}x_2(t-\tau_2)] \end{aligned}\tag{1} \] with initial conditions \[ x_i(t)=\phi_i(t)\geq 0, \;t\in [-\tau, 0), \;\phi_i(0)>0, \;i=1,2,3, \] here \(\tau=\tau_1+\tau_2+\tau_3\). In system (1), \(x_i(t)\) represents the density of the \(i\)th species at time \(t\), respectively, \(i=1,2,3\); \(\tau_i\) is the feedback time delay of the species \(x_i (i=1,2,3)\) to the growth of the species itself; \(r_i\) is the intrinsic growth rate of the \(i\)th species and \(r_i/a_{ii}\) is the carrying capacity of the \(i\)th species, \(a_{13}, a_{21}\) and \(a_{32}\) are competition coefficients. By choosing \(\tau\) as a bifurcation parameter, it is shown that system (1) undergoes a Hopf bifurcation at the positive equilibrium as \(\tau\) crosses some critical values. The formulae determining the direction of Hopf bifurcation and the stability of bifurcating periodic solutions are obtained by using the normal form theory and center manifold theorem.