Periodic solution of neutral Lotka–Volterra system with periodic delays ✩

A nonautonomous n-species Lotka–Volterra system with neutral delays is investigated. A set of verifiable sufficient conditions is derived for the existence of at least one strictly positive periodic solution of this Lotka–Volterra system by applying an existence theorem and some analysis techniques, where the assumptions of the existence theorem are different from that of Gaines and Mawhin’s continuation theorem [R.E. Gaines, J.L. Mawhin, Coincidence Degree and Nonlinear Differential Equations, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1977] and that of abstract continuation theory for k-set contraction [W. Petryshyn, Z. Yu, Existence theorem for periodic solutions of higher order nonlinear periodic boundary value problems, Nonlinear Anal. 6 (1982) 943–969]. Moreover, a problem proposed by Freedman and Wu [H.I. Freedman, J. Wu, Periodic solution of single species models with periodic delay, SIAM J.Math. Anal. 23 (1992) 689–701] is answered. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.