An N-barrier maximum principle for autonomous systems of <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$n$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> species and its application to problems arising from population dynamics

Abstract

The main contribution of the N-barrier maximum principle is that it provides rather generic a priori upper and lower bounds for the linear combination of the components of a vector-valued solution. We show that the N-barrier maximum principle (NBMP, C.-C. Chen and L.-C. Hung (2016)) remains true for $n$ $(n>2)$ species. In addition, a stronger lower bound in NBMP is given by employing an improved tangent line method. As an application of NBMP, we establish a nonexistence result for traveling wave solutions to the four species Lotka-Volterra system.