Transitivity of a Lotka-Volterra map

Abstract

The dynamics of the transformation $F: (x,y)\rightarrow (x(4-x-y),xy)$ defined on the plane triangle $\Delta$ of vertices $(0,0)$, $(0,4)$ and $(4,0)$ plays an important role in the behaviour of the Lotka--Volterra map. In 1993, A. N. SharkovskiĬ (Proc. Oberwolfach 20/1993) stated some problems on it, in particular a question about the trasitivity of $F$ was posed. The main aim of this paper is to prove that for every non--empty open set $\mathcal{U} \subset \Delta$ there is an integer $n_{0}$ such that for each $n>n_{0}$ it is $F^{n}(\mathcal{U}) \supseteq \Delta \setminus P_{\varepsilon}$, where $P_{\varepsilon} = \{ (x,y) \in D : y<\beta, \mbox{ $where$ F(t,\varepsilon)=(\alpha,\beta) \mbox{ and } t \in[0,2] \}$ and $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$ for $n \rightarrow \infty$. Consequently, we show that the map $F$ is transitive, it is not topologically exact and it is almost topologically exact. Additionally, we prove that the union of all preimages of the point $(1,2)$ is a dense subset of $\Delta$.