Computation of periodic orbits in three-dimensional Lotka-Volterra systems

This paper deals with an adaptation of the Poincare-Lindstedt method for the determination of periodic orbits in three-dimensional nonlinear differential systems. We describe here a general symbolic algorithm to implement the method and apply it to compute periodic solutions in a three-dimensional Lotka-Volterra system modeling a chain food interaction. The sufficient conditions to make secular terms disappear from the approximate series solution are given in the paper.