Global attractivity for a nonautonomous Nicholson’s equation with mixed monotonicities

Abstract

Abstract We consider a Nicholson’s equation with multiple pairs of time-varying delays and nonlinear terms given by mixed monotone functions. Sufficient conditions for the permanence, local stability and global attractivity of its positive equilibrium K are established. The main novelty here is the construction of a suitable auxiliary difference equation x n+1 = h(x n ) with h having negative Schwarzian derivative, and its application to derive the attractivity of K for a model with one or more pairs of time-dependent delays. Our criteria depend on the size of some delays, improve results in recent literature and provide answers to open problems.