Hamiltonian structure and Darboux theorem for families of generalized Lotka-Volterra systems

This work is devoted to the establishment of a Poisson structure for a form at of equations known as generalized Lotka-Volterra systems. These equation s, which include the classical Lotka-Volterra systems as a particular case, have been deeply studied in the literature. They have been shown to consti tute a whole hierarchy of systems, the characterization of which is made in the context of simple algebra. Our main result is to show that this algebr aic structure is completely translatable into the Poisson domain. Important Poisson structures features, such as the symplectic foliation and the Darb oux canonical representation, rise as a result of rather simple matrix mani pulations. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0022-2488(98)02411-6].