Bounding the number of zeros of certain Abelian integrals

In this paper we prove a criterion that provides an easy sufficient condition in order for any nontrivial linear combination of n Abelian integrals to have at most n+k−1 zeros counted with multiplicities. This condition involves the functions in the integrand of the Abelian integrals and it can be checked, in many cases, in a purely algebraic way.