Copyright © 2010 Ziyad AlSharawi and Mohamed Ben Haj Rhouma. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of constant and periodic harvesting on the Beverton-Holt model in a periodically fluctuating environment. We show that in a periodically fluctuating environment, periodic harvesting gives a better maximum sustainable yield compared to constant harvesting. However, if one can also fix the environment, then constant harvesting in a constant environment can be a better option, especially for sufficiently large initial populations. Also, we investigate the combinatorial structure of the periodic sequence of carrying capacities and its effect on the maximum sustainable yield. Finally, we leave some questions worth further investigations.