Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 592950, 23 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/592950
Research Article
About the Properties of a Modified Generalized Beverton-Holt Equation in Ecology Models
Department of Electricity and Electronics, Institute for Research and Development of Processes, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of the Basque Country, Campus of Leioa, 544 Bilbao, 48940 Leioa, Spain
Received 5 February 2008; Revised 10 April 2008; Accepted 22 April 2008
Academic Editor: Antonia Vecchio
Copyright © 2008 M. De La Sen. 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
This paper is devoted to the study of a generalized modified version of the well-known Beverton-Holt equation in ecology. The proposed model describes the population evolution of some species in a certain habitat driven by six parametrical sequences, namely, the intrinsic growth rate (associated with the reproduction capability), the degree of sympathy of the species with the habitat (described by a so-called environment carrying capacity), a penalty term to deal with overpopulation levels, the harvesting (fishing or hunting) regulatory quota, or related to use of pesticides when fighting damaging plagues, and the independent consumption which basically quantifies predation. The independent consumption is considered as a part of a more general additive disturbance which also potentially includes another extra additive disturbance term which might be attributed to net migration from or to the habitat or modeling measuring errors. Both potential contributions are included for generalization purposes in the proposed modified generalized Beverton-Holt equation. The properties of stability and boundedness of the solution sequences, equilibrium points of the stationary model, and the existence of oscillatory solution sequences are investigated. A numerical example for a population of aphids is investigated with the theoretical tools developed in the paper.