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Harvesting an Age-Distributed Population

Part 4: Summary

  1. Describe in your own words the meaning of "sustainable harvesting policy." How does a second Leslie matrix for a given population arise in this context? What is the significance of 1 as an eigenvalue for that matrix? What is the significance of an eigenvector for the eigenvalue 1?

  2. If a sustainable harvesting policy takes the same fraction from every age group, how is that fraction calculated from the original Leslie matrix? How is a stable age distribution calculated?

  3. If a sustainable harvesting policy takes only a fraction of the youngest age group, how is that fraction calculated from the original Leslie matrix? How is a stable age distribution calculated?

  4. Can either uniform harvesting or youngest-only harvesting be an optimal sustainable policy in the sense of harvesting the largest number of individuals? Explain.
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