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A theory of stochastic harvesting in stochastic environments

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Author

Summary, in English

We investigate how model populations respond to stochastic harvesting in a stochastic environment. In particular, we show that the effects of variable harvesting on the variance in population density and yield depend critically on the autocorrelation of environmental noise and on whether the endogenous dynamics of the population display over- or undercompensation to density. These factors interact in complicated ways; harvesting shifts the slope of the renewal function, and the net effect of this shift will depend on the sign and magnitude of the other influences. For example, when environmental noise exhibits a positive auto correlation, the relative importance of a variable harvest to the variance in density increases with overcompensation but decreases with undercompensation. For a fixed harvesting level, an increasing level of autocorrelation in environmental noise will decrease the relative variation in population density when overcompensation would otherwise occur. These and other intricate interactions have important ramifications for the interpretation of time series data when no prior knowledge of demographic or environmental details exists, These effects are important whenever the harvesting rate is sufficiently high or variable, conditions likely to occur in many systems, whether the harvesting is caused by commercial exploitation or by any other strong agent of density-independent mortality.

Publishing year

2002

Language

English

Pages

427-437

Publication/Series

American Naturalist

Volume

159

Issue

5

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Topic

  • Biological Sciences

Status

Published

Research group

  • Theoretical Population Ecology and Evolution Group

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0003-0147