SOME MATHEMATICAL ASPECTS OF OPTIMAL PREDATION IN ECOLOGY AND BOVICULTURE

Abstract

General mathematical problems arising in the scientific study of predation have been studied from a variety of viewpoints. Primary emphasis has been given to the descriptive aspects of the prey and predator populations under various assumptions concerning interactions among the different members of the populations during these processes and to birth and death processes. The major objective of this note is to show how the functional equation technique of a new mathematical discipline, dynamic programming, can be used in formulating and solving--both analytically and numerically--a variety of problems of optimal predation. We wish to determine optimal predation policies and are thus interested in the control, as opposed to the descriptive, aspects of predation processes.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 08, 1960
Accession Number
AD0616565

Entities

People

  • Richard E. Bellman
  • Robert E. Kalaba

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Age Groups
  • Applied Mathematics
  • Computer Programming
  • Computing-Related Activities
  • Continents
  • Corporations
  • Differential Equations
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Geographic Regions
  • Interdisciplinary Science
  • Mathematics
  • New York
  • North America
  • Operations Research
  • Systems Science

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Aquatic Ecology
  • Calculus or Mathematical Analysis
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.