Optimal harvesting of a hierarchical age-structured population system

We investigate an optimal harvesting problem for age-structured species, in which elder individuals are more competitive than younger ones, and the population is modeled by a highly nonlinear integro-partial differential equation with a global feedback boundary condition. The existence of optimal strategies is established by means of compactness and maximizing sequences, and the maximum principle obtained via an adjoint system, tangent-normal cones and a new continuity result. In addition, some numerical experiments are presented to show the effects of the price function and younger’s weight on the optimal profits.