• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.197-210
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• 2014

Species like insects and fishes have, in many cases, non-overlapping time intervals of one generation and their descendant one. So the population dynamics of such species can be formulated as discrete models. In this paper various discrete population models are introduced in chronological order. The author's investigation starts with the Malthusian model suggested in 1798, and continues through Verhulst model(the discrete logistic model), Ricker model, the Beverton-Holt stock-recruitment model, Shep-herd model, Hassell model and Sigmoid type Beverton-Holt model. We discuss the mathematical and practical significance of each model and analyze its properties. Also the stability properties of stationary solutions of the models are studied analytically and illustratively using GSP, a computer software. The visual outputs generated by GSP are compared with the analytical stability results.