The Beverton–Holt model was introduced in the context of fisheries by Beverton & Holt (1957).
Subsequent work has derived the model under other assumptions such as contest competition (Brännström & Sumpter 2005), within-year resource limited competition (Geritz & Kisdi 2004) or even as the outcome of a source-sink Malthusian patches linked by density-dependent dispersal (Bravo de la Parra et al. 2013).
It is also possible to include a parameter reflecting the spatial clustering of individuals (see Brännström & Sumpter 2005).
Despite being nonlinear, the model can be solved explicitly, since it is in fact an inhomogeneous linear equation in 1/n.
The solution is[citation needed] Because of this structure, the model can be considered as the discrete-time analogue of the continuous-time logistic equation for population growth introduced by Verhulst; for comparison, the logistic equation is and its solution is