Symmetries and solutions of the non-autonomous von Bertalanffy equation (Q907670)

Consider the generalized Bertalanffy equation \[ {dN\over dt}= \alpha(t)N^\beta -a(t)N^b+ \psi(t),\tag{\(*\)} \] where \(N\) describes the size of a population. The authors use Lie symmetry methods to determine constraints on the functions \(\alpha(t)\), \(a(t)\) and \(\psi(t)\) which allow nontrivial symmetries to exist for \((*)\). These symmetry properties are exploited to construct new closed form solutions.