In the summer of 1993, twenty-six graduate and postdoctoral stu dents and fourteen lecturers converged on Cornell University for a summer school devoted to structured-population models. This school was one of a series to address concepts cutting across the traditional boundaries separating terrestrial, marine, and freshwa ter ecology. Earlier schools resulted in the books Patch Dynamics (S. A. Levin, T. M. Powell & J. H. Steele, eds., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1993) and Ecological Time Series (T. M. Powell & J. H. Steele, eds., Chapman and Hall, New York, 1995); a book on food webs is in preparation. Models of population structure (differences among individuals due to age, size, developmental stage, spatial location, or genotype) have an important place in studies of all three kinds of ecosystem. In choosing the participants and lecturers for the school, we se lected for diversity-biologists who knew some mathematics and mathematicians who knew some biology, field biologists sobered by encounters with messy data and theoreticians intoxicated by the elegance of the underlying mathematics, people concerned with long-term evolutionary problems and people concerned with the acute crises of conservation biology. For four weeks, these perspec tives swirled in discussions that started in the lecture hall and carried on into the sweltering Ithaca night. Diversity mayor may not increase stability, but it surely makes things interesting.

Emphasizes the construction of models, either from actual data or as an expression of hypotheses about the life cycle, mathematical analysis of the models, and the biological interpretation of the results. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Interest in the temporal fluctuations of biological populations can be traced to the dawn of civilization. How can mathematics be used to gain an understanding of population dynamics? This monograph introduces the theory of structured population dynamics and its applications, focusing on the asymptotic dynamics of deterministic models. This theory bridges the gap between the characteristics of individual organisms in a population and the dynamics of the total population as a whole. In this monograph, many applications that illustrate both the theory and a wide variety of biological issues are given, along with an interdisciplinary case study that illustrates the connection of models with the data and the experimental documentation of model predictions. The author also discusses the use of discrete and continuous models and presents a general modeling theory for structured population dynamics. Cushing begins with an obvious point: individuals in biological populations differ with regard to their physical and behavioral characteristics and therefore in the way they interact with their environment. Studying this point effectively requires the use of structured models. Specific examples cited throughout support the valuable use of structured models. Included among these are important applications chosen to illustrate both the mathematical theories and biological problems that have received attention in recent literature.

Presents a comprehensive analytical framework for structured population models in spaces of Radon measures and their numerical approximation.

This book is a “How To” guide for modeling population dynamics using Integral Projection Models (IPM) starting from observational data. It is written by a leading research team in this area and includes code in the R language (in the text and online) to carry out all computations. The intended audience are ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and mathematical biologists interested in developing data-driven models for animal and plant populations. IPMs may seem hard as they involve integrals. The aim of this book is to demystify IPMs, so they become the model of choice for populations structured by size or other continuously varying traits. The book uses real examples of increasing complexity to show how the life-cycle of the study organism naturally leads to the appropriate statistical analysis, which leads directly to the IPM itself. A wide range of model types and analyses are presented, including model construction, computational methods, and the underlying theory, with the more technical material in Boxes and Appendices. Self-contained R code which replicates all of the figures and calculations within the text is available to readers on GitHub. Stephen P. Ellner is Horace White Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, USA; Dylan Z. Childs is Lecturer and NERC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at The University of Sheffield, UK; Mark Rees is Professor in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at The University of Sheffield, UK.

What determines where a species lives? And what determines its abundance? This book takes a fresh approach to some of the classic questions in ecology. Despite great progress in the twentieth century much more remains to be done before we can provide full answers to these questions. The methods described and deployed in this book point the way forward. The core message of the book is that the key insights come from understanding what determines population growth rate, and that application of this approach will make ecology a more predictive science. Topics covered include population regulation, density-dependence, the ecological niche, resource and interference competition, habitat fragmentation and the ecological effects of environmental stress, together with applications to conservation biology, wildlife management, human demography and ecotoxicology. After a substantial introduction by the editors the book brings together contributions from leading scientists from Australia, New Zealand, North America, Europe and the U.K.

Recent decades have witnessed strong declines in fish stocks aroundthe globe, amid growing concerns about the impact of fisheries onmarine and freshwater biodiversity. Fisheries biologists andmanagers are therefore increasingly asking about aspects ofecology, behaviour, evolution and biodiversity that weretraditionally studied by people working in very separate fields.This has highlighted the need to work more closely together, inorder to help ensure future success both in management andconservation. The Handbook of Fish Biology and Fisheries has beenwritten by an international team of scientists and practitioners,to provide an overview of the biology of freshwater and marine fishspecies together with the science that supports fisheriesmanagement and conservation. This volume, subtitled Fish Biology, reviews a broadvariety of topics from evolutionary relationships and globalbiogeography to physiology, recruitment, life histories, genetics,foraging behaviour, reproductive behaviour and community ecology.The second volume, subtitled Fisheries, uses much of thisinformation in a wide-ranging review of fisheries biology,including methods of capture, marketing, economics, stockassessment, forecasting, ecosystem impacts and conservation. Together, these books present the state of the art in ourunderstanding of fish biology and fisheries and will serve asvaluable references for undergraduates and graduates looking for acomprehensive source on a wide variety of topics in fisheriesscience. They will also be useful to researchers who needup-to-date reviews of topics that impinge on their fields, anddecision makers who need to appreciate the scientific backgroundfor management and conservation of aquatic ecosystems. To order volume I, go to the box in the top right hand corner.Alternatively to order volume II, go to:http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=063206482X or toorder the 2 volume set, go to:http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=0632064838. Provides a unique overview of the study of fish biology andecology, and the assessment and management of fish populations andecosystems. The first volume concentrates on aspects of fish biology andecology, both at the individual and population levels, whilst thesecond volume addresses the assessment and management of fishpopulations and ecosystems. Written by an international team of expert scientists andpractitioners. An invaluable reference tool for both students, researchers andpractitioners working in the fields of fish biology andfisheries.