Questions: In a growing population, is there generation-by-generation feedback between population density, the strength of natural selection, and the rate of evolutionary change? What are the overall effects of natural selection and increasing population size on the total change in mean fitness? Mathematical Methods: Numerical iterations of equations for ∆p and ∆N, coupled with Frank and Slatki...

This paper presents a summary mortality index, the Cross-sectional Average Length of Life (CAL). By combining the mortality experience of various cohorts in a cross-sectional fashion, CAL complements traditional one-period or one-cohort indexes and enriches our understanding of population processes. First, CAL provides an alternative insight into the analysis of mortality. By taking into accoun...

Behavioral ecology and population ecology are two separate branches of ecology; studies linking the effect of individual behavior and population dynamics are rare. This paper connects a stochastic optimal foraging model of insect predators with an age structured population model of its prey. I modeled syrphid larvae feeding on cereal aphids, an interaction critical to cereal crops in Germany. T...

Once stable industries that become dynamic industries raise numerous management and economic issues. Population ecology and contingency theories indicate that an incumbent economic organization must reform its organizational structure, production resource and processes, products, and markets if it is to survive (Harman and Freeman, 1977; Tosi, 1984). Survival can take many forms, including reor...

Nonlinear or linear algebraic systems appear as steady-state equations in continuous and discrete dynamical models (e.g., reaction-diffusion equations [14,19], neural networks [5,6,15,22] compartmental systems [2,4,11,12,16,17], population models [13,21]). Next we mention some typical models. Compartmental systems are used to model many processes in pharmacokinetics, metabolism, epidemiology an...

Controllability of componentwise nonnegative discrete-time linear systems is considered. The key difference here from the well-established positive systems theory is that we permit the case where the input takes negative values, provided that the state remains nonnegative. Such a framework is very natural, moreover necessary, in situations such as population ecology to describe the control acti...

1. Population extinction is a fundamental ecological process. Recent experimental work has begun to test the large body of theory that predicts how demographic, genetic and environmental factors influence extinction risk. We review empirical studies of extinction conducted under controlled laboratory conditions. Our synthesis highlights four findings. First, extinction theory largely considers ...

The modeling of ecological connectivity across networks and landscapes is an active research area that spans the disciplines of ecology, conservation, and population genetics. Recently, concepts and algorithms from electrical circuit theory have been adapted to address these problems. The approach is based on linkages between circuit and random walk theories, and has several advantages over pre...

We reconcile the findings of Holmes et al. (Ecology Letters, 10, 2007, 1182) that 95% confidence intervals for quasi-extinction risk were narrow for many vertebrates of conservation concern, with previous theory predicting wide confidence intervals. We extend previous theory, concerning the precision of quasi-extinction estimates as a function of population dynamic parameters, prediction interv...

We have investigated microbial mats of alkaline siliceous hot springs in Yellowstone National Park as natural model communities to learn how microbial populations group into species-like fundamental units. Here, we bring together empirical patterns of the distribution of molecular variation in predominant mat cyanobacterial populations, theory-based modelling of how to demarcate phylogenetic cl...