Structured-Population Models in Marine, Terrestrial, and Freshwater Systems

This volume describes the biology of the life cycle (age, size, development stage, for example) and follows the transitions of individuals through stages in the life cycle (survival, growth, development, and reproduction). They are an alternative to models that describe populations in terms of total numbers or biomass. Such models, which depend much more intensively on computer firepower than aggregate or logistic models, have taken a central place in ecological investigations in the last decade. Making appropriate assumptions about their parameters, the ecologist can describe constant environments, time-varying environments, density-dependent populations, and species-species or species-resource interactions with these models.