Week 02

Overview

This week’s lectures will provide an introduction to how ecologists model the process of populations growing or shrinking. We will begin with a simple model that considers a “closed” population that only grows with births, and only shrinks with deaths. This gives rise to exponential growth dynamics, which form the basis for many other models in population ecology.

From here, we will add demographic structure to our populations by dividing the organisms into different age (or size) classes, and model their growth using matrix math.

Featured photo of a starling murmuration by Pete Godfrey on Unsplash: