Prologue ...................................................... vii
Preface ........................................................ ix
Acknowledgments .............................................. xiii
Part 1: Preliminaries ........................................... 1
1. What is mathematical ecology and why should we do it? ........ 3
2. Mathematical toolbox ........................................ 11
Part 2: Populations ............................................ 51
3. Homogeneous populations: exponential and geometric growth
and decay ................................................... 53
4. Age- and stage-structured linear models: relaxing the
assumption of population homogeneity ........................ 65
5. Nonlinear models of single populations: the continuous
time logistic model ......................................... 78
6. Discrete logistic growth, oscillations, and chaos ........... 92
7. Harvesting and the logistic model .......................... 110
8. Predators and their prey ................................... 129
9. Competition between two species, mutualism, and species
invasions .................................................. 159
10.Multispecies community and food web models ................. 176
Part 3: Ecosystems ............................................ 187
11.Inorganic resources, mass balance, resource uptake, and
resource use efficiency .................................... 189
12.Litter return, nutrient cycling, and ecosystem stability ... 218
13.Consumer regulation of nutrient cycling .................... 238
14.Stoichiometry and linked element cycles .................... 252
Part 4: Populations and ecosystems in space and time .......... 271
15.Transitions between populations and states in landscapes ... 273
16.Diffusion, advection, the spread of populations and
resources, and the emergence of spatial patterns ........... 284
Appendix: MatLab commands for equilibrium and stability
analysis of multi-compartment models by solving
the Jacobian and its eigenvalues .................... 298
References .................................................... 305
Index ......................................................... 319
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