Population dynamics
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Population dynamics is the study of marginal and long-term changes in the numbers, individual weights and age composition of individuals in one or several populations, and biological and environmental processes influencing those changes.
Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has a history of more than 210 years, although more recently the scope of mathematical biology has greatly expanded. The first principle of population dynamics is widely regarded as the exponential law of Malthus, as modelled by the Malthusian growth model. The early period was dominated by demographic studies such as the work of Benjamin Gompertz and Pierre François Verhulst in the early 19th century, who refined and adjusted the Malthusian demographic model.
The rate at which a population increases in size, i.e. the change in population size over a particular period of time is known as the intrinsic rate of increase. The concept is commonly used in insect population biology to determine how environmental factors affect the rate at which pest populations increase (e.g. Jahn et al. 2005).
A more general model formulation was proposed by F.J. Richards in 1959, by which the models of Gompertz, Verhulst and also Ludwig von Bertalanffy are covered as special cases of the general formulation.
Ecological factors
There are a number of ecological factors which can affect dynamic change in a population or species in a given ecology or environment are usually divided into two groups: abiotic and biotic.
Abiotic factors are geological, geographical, hydrological and climatological parameters. A biotope is an environmentally uniform region characterized by a particular set of abiotic ecological factors. Specific abiotic factors include:
- Water, which is at the same time an essential element to life and a milieu
- Air, which provides oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide to living species and allows the dissemination of pollen and spores
- Soil, at the same time source of nutriment and physical support
- Temperature, which should not exceed certain extremes, even if tolerance to heat is significant for some species
- Light, which provides energy to the ecosystem through photosynthesis
- Natural disasters can also be considered abiotic
References
- Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth by Andrey Korotayev, Artemy Malkov, and Daria Khaltourina. ISBN 5-484-00414-4 [1]
- Jahn, GC, LP Almazan, and J Pacia. 2005. Effect of nitrogen fertilizer on the intrinsic rate of increase of the rusty plum aphid, Hysteroneura setariae (Thomas) (Homoptera: Aphididae) on rice (Oryza sativa L.). Environmental Entomology 34 (4): 938-943.[2]
