InhaltsangabePrologue. Preface. Acknowledgments. Part I: Preliminaries. 1. What is Mathematical Ecology and Why Should We Do It?. 2. Mathematical Toolbox. Part II: Populations. 3. Homogeneous Populations: Exponential and Geometric Growth and Decay. 4. Age and Stagestructured Linear Models: Relaxing The Assumption Of Population Homogeneity. 5. Nonlinear Models of Single Populations: The Continuous Time Logistic Model. 6. Discrete Logistic Growth, Oscillations, and Chaos. 7. Harvesting and the Logistic Model. 8. Predators and their Prey. 9. Competition between Two Species, Mutualism, and Species Invasions. 10. Multispecies Community and Food Web Models. Part III: Ecosystems. 11. Inorganic Resources, Mass Balance, Resource Uptake, and Resource Use Efficiency. 12. Litter Return, Nutrient Cycling, and Ecosystem Stability. 13. Consumer Regulation of Nutrient Cycling. 14. Stoichiometry and Linked Element Cycles. Part IV: Populations and Ecosystems in Space and Time. 15. Transitions between Populations and States in Landscapes. 16. Diffusion, Advection, the Spread of Populations and Resources, and the Emergence of Spatial Patterns. Appendix: MatLab Commands for Equilibrium and Stability Analysis of Multi-compartment Models by Solving the Jacobian and its Eigenvalues. References. Index

John Pastor is Professor of Biology, at University of Minnesota Duluth, USA