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The development of population ecology owes much to the mathematical models known as population dynamics, which were originally formulae derived from demography at the end of the 18th and beginning of 19th century. [8] The beginning of population dynamics is widely regarded as the work of Malthus, [9] formulated as the Malthusian growth model.
Organizational ecology (also organizational demography and the population ecology of organizations) is a theoretical and empirical approach in the social sciences that is considered a sub-field of organizational studies. Organizational ecology utilizes insights from biology, economics, [1] and sociology, and employs statistical analysis to try ...
Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment. [15] It is the study of how the population sizes of species living together in groups change over time and space, and was one of the first aspects of ecology to be studied and modelled mathematically.
A population ecology concept is r/K selection theory, one of the first predictive models in ecology used to explain life-history evolution. The premise behind the r/K selection model is that natural selection pressures change according to population density. For example, when an island is first colonized, density of individuals is low.
Source–sink dynamics is a theoretical model used by ecologists to describe how variation in habitat quality may affect the population growth or decline of organisms. Since quality is likely to vary among patches of habitat, it is important to consider how a low quality patch might affect a population. In this model, organisms occupy two ...
In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The focus on either an increased quantity of offspring at the expense of reduced individual parental investment of r -strategists, or on a reduced quantity of offspring with a corresponding ...
In ecology, an ideal free distribution (IFD) is a theoretical way in which a population ' s individuals distribute themselves among several patches of resources within their environment, in order to minimize resource competition and maximize fitness. [1][2] The theory states that the number of individual animals that will aggregate in various ...
The balance of nature, also known as ecological balance, is a theory that proposes that ecological systems are usually in a stable equilibrium or homeostasis, which is to say that a small change (the size of a particular population, for example) will be corrected by some negative feedback that will bring the parameter back to its original "point of balance" with the rest of the system.