This open access book shows how to use sensitivity analysis in demography. It presents new methods for individuals, cohorts, and populations, with applications to humans, other animals, and plants. The analyses are based on matrix formulations of age-classified, stage-classified, and multistate population models. Methods are presented for linear and nonlinear, deterministic and stochastic, and time-invariant and time-varying cases. Readers will discover results on the sensitivity of statistics of longevity, life disparity, occupancy times, the net reproductive rate, and statistics of Markov chain models in demography. They will also see applications of sensitivity analysis to population growth rates, stable population structures, reproductive value, equilibria under immigration and nonlinearity, and population cycles. Individual stochasticity is a theme throughout, with a focus that goes beyond expected values to include variances in demographic outcomes. The calculations are easily and accurately implemented in matrix-oriented programming languages such as Matlab or R. Sensitivity analysis will help readers create models to predict the effect of future changes, to evaluate policy effects, and to identify possible evolutionary responses to the environment. Complete with many examples of the application, the book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in human demography and population biology. The material will also appeal to those in mathematical biology and applied mathematics.

This open access book shows how to use sensitivity analysis in demography. It presents new methods for individuals, cohorts, and populations, with applications to humans, other animals, and plants. The analyses are based on matrix formulations of age-classified, stage-classified, and multistate population models. Methods are presented for linear and nonlinear, deterministic and stochastic, and time-invariant and time-varying cases. Readers will discover results on the sensitivity of statistics of longevity, life disparity, occupancy times, the net reproductive rate, and statistics of Markov chain models in demography. They will also see applications of sensitivity analysis to population growth rates, stable population structures, reproductive value, equilibria under immigration and nonlinearity, and population cycles. Individual stochasticity is a theme throughout, with a focus that goes beyond expected values to include variances in demographic outcomes. The calculations are easily and accurately implemented in matrix-oriented programming languages such as Matlab or R. Sensitivity analysis will help readers create models to predict the effect of future changes, to evaluate policy effects, and to identify possible evolutionary responses to the environment. Complete with many examples of the application, the book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in human demography and population biology. The material will also appeal to those in mathematical biology and applied mathematics.; This open access book provides a comprehensive presentation of sensitivity analysis for demographic models Applicable to populations of humans, other animals, and plants Develops mathematical theory and shows examples of application Considers all types of population models (linear and nonlinear, deterministic and stochastic, age-classified and stage-classified) This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This book provides a complete treatment of matrix population models and their applications in ecology and demography. It is written for graduate students and researchers in ecology, population biology, conservation biology and human demography.

In the summer of 1993, twenty-six graduate and postdoctoral stu dents and fourteen lecturers converged on Cornell University for a summer school devoted to structured-population models. This school was one of a series to address concepts cutting across the traditional boundaries separating terrestrial, marine, and freshwa ter ecology. Earlier schools resulted in the books Patch Dynamics (S. A. Levin, T. M. Powell & J. H. Steele, eds., Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1993) and Ecological Time Series (T. M. Powell & J. H. Steele, eds., Chapman and Hall, New York, 1995); a book on food webs is in preparation. Models of population structure (differences among individuals due to age, size, developmental stage, spatial location, or genotype) have an important place in studies of all three kinds of ecosystem. In choosing the participants and lecturers for the school, we se lected for diversity-biologists who knew some mathematics and mathematicians who knew some biology, field biologists sobered by encounters with messy data and theoreticians intoxicated by the elegance of the underlying mathematics, people concerned with long-term evolutionary problems and people concerned with the acute crises of conservation biology. For four weeks, these perspec tives swirled in discussions that started in the lecture hall and carried on into the sweltering Ithaca night. Diversity mayor may not increase stability, but it surely makes things interesting.

A synthesis of contemporary analytical and modeling approaches in population ecology The book provides an overview of the key analytical approaches that are currently used in demographic, genetic, and spatial analyses in population ecology. The chapters present current problems, introduce advances in analytical methods and models, and demonstrate the applications of quantitative methods to ecological data. The book covers new tools for designing robust field studies; estimation of abundance and demographic rates; matrix population models and analyses of population dynamics; and current approaches for genetic and spatial analysis. Each chapter is illustrated by empirical examples based on real datasets, with a companion website that offers online exercises and examples of computer code in the R statistical software platform. Fills a niche for a book that emphasizes applied aspects of population analysis Covers many of the current methods being used to analyse population dynamics and structure Illustrates the application of specific analytical methods through worked examples based on real datasets Offers readers the opportunity to work through examples or adapt the routines to their own datasets using computer code in the R statistical platform Population Ecology in Practice is an excellent book for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in population ecology or ecological statistics, as well as established researchers needing a desktop reference for contemporary methods used to develop robust population assessments.

Demography is everywhere in our lives: from birth to death. Indeed, the universal currencies of survival, development, reproduction, and recruitment shape the performance of all species, from microbes to humans. The number of techniques for demographic data acquisition and analyses across the entire tree of life (microbes, fungi, plants, and animals) has drastically increased in recent decades. These developments have been partially facilitated by the advent of technologies such as GIS and drones, as well as analytical methods including Bayesian statistics and high-throughput molecular analyses. However, despite the universality of demography and the significant research potential that could emerge from unifying: (i) questions across taxa, (ii) data collection protocols, and (iii) analytical tools, demographic methods to date have remained taxonomically siloed and methodologically disintegrated. This is the first book to attempt a truly unified approach to demography and population ecology in order to address a wide range of questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology across the entire spectrum of life. This novel book provides the reader with the fundamentals of data collection, model construction, analyses, and interpretation across a wide repertoire of demographic techniques and protocols. It introduces the novice demographer to a broad range of demographic methods, including abundance-based models, life tables, matrix population models, integral projection models, integrated population models, individual based models, and more. Through the careful integration of data collection methods, analytical approaches, and applications, clearly guided throughout with fully reproducible R scripts, the book provides an up-to-date and authoritative overview of the most popular and effective demographic tools. Demographic Methods across the Tree of Life is aimed at graduate students and professional researchers in the fields of demography, ecology, animal behaviour, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematical biology, and wildlife management.

Population biology.

Integrated Population Models: Theory and Ecological Applications with R and JAGS is the first book on integrated population models, which constitute a powerful framework for combining multiple data sets from the population and the individual levels to estimate demographic parameters, and population size and trends. These models identify drivers of population dynamics and forecast the composition and trajectory of a population. Written by two population ecologists with expertise on integrated population modeling, this book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the relevant theory of integrated population models with an extensive overview of practical applications, using Bayesian methods by means of case studies. The book contains fully-documented, complete code for fitting all models in the free software, R and JAGS. It also includes all required code for pre- and post-model-fitting analysis. Integrated Population Models is an invaluable reference for researchers and practitioners involved in population analysis, and for graduate-level students in ecology, conservation biology, wildlife management, and related fields. The text is ideal for self-study and advanced graduate-level courses. - Offers practical and accessible ecological applications of IPMs (integrated population models) - Provides full documentation of analyzed code in the Bayesian framework - Written and structured for an easy approach to the subject, especially for non-statisticians

Demography relates observable facts about individuals to the dynamics of populations. If the dynamics are linear and do not change over time, the classical theory of Lotka (1907) and Leslie (1945) is the central tool of demography. This book addresses the situation when the assumption of constancy is dropped. In many practical situations, a population will display unpredictable variation over time in its vital rates, which must then be described in statistical terms. Most of this book is concerned with the theory of populations which are subject to random temporal changes in their vital rates, although other kinds of variation (e. g. , cyclical) are also dealt with. The central questions are: how does temporal variation work its way into a population's future, and how does it affect our interpretation of a population's past. The results here are directed at demographers of humans and at popula tion biologists. The uneven mathematical level is dictated by the material, but the book should be accessible to readers interested in population the ory. (Readers looking for background or prerequisites will find much of it in Hal Caswell's Matrix population models: construction, analysis, and in terpretation (Sinauer 1989) ). This book is in essence a progress report and is deliberately brief; I hope that it is not mystifying. I have not attempted to be complete about either the history or the subject, although most sig nificant results and methods are presented.

Mathematical demography is the centerpiece of quantitative social science. The founding works of this field from Roman times to the late Twentieth Century are collected here, in a new edition of a classic work by David R. Smith and Nathan Keyfitz. Commentaries by Smith and Keyfitz have been brought up to date and extended by Kenneth Wachter and Hervé Le Bras, giving a synoptic picture of the leading achievements in formal population studies. Like the original collection, this new edition constitutes an indispensable source for students and scientists alike, and illustrates the deep roots and continuing vitality of mathematical demography.