Table of Contents
Introduction to Population Biology
Institute for Theoretical Physics, UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil
Outline
This is a course on basic population biology, with applications to ecology and epidemiology. You will find the previous year's lectures on http://www.ictp-saifr.org/mathbio2 and in the links in the section “Past schools” in the sidebar.
Topics
Follow the links for handouts and supplementary material:
Suggested Readings
If you have a background in physics or mathematics
J. Murray : Mathematical Biology I ( Springer, 2002), chapters 1, 3, 10 and 11.
N. F. Britton, Essential Mathematical Biology (Springer,2003).
If you have a background in biology
N. J. Gotelli, A Primer of Ecology (Sinauer, 2001, third edition), chapters 1, 2, 5 and 6 (very basic)
Complex Population Dynamics. Peter Turchin, Princeton Univ Press, 2003. (basic + more advanced topics)
If you think that you need to revise your knowledge on calculus, you may want to take a look at
S. P. Otto and T. Day, A Biologist’s Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution (Princeton U. Press, 2007).
Matthiopoulos, J. (2011). How to be a quantitative ecologist: the'A to R'of green mathematics and statistics. John Wiley & Sons.
History and epistemology
Kingsland, S. 1995. Modeling nature-Episodes in the history of population ecology. The Chicago University Press, Chicago.
Keller, E. F. 2009. Making sense of life: Explaining biological development with models, metaphors, and machines. Harvard University Press.
Wigner on unreasonable efectiveness of math
- Aiming the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” at ecological theory. Giznburg et al. (2007).