Population ecology is a sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment. It is the study of how the population sizes of species living together in groups change over time and space.
The development of population ecology owes much to demography and actuarial life tables. Population ecology is important in conservation biology, especially in the development of population viability analysis (PVA) which makes it possible to predict the long-term probability of a species persisting in a given habitat patch, such as a national park. Although population ecology is a subfield of biology, it provides interesting problems for mathematicians and statisticians who work in population dynamics.
Read more about Population Ecology: Fundamentals, R/K Selection, Metapopulation, History, Journals
Famous quotes containing the words population and/or ecology:
“The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the fundamental principles of ecology govern our lives wherever we live, and ... we must wake up to this fact or be lost.”
—Karin Sheldon (b. c. 1945)