Here, biologists and statisticians come together in an interdisciplinary synthesis with the aim of developing new methods to overcome the most significant challenges and constraints faced by quantitative biologists seeking to model demographic rates.

Here, biologists and statisticians come together in an interdisciplinary synthesis with the aim of developing new methods to overcome the most significant challenges and constraints faced by quantitative biologists seeking to model demographic rates.

Here, biologists and statisticians come together in an interdisciplinary synthesis with the aim of developing new methods to overcome the most significant challenges and constraints faced by quantitative biologists seeking to model demographic rates.

This book gives a unifying framework for estimating the abundance of open populations: populations subject to births, deaths and movement, given imperfect measurements or samples of the populations. The focus is primarily on populations of vertebrates for which dynamics are typically modelled within the framework of an annual cycle, and for which stochastic variability in the demographic processes is usually modest. Discrete-time models are developed in which animals can be assigned to discrete states such as age class, gender, maturity, population (within a metapopulation), or species (for multi-species models). The book goes well beyond estimation of abundance, allowing inference on underlying population processes such as birth or recruitment, survival and movement. This requires the formulation and fitting of population dynamics models. The resulting fitted models yield both estimates of abundance and estimates of parameters characterizing the underlying processes.

This book presents and develops the basic methods and models that are used by demographers to study the behaviour of human populations. The procedures are clearly and concisely developed from first principles and extensive applications are presented.

Here, biologists and statisticians come together in an interdisciplinary synthesis with the aim of developing new methods to overcome the most significant challenges and constraints faced by quantitative biologists seeking to model demographic rates.

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.