ABR: Developments in Matrix Population Analysis

本项目具有基础和应用两个方面。在过去十年中，人口生态学最重要的基础研究发展之一是越来越多地使用涵盖人口结构的建模技术，即个体按年龄、体型或发育阶段的分布。矩阵种群模型就是其中一种技术，特别适合于种群间比较和随机分析。本文提出的研究将扩展比较分析的基本理论，以允许评估环境因素对种群水平的影响，并将明确地将矩阵种群模型与小种群生长和灭绝的随机模型联系起来。这个项目的每个方面都有助于解决一个重要的应用问题。测量人口对环境因素的反应对于评价污染物、可能的气候变化、采伐、生物控制和其他人为影响的影响至关重要。该项目的研究结果将直接适用于此类研究。小种群的灭绝问题是保护生物学中种群生存力计算的关键问题。目前用于这类分析的模型忽略了可能对生存能力有重要影响的种群结构。这个项目的成果将直接适用于这种情况。

This project has both basic and applied aspects. One of the most important basic research developments in population ecology in the last decade has been the increased use of modeling techniques that encompass population structure, I.E., the distribution of individuals into age classes, size classes or developmental stages. Matrix population models are one of these techniques, one particularly suited to inter-population comparisons and to stochastic analysis. The research proposed here will extend the basic theory for comparative analysis to permit evaluation of the population-level effects of environmental factors, and will explicitly connect matrix population models to stochastic models for the growth and extinction of small populations. Each aspect of this project contributes to an important applied problem. Measuring the responses of populations to environmental factors is essential for evaluating the impact of pollutants, possible climactic changes, harvesting, biological control and other anthropogenic effects. The results of this project will be directly applicable to such studies. The problem of extinction of small populations is crucial to population viability calculations in conservation biology. The models currently used for such analyses ignore population structure, which may have important effects on viability. The results of this project will be directly applicable to such situations.