This volume develops a unifying approach to population studies that emphasizes the interplay between modeling and experimentation and that will provide mathematicians and biologists with a framework within which population dynamics can be fully explored and understood. A unique feature of the book is that deterministic and stochastic models are considered together; spatial effects are investigated by developing models that highlight the consequences that geographical restriction and species mobility may have on population development. Model-based simulations of processes are used to explore hitherto unforeseen features and thereby suggest further profitable lines of both experimentation and theoretical study. Most aspects of population dynamics are covered, including birth-death and logistic processes, competition and predator-prey relationships, chaos, reaction time delays, fluctuating environments, spatial systems, velocities of spread, epidemics, and spatial branching structures.

The vast majority of random processes in the real world have no memory - the next step in their development depends purely on their current state. Stochastic realizations are therefore defined purely in terms of successive event-time pairs, and such systems are easy to simulate irrespective of their degree of complexity. However, whilst the associated probability equations are straightforward to write down, their solution usually requires the use of approximation and perturbation