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  1. Types of Experiments and Causal Process Tracing: What Happened on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s?Roberta L. Millstein - manuscript
    I argue that Binkley et al. use causal process tracing in conjunction with a natural trajectory experiment and two natural snapshot experiments in their re-examination of the Kaibab. This shows that Aldo Leopold may have been right about trophic cascade in the Kaibab in the 1920s, i.e., that there are good reasons to think that a loss of predators led to a deer irruption which decreased aspen recruitment. Using the different cause-finding practices in combination can strengthen causal inferences and mitigate (...)
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  2. Climate Change Adaptation and the Back of the Invisible Hand.H. Clark Barrett & Josh Armstrong - forthcoming - Philosophical Transactions B.
    We make the case that scientifically accurate and politically feasible responses to the climate crisis require a complex understanding of human cultural practices of niche construction that moves beyond the adaptive significance of culture. We develop this thesis in two related ways. First, we argue that cumulative cultural practices of niche construction can generate stable equilibria and runaway selection processes that result in long-term existential risks within and across cultural groups. We dub this the back of the invisible hand. Second, (...)
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  3. Discrete conventional signalling of a continuous variable.Magnus Enquist, Stefano Ghirlanda & Pete L. Hurd - forthcoming - Philosophical Explorations.
    In aggressive interactions, animals often use a discrete set of signals, while the properties being signalled are likely to be continuous, for example fighting ability or value of victory. Here we investigate a particular model of fighting which allows for conventional signalling of subjective resource value to occur. The result shows that neither perfect nor no signalling are evolutionarily stable strategies in the model. Instead, we find ESSs in which partial information is communicated, with discrete displays signalling a range of (...)
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  4. Egg distributions of insect parasitoids: Modelling and analysis of temporal data with host density dependence.John S. Fenlon, Malcolm J. Faddy, Menia Toussidou & Michael E. Courcy Williamdes - forthcoming - Acta Biotheoretica.
    A simple numerical procedure is presented for the problem of estimating the parameters of models for the distribution of eggs oviposited in a host. The modelling is extended to incorporate both host density and time dependence to produce a remarkably parsimonious structure with only seven parameters to describe a data set of over 3,000 observations. This is further refined using a mixed model to accommodate several large outliers. Both models show that the level of superparasitism declines with increasing host density, (...)
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  5. The Economic Effects of a Declining Population.John Maynard Keynes - forthcoming - The Eugenics Review.
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  6. Developments in the Study of Population.Kurt Mayer - forthcoming - Social Research: An International Quarterly.
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  7. Population Ecology of Human Survival. Edited by R. Ohtsuka & T. Suzuki, Pp. 265.Peter Phillimore - forthcoming - Journal of Biosocial Science.
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  8. The Role of Starting Points to Order Investigation: Why and How to Enrich the Logic of Research Questions.William C. Bausman - 2022 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 6 (14).
    What methodological approaches do research programs use to investigate the world? Elisabeth Lloyd’s Logic of Research Questions (LRQ) characterizes such approaches in terms of the questions that the researchers ask and causal factors they consider. She uses the Logic of Research Questions Framework to criticize adaptationist programs in evolutionary biology for dogmatically assuming selection explanations of the traits of organisms. I argue that Lloyd’s general criticism of methodological adaptationism is an artefact of the impoverished LRQ. My Ordered Factors Proposal extends (...)
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  9. Informative ecological models without ecological forces.Justin Donhauser - 2020 - Synthese 197 (6):2721-2743.
    Sagoff (2016) criticizes widely used “theoretical” methods in ecology; arguing that those methods employ models that rely on problematic metaphysical assumptions and are therefore uninformative and useless for practical decision-making. In this paper, I show that Sagoff misconstrues how such model-based methods work in practice, that the main threads of his argument are problematic, and that his substantive conclusions are consequently unfounded. Along the way, I illuminate several ways the model-based inferential methods he criticizes can be, and have been, usefully (...)
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  10. Cómo repensar nuestra relación con el medioambiente en tiempos de Covid-19: una propuesta conservadora.Miguel Angel Quintana Paz - 2020 - Https://Fundaciondisenso.Org/.
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  11. 21世纪的自杀性乌托邦妄想: 哲学,人性与文明的崩溃.Michael Richard Starks - 2020 - Las Vegas, NV USA: Reality Press.
    美国和世界正处于人口过度增长的崩溃过程中,大部分都发生在上个世纪,现在这一切都是由于第三世界人民造成的。资源消耗和增加10亿至2100亿美元,将使工业文明崩溃,并造成饥饿、疾病、暴力和战争。" ;数十亿人将死去,核战争几乎可以肯定。在美国,大规模移民和移民再生产,加上民主带来的滥用,大大加速了这一速度。堕落的人性无情地把民主和多样性的梦想变成犯罪和贫穷的噩梦。崩溃的根本原因是我们天生的心理无 法适应现代世界,这导致人们把不相关的人当作他们有共同的兴趣对待。再加上对基本生物学和心理的无知,导致部分受教育者的社会工程妄想,他们控制着民主社会。很少有人明白,如果你帮助一个人,你伤害了别人——没有 免费的午餐,任何人消费的每一件物品都会破坏地球,无法修复。因此,世界各地的社会政策都是不可持续的,如果不严格控制自私,所有社会都会陷入无政府状态或独裁。如果不立即作出戏剧性改变,就没有希望阻止美国或任 何遵循民主制度的国家的崩溃。因此,我的文章"民主自杀"。 现在很清楚,统治中国的七个社会道路正在赢得第三次世界大战,所以我关于他们的结论性文章。唯一更大的威胁是人工智能,我简要地评论。 我们一切的关键是生物学,而正是它所忽视它,导致数百万聪明受过教育的人,如奥巴马,乔姆斯基,克林顿,民主党和教皇支持自杀的乌托邦理想,无情地直接导致地球上的地狱。 正如W指出的,我们眼前最难看的就是什么。 我们生活在有意识的议事语言系统2的世界里,但它是无意识的,自动反射系统1的规则。这是西尔的《现象幻象》(TPI)、平克的《空白石板》和《图比》和《科斯米德的标准社会科学模型》中描述的普遍失明的根源。 第一组文章试图让我们了解我们是如何合理摆脱理论错觉的。在接下来的三个组中,我评论了阻碍可持续世界的三个主要错觉——技术、宗教和政治(合作团体)。人们相信社会可以由他们拯救,所以我在书的其余部分提供一些 建议,为什么这不太可能通过短篇文章和评论最近出版的著名作家的书。 另一节描述了宗教错觉——有一些超级力量会拯救我们。 下一节将数字错觉描述为将系统2的语言游戏与系统1的自动化混为一谈,因此无法区分生物机器(即人)和其他种类的机器(即计算机)。 其他数字错觉是,我们将从系统1的纯邪恶(自私)由计算机/AI/机器人/纳米技术/基因工程由系统2创建。 没有免费午餐校长告诉我们,将有严重,甚至致命的后果。 最后一节描述了"一个幸福家庭"的幻想,即我们被选中与大家合作,如果我们只是正确管理事情(政治的可能性),民主、多样性和平等等异想天意将引导我们进入乌托邦。 再次,没有免费午餐原则应该警告我们,它不能是真实的,我们看到整个历史和整个当代世界,没有严格的控制,自私和愚蠢占上风,并很快摧毁任何国家,拥抱这些妄想。此外,猴子的头脑大大折扣的未来,所以我们合作出售 我们的后代的遗产为临时舒适,大大加剧了问题。 .
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  12. The Aims and Structures of Ecological Research Programs.William Bausman - 2019 - Philosophical Topics 47 (1):1-20.
    Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. The Neutralist and (...)
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  13. Ecological Theory and the Superfluous Niche.James Justus - 2019 - Philosophical Topics 47 (1):105-123.
    Perhaps no concept has been thought more important to ecological theorizing than the niche. Without it, technically sophisticated and well-regarded accounts of character displacement, ecological equivalence, limiting similarity, and others would seemingly never have been developed. The niche is also widely considered the centerpiece of the best candidate for a distinctively ecological law, the competitive exclusion principle. But the incongruous array and imprecise character of proposed definitions of the concept square poorly with its apparent scientific centrality. I argue this definitional (...)
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  14. Types of experiments and causal process tracing: What happened on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s.Roberta L. Millstein - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 78:98-104.
    In a well-cited book chapter, ecologist Jared Diamond characterizes three main types of experiment performed in community ecology: laboratory experiment, field experiment, and natural experiment. Diamond argues that each form of experiment has strengths and weaknesses, with respect to, for example, realism or the ability to follow a causal trajectory. But does Diamond’s typology exhaust the available kinds of cause-finding practices? Some social scientists have characterized something they call “causal process tracing.” Is this a fourth type of experiment or something (...)
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  15. Is JK Rowling More Evil Than Me? (revised 2019).Michael Starks - 2019 - In Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century -- Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 4th Edition Michael Starks. Las Vegas, NV USA: Reality Press. pp. 194-199.
    How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—the Harry Potter novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as most people, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 hectares of (...)
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  16. Suicide by Democracy-an Obituary for America and the World (revised (2019).Michael Starks - 2019 - In Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century -- Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 4th Edition Michael Starks. Las Vegas, NV USA: Reality Press. pp. 404-459.
    America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses at least 1% of its topsoil every year, and climate change will greatly decrease food production in much of (...)
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  17. Towards an ecological view of immunity.Swiatczak Bartlomiej - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 63:85-88.
    The immune system does not just fight pathogens but also engages in interactions with beneficial microbes and non-immune cells of the body to harmonize their behavior by means of cytokines, antibodies and effector cells (Dinarello, 2007; Moticka, 2015, pp. 217e226, 261e267). However, the importance of these “housekeeping” functions has not been fully appreciated (Cohen, 2000). In his new book Immunity: The Evolution of an Idea Alfred I. Tauber traces the history of fundamental ideas in immunology and refers to recent advances (...)
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  18. La red teórica de la dinámica de poblaciones.Martín Díaz & Pablo Lorenzano - 2017 - Scientiae Studia 15 (2):307.
    The general aim of this article is to carry out a reconstruction of the theory of Population Dynamics (DP) in Ecology, according to Castle’s (2001) general stance with regard to the semantic view of theories, but doing it within the framework of metatheoretical structuralism. Thus, we will first identify Population Dynamics’ basic theory-element: its core K(DP) – with the class of potential models, the class of models (through the identification of its fundamental law) and the class of partial potential models (...)
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  19. Neutral Theory, Biased World.William Bausman - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Minnesota
    The ecologist today finds scarce ground safe from controversy. Decisions must be made about what combination of data, goals, methods, and theories offers them the foundations and tools they need to construct and defend their research. When push comes to shove, ecologists often turn to philosophy to justify why it is their approach that is scientific. Karl Popper’s image of science as bold conjectures and heroic refutations is routinely enlisted to justify testing hypotheses over merely confirming them. One of the (...)
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  20. Contrasting Cases: The Lotka-Volterra Model Times Three.Tarja Knuuttila & Andrea Loettgers - 2016 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 319:151-178.
    How do philosophers of science make use of historical case studies? Are their accounts of historical cases purpose-built and lacking in evidential strength as a result of putting forth and discussing philosophical positions? We will study these questions through the examination of three different philosophical case studies. All of them focus on modeling and on Vito Volterra, contrasting his work to that of other theoreticians. We argue that the worries concerning the evidential role of historical case studies in philosophy are (...)
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  21. Will the world decrease births or increase deaths?—A review of ‘Reproductive Medicine’--E. Coutinho & P. Spinola Eds. 366p (1999).Michael Starks - 2016 - In Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization-- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 2nd Edition Feb 2018. Michael Starks. pp. 581-584.
    I review this report of an old medical congress on reproductive medicine. Much has happened in the 17 years since its publication but the most urgent task of preventing further population growth has largely failed on a global scale. I try to bring it up to date and briefly discuss the inexorable disaster coming as the world population passes 11 billion in the 22nd century. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two (...)
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  22. Complex Dynamics of an SIR Epidemic Model with Saturated Incidence Rate and Treatment.Soovoojeet Jana, Swapan Kumar Nandi & T. K. Kar - 2015 - Acta Biotheoretica 64 (1):65-84.
    This paper describes a traditional SIR type epidemic model with saturated infection rate and treatment function. The dynamics of the model is studied from the point of view of stability and bifurcation. Basic reproduction number is obtained and it is shown that the model system may possess a backward bifurcation. The global asymptotic stability of the endemic equilibrium is studied with the help of a geometric approach. Optimal control problem is formulated and solved. Some numerical simulation works are carried out (...)
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  23. The evolution of phenotypic plasticity: Genealogy of a debate in genetics.Antonine Nicoglou - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 50:67-76.
    The paper describes the context and the origin of a particular debate that concerns the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. In 1965, British biologist A. D. Bradshaw proposed a widely cited model intended to explain the evolution of norms of reaction, based on his studies of plant populations. Bradshaw’s model went beyond the notion of the “adaptive norm of reaction” discussed before him by Dobzhansky and Schmalhausen by suggesting that “plasticity” the ability of a phenotype to be modified by the environment (...)
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  24. The Modellers’ Halting Foray into Ecological Theory: Or, What is This Thing Called ‘Growth Rate’?Holger Teismann, Richard Karsten & Michael Deveau - 2015 - Acta Biotheoretica 63 (2):99-111.
    This discussion paper describes the attempt of an imagined group of non-ecologists to determine the population growth rate from field data. The Modellers wrestle with the multiple definitions of the growth rate available in the literature and the fact that, in their modelling, it appears to be drastically model-dependent, which seems to throw into question the very concept itself. Specifically, they observe that six representative models used to capture the data produce growth-rate values, which differ significantly. Almost ready to concede (...)
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  25. The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Ryan Giordano, Michael D. Edge & Rasmus Nielsen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52:12-21.
    Scientists use models to understand the natural world, and it is important not to conflate model and nature. As an illustration, we distinguish three different kinds of populations in studies of ecology and evolution: theoretical, laboratory, and natural populations, exemplified by the work of R.A. Fisher, Thomas Park, and David Lack, respectively. Biologists are rightly concerned with all three types of populations. We examine the interplay between these different kinds of populations, and their pertinent models, in three examples: the notion (...)
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  26. The Population Ecology of Despotism.Adrian Viliami Bell & Bruce Winterhalder - 2014 - Human Nature 25 (1):121-135.
  27. Levins and the Lure of Artificial Worlds.Seth Bullock - 2014 - The Monist 97 (3):301-320.
    What is it about simulation models that has led some practitioners to treat them as potential sources of empirical data on the real-world systems being simulated; that is, to treat simulations as ‘artificial worlds’within which to perform computational ‘experiments’? Here we use the work of Richard Levins as a starting point in identifying the appeal of this model building strategy, and proceed to account for why this appeal is strongest for computational modellers. This analysis suggests a perspective on simulation modelling (...)
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  28. Biological Conservation of a Prey–Predator System Incorporating Constant Prey Refuge Through Provision of Alternative Food to Predators: A Theoretical Study.Kunal Chakraborty & Sankha Subhra Das - 2014 - Acta Biotheoretica 62 (2):183-205.
    We describe a prey–predator system incorporating constant prey refuge through provision of alternative food to predators. The proposed model deals with a problem of non-selective harvesting of a prey–predator system in which both the prey and the predator species obey logistic law of growth. The long-run sustainability of an exploited system is discussed through provision of alternative food to predators. We have analyzed the variability of the system in presence of constant prey refuge and examined the stabilizing effect on predator–prey (...)
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  29. Stability, Complexity and Robustness in Population Dynamics.J. Demongeot, H. Hazgui, H. Ben Amor & J. Waku - 2014 - Acta Biotheoretica 62 (3):243-284.
    The problem of stability in population dynamics concerns many domains of application in demography, biology, mechanics and mathematics. The problem is highly generic and independent of the population considered (human, animals, molecules,…). We give in this paper some examples of population dynamics concerning nucleic acids interacting through direct nucleic binding with small or cyclic RNAs acting on mRNAs or tRNAs as translation factors or through protein complexes expressed by genes and linked to DNA as transcription factors. The networks made of (...)
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  30. Untangling the Conceptual Issues Raised in Reydon and Scholz’s Critique of Organizational Ecology and Darwinian Populations.Denise E. Dollimore - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (3):282-315.
    Reydon and Scholz raise doubts about the Darwinian status of organizational ecology by arguing that Darwinian principles are not applicable to organizational populations. Although their critique of organizational ecology’s typological essentialism is correct, they go on to reject the Darwinian status of organizational populations. This paper claims that the replicator-interactor distinction raised in modern philosophy of biology but overlooked for discussion by Reydon and Scholz provides a way forward. It is possible to conceptualize evolving Darwinian populations providing that the inheritance (...)
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  31. Of Mice and Men: Lyme Disease and Biodiversity.Scott R. Granter, Aaron Bernstein & Richard S. Ostfeld - 2014 - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 57 (2):198-207.
    If you consult a medical textbook to learn about the pathogenesis of Lyme disease, you will find a standard narrative. You will learn the disease is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, which is transmitted to people by blacklegged ticks . You will also learn that the natural reservoir for spirochetes in the Northeast is the white-footed mouse , and also likely be told that white-tailed deer are the primary host for gravid female ticks. And that is pretty much the (...)
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  32. Time of famine: Time to reproduce? (comment on DOI 10.1002/bies.201300165).Éric Le Bourg - 2014 - Bioessays 36 (5):436-436.
  33. Effect of Hawk-Dove Game on the Dynamics of Two Competing Species.Ali Moussaoui, Pierre Auger & Benjamin Roche - 2014 - Acta Biotheoretica 62 (3):385-404.
    Outcomes of interspecific competition, and especially the possibility of coexistence, have been extensively studied in theoretical ecology because of their implications in community assemblages. During the last decades, the influence of different time scales through the local/regional dynamics of animal communities has received an increasing attention. Nevertheless, different time scales involved in interspecific competition can result form other processes than spatial dynamics. Here, we envision and analyze a new theoretical framework that couples a game theory approach for competition with a (...)
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  34. Immune balance: The development of the idea and its applications.Bartlomiej Swiatczak - 2014 - Journal of the History of Biology 47 (3):411-442.
    It has long been taken for granted that the immune system’s capacity to protect an individual from infection and disease depends on the power of the system to distinguish between self and nonself. However, accumulating data have undermined this fundamental concept. Evidence against the self/nonself discrimination model left researchers in need of a new overarching framework able to capture the immune system’s reactivity. Here, I highlight that along with the self/nonself model, another powerful representation of the immune system’s reactivity has (...)
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  35. Idealisations in normative models.Mark Colyvan - 2013 - Synthese 190 (8):1337-1350.
    In this paper I discuss the kinds of idealisations invoked in normative theories—logic, epistemology, and decision theory. I argue that very often the so-called norms of rationality are in fact mere idealisations invoked to make life easier. As such, these idealisations are not too different from various idealisations employed in scientific modelling. Examples of the latter include: fluids are incompressible (in fluid mechanics), growth rates are constant (in population ecology), and the gravitational influence of distant bodies can be ignored (in (...)
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  36. Exploring the Status of Population Genetics: The Role of Ecology.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - Biological Theory 7 (4):346-357.
    The status of population genetics has become hotly debated among biologists and philosophers of biology. Many seem to view population genetics as relatively unchanged since the Modern Synthesis and have argued that subjects such as development were left out of the Synthesis. Some have called for an extended evolutionary synthesis or for recognizing the insignificance of population genetics. Yet others such as Michael Lynch have defended population genetics, declaring "nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of population genetics" (...)
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  37. Stabilizing Effect of Cannibalism in a Two Stages Population Model.Jonathan Rault, Eric Benoît & Jean-Luc Gouzé - 2013 - Acta Biotheoretica 61 (1):119-139.
    In this paper we build a prey–predator model with discrete weight structure for the predator. This model will conserve the number of individuals and the biomass and both growth and reproduction of the predator will depend on the food ingested. Moreover the model allows cannibalism which means that the predator can eat the prey but also other predators. We will focus on a simple version with two weight classes or stage and present some general mathematical results. In the last part, (...)
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  38. A General Method for Modeling Population Dynamics and Its Applications.Yuri K. Shestopaloff - 2013 - Acta Biotheoretica 61 (4):499-519.
    Studying populations, be it a microbe colony or mankind, is important for understanding how complex systems evolve and exist. Such knowledge also often provides insights into evolution, history and different aspects of human life. By and large, populations’ prosperity and decline is about transformation of certain resources into quantity and other characteristics of populations through growth, replication, expansion and acquisition of resources. We introduce a general model of population change, applicable to different types of populations, which interconnects numerous factors influencing (...)
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  39. Discrete Modeling of Dynamics of Zooplankton Community at the Different Stages of an Antropogeneous Eutrophication.G. N. Zholtkevych, G. Yu Bespalov, K. V. Nosov & Mahalakshmi Abhishek - 2013 - Acta Biotheoretica 61 (4):449-465.
    Mathematical modeling is a convenient way for characterization of complex ecosystems. This approach was applied to study the dynamics of zooplankton in Lake Sevan (Armenia) at different stages of anthropogenic eutrophication with the use of a novel method called discrete modeling of dynamical systems with feedback (DMDS). Simulation demonstrated that the application of this method helps in characterization of inter- and intra-component relationships in a natural ecosystem. This method describes all possible pairwise inter-component relationships like “plus–plus,” “minus–minus,” “plus–minus,” “plus–zero,” “minus–zero,” (...)
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  40. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection.Peter Gildenhuys - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1):192-195.
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 1, Page 192-195, March 2012.
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  41. Estimation of Parameters in a Bertalanffy Type of Temperature Dependent Growth Model Using Data on Juvenile Stone Loach (Barbatula barbatula).Johan Grasman, Willem B. E. van Deventer & Vincent van Laar - 2012 - Acta Biotheoretica 60 (4):393-405.
    Parameters of a Bertalanffy type of temperature dependent growth model are fitted using data from a population of stone loach ( Barbatula barbatula ). Over two periods respectively in 1990 and 2010 length data of this population has been collected at a lowland stream in the central part of the Netherlands. The estimation of the maximum length of a fully grown individual is given special attention because it is in fact found as the result of an extrapolation over a large (...)
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  42. Consequences of Environmental Fluctuations on Taylor’s Power Law and Implications for the Dynamics and Persistence of Populations.C. Pertoldi & S. Faurby - 2012 - Acta Biotheoretica 61 (2):173-180.
    Conservation Biologists have found that demographic stochasticity causes the mean time to extinction to increase exponentially with population size. This has proved helpful in analyses determining extinction times and characterizing the pathway to extinction. The aim of this investigation is to explore the possible interactions between environmental/demographic noises and the scaling effect of the mean population size with its variance, which is expected to follow Taylor’s power law relationship. We showed that the combined effects of environmental/demographic noises and the scaling (...)
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  43. Evaluating the models and behaviour of 3D intelligent virtual animals in a predator-prey relationship. AAMAS 2012: 79-86.Deborah Richards, Jacobson Michael, Taylor Charlotte, Taylor Meredith, Porte John, Newstead Anne & Hanna Nader - 2012 - Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Agent and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS).
    This paper presents the intelligent virtual animals that inhabit Omosa, a virtual learning environment to help secondary school students learn how to conduct scientific inquiry and gain concepts from biology. Omosa supports multiple agents, including animals, plants, and human hunters, which live in groups of varying sizes and in a predator-prey relationship with other agent types (species). In this paper we present our generic agent architecture and the algorithms that drive all animals. We concentrate on two of our animals to (...)
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  44. The humanist case for population reform.Kelvin Thomson - 2012 - The Australian Humanist (106):3.
    Thomson, Kelvin You might be surprised to learn that China, home of the much derided one-child policy, has a higher birth rate than Italy, home of the Vatican. This suggests Chinese families are quietly defying their political leaders and Italian families are quietly defying their religious ones. But the overall global picture is one of rapid population growth.
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  45. Environmental Ethics and Decision Theory: Fellow Travellers or Bitter Enemies?Mark Colyvan & Katie Steele - 2011 - In Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent Peacock (eds.), Philosophy of Ecology. Elsevier Science Publishers. pp. 285--300.
    On the face of it, ethics and decision theory give quite different advice about what the best course of action is in a given situation. In this paper we examine this alleged conflict in the realm of environmental decision-making. We focus on a couple of places where ethics and decision theory might be thought to be offering conflicting advice: environmental triage and carbon trading. We argue that the conflict can be seen as conflicts about other things (like appropriate temporal scales (...)
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  46. Philosophy of ecology.Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent A. Peacock (eds.) - 2011 - Waltham, MA: North-Holland.
    The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project. To get the application of ecology (...)
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  47. Single species population dynamics and its theoretical underpinnings.Alan Hastings - 2011 - In Samuel M. Scheiner & Michael R. Willig (eds.), The Theory of Ecology. University of Chicago Press. pp. 109-123.
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  48. The Evolution of Dispersal in Random Environment.Mohamed Khaladi, Jean-Dominique Lebreton & Abdelaziz Khermjioui - 2011 - Acta Biotheoretica 60 (1-2):155-165.
    In this paper we introduce a stochastic model for a population living and migrating between s sites without distinction in the states between residents and immigrants. The evolutionary stable strategies is characterized by the maximization of a stochastic growth rate. We obtain that the expectation of reproductive values, normalized by some random quantity, are constant on all sites and that the expectation of the normalized vector population structure is proportional to eigenvector of the dispersion matrix associated to eigenvalue one, which (...)
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  49. Trade-offs in model-building: A more target-oriented approach.John Matthewson - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (2):324-333.
    In his 1966 paper “The Strategy of model-building in Population Biology”, Richard Levins argues that no single model in population biology can be maximally realistic, precise and general at the same time. This is because these desirable model properties trade-off against one another. Recently, philosophers have developed Levins’ claims, arguing that trade-offs between these desiderata are generated by practical limitations on scientists, or due to formal aspects of models and how they represent the world. However this project is not complete. (...)
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  50. What Were They Thinking?: Is Population Ecology a Science?: Papers, Critiques, Rebuttals and Philosophy.Bertram G. Murray - 2011 - Infinity Publishing.
    This book presents Bertram Murray's philosophy of science, unpublished papers, and rebuttals to critics of these papers. Subjects include clutch size, population dynamics, life history tables, and mating systems.
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