Learning Objectives

Following this assignment students should be able to:

• describe the processes that cause populations to grow or decline
• understand exponential population growth
• code and simulate a simple population model in R

Reading

• Topics

• What is a population?
• Births, deaths, immigration, emigration
• Exponential population growth equation

• Malthus

• Video

  • Crash Course: Population Ecology

• Readings

  • An Introduction to Population Growth
  • Population Ecology at Work: Managing Game Populations
  • How Populations Grow: The Exponential and Logistic Equations