Foreword for Applied Population Ecology

Foreword by Mark Shaffer

        To many people, population ecology seems, at first acquaintance, to be the antithesis of mathematics. Ecology is about living things, not numbers. It is about the relationships of living things to each other and their environment, not about formulas. Complex things in a complex world that require qualitative observation and description for understanding. Where do deer live? What do they eat? What species of songbirds are found in old-growth forest? Why do some plant species seem to grow everywhere, but others only in specific places? Not the kind of questions that beg for numerical answers.

        Eventually, however, as our qualitative knowledge increases, quantitative questions emerge. How many deer can live in a thousand-acre woods? How much food does each need to survive? Why are there more songbird species in larger patches of old-growth forest? How big a patch of old-growth do we need if we want to be sure of keeping all its songbirds around? It does not take long for population ecology to reveal itself as an intensely quantitative discipline.

        For whatever reasons, many people drawn to the fascination and beauty of the qualitative aspects of ecology are put off by the quantitative aspects. Mathematics seems far too abstract and inanimate to describe palpable flesh and blood. Yet, it is only through the application of mathematics that we can begin, not just to see, but to understand the underlying patterns in the distribution and abundance of living things that is the essence of population ecology. This book is meant for such people. The text is clear and the examples real. But more than this, the book is accompanied by a friendly computer program that allows the reader to interact with the quantitative aspects of ecology without first having to become a mathematician. A little time with this program and the exercises the authors provide quickly illustrates how dynamic and fascinating quantitative population ecology can be.

        Another strength of this text is its scope of coverage. Too many treatments of population ecology start and stop with the basic models of population growth and life tables. This text and computer program capture the basics but go beyond to include such current and difficult topics as metapopulation dynamics and population viability analysis. The authors also provide the best treatment of variation and its effects on population dynamics that I have seen anywhere.

        By making this discipline far more accessible to a wider audience, the authors deserve much credit and our sincere thanks.

Mark Shaffer
Director, Heritage Network Operations
The Nature Conservancy

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