Animal Population Ecology
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0192
- LAST REVIEWED: 31 August 2021
- LAST MODIFIED: 11 January 2018
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199830060-0192
Introduction
Animal population ecology comprises the study of the growth, regulation, and interactions of animal populations. As a level of organization, the population comes between individuals on the one hand and communities on the other, but there is not a sharp distinction between those phenomena that affect the levels above and below from those of the population: a population’s growth may be much effected by the behavior of its constituent individuals, while the presence of predators, prey, and competitors in the community will likewise have important effects on the population. Nonetheless, the population is a worthy area of emphasis (for greater consideration of multispecies interactions and other aspects of community structure and function, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Community Ecology”). Animals share a number of relevant ecological features that make a separation from plants useful: animals are all heterotrophs, mostly exist as biologically separate and genetically distinct individuals, and most are sexual. There are greater or lesser exceptions to all of these features, but they unify the phenomena of animal populations, and make counting individuals an intuitive and practical way of accounting for their populations’ growth and numbers. That part of ecology that deals with populations of animals is thus an interesting partition, and as a distinct area of study is well-justified by historical development and current practice.
General Overviews
Population ecology, perhaps more than other subfields of ecology, has what Vandermeer and Goldberg 2013 call a “canon”: a set of fundamental principles and areas of study that form a common core of the discipline, including exponential population growth, logistic growth, age structure, predation, competition, and other interspecific interactions, and more recently, a consideration of the extension of the population in space in metapopulation dynamics (for this spatial aspect, see also the separate Oxford Bibliographies article on “Metapopulations and Spatial Population Processes”). Allee, et al. 1949 were the first to set out in detail the basic form of this canon. Levin 2009 provides a comprehensive review of all of ecology, including extensive treatment of population ecology. Vandermeer and Goldberg 2013 provide an empirical and theoretical overview, while Ranta, et al. 2006 and Rockwood 2015 are more theoretical in their approach. Gotelli 2008 is a very clear exposition of the theoretical canon of population ecology at an introductory level.
Allee, W. C., A. E. Emerson, O. Park, T. Park, and K. P. Schmidt. 1949. Principles of animal ecology. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.
This was the first comprehensive, detailed treatise on animal ecology. Its seven chapters on population cover general properties, biological backgrounds, demographic backgrounds, growth form, selected problems, aggregations, and organized insect societies. It remains a benchmark for judging progress in population ecology.
Gotelli, N. J. 2008. A primer of ecology. 4th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.
An excellent overview of theoretical population ecology, building the theory of population dynamics from elementary growth through to metapopulations, competition, and predation; and concluding with some community ecological topics.
Levin, S. A., ed. 2009. The Princeton guide to ecology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
A comprehensive overview of all of ecology. Part II, of 13 chapters, is on population ecology, but many directly relevant chapters occur in other parts, including Schoener on the ecological niche, Doak and colleagues on population viability, Hilborn on fisheries management, and Boyce and colleagues on wildlife management.
Ranta, E., P. Lundberg, and V. Kaitala. 2006. Ecology of Populations. Cambridge Univ. Press.
A monograph that is wide-ranging in scope, building from relatively simple models of birth and death to a variety of population and community phenomena, including spatial patterns and processes. It is primarily theoretical.
Rockwood, L. L. 2015. Introduction to population ecology. 2d ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
An advanced undergraduate/graduate text, with a theoretical emphasis, and a strong consideration of an array of interspecific interactions, including host-parasite and plant-herbivore interactions.
Vandermeer, J. H., and D. E. Goldberg. 2013. Population Ecology. 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
An advanced undergraduate/graduate text, presenting an overview of what the authors justifiably call the “canon,” from elementary population dynamics through predation and competition, including spatial patterns and processes.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abundance/Biomass Comparison Method
- Accounting for Ecological Capital
- Adaptive Radiation
- Agroecology
- Allelopathy
- Allocation of Reproductive Resources in Plants
- Animals, Functional Morphology of
- Animals, Reproductive Allocation in
- Animals, Thermoregulation in
- Antarctic Environments and Ecology
- Anthropocentrism
- Applied Ecology
- Approaches and Issues in Historical Ecology
- Aquatic Conservation
- Aquatic Nutrient Cycling
- Archaea, Ecology of
- Assembly Models
- Autecology
- Bacterial Diversity in Freshwater
- Benthic Ecology
- Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning
- Biodiversity, Dimensionality of
- Biodiversity, Marine
- Biodiversity Patterns in Agricultural Systms
- Biofuels
- Biogeochemistry
- Biological Chaos and Complex Dynamics
- Biological Rhythms
- Biome, Alpine
- Biome, Boreal
- Biome, Desert
- Biome, Grassland
- Biome, Savanna
- Biome, Tundra
- Biomes, African
- Biomes, East Asian
- Biomes, Mountain
- Biomes, North American
- Biomes, South Asian
- Biophilia
- Braun, E. Lucy
- Bryophyte Ecology
- Buell-Small Succession Study (New Jersey)
- Butterfly Ecology
- Carson, Rachel
- Chemical Ecology
- Classification Analysis
- Coastal Dune Habitats
- Coevolution
- Communicating Ecology
- Communities and Ecosystems, Indirect Effects in
- Communities, Top-Down and Bottom-Up Regulation of
- Community Concept, The
- Community Ecology
- Community Genetics
- Community Phenology
- Competition and Coexistence in Animal Communities
- Competition in Plant Communities
- Complexity Theory
- Conservation Biology
- Conservation Genetics
- Coral Reefs
- Darwin, Charles
- Dead Wood in Forest Ecosystems
- Decomposition
- De-Glaciation, Ecology of
- Dendroecology
- Disease Ecology
- Dispersal
- Drought as a Disturbance in Forests
- Early Explorers, The
- Earth’s Climate, The
- Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics
- Ecological Dynamics in Fragmented Landscapes
- Ecological Education
- Ecological Engineering
- Ecological Forecasting
- Ecological Informatics
- Ecological Relevance of Speciation
- Ecology, Introductory Sources in
- Ecology, Microbial (Community)
- Ecology of Emerging Zoonotic Viruses
- Ecology of the Atlantic Forest
- Ecology, Stochastic Processes in
- Ecosystem Ecology
- Ecosystem Engineers
- Ecosystem Multifunctionality
- Ecosystem Services
- Ecosystem Services, Conservation of
- Ecotourism
- Elton, Charles
- Endophytes, Fungal
- Energy Flow
- Environmental Anthropology
- Environmental Justice
- Environments, Extreme
- Ethics, Ecological
- European Natural History Tradition
- Evolutionarily Stable Strategies
- Facilitation and the Organization of Communities
- Fern and Lycophyte Ecology
- Fire Ecology
- Fishes, Climate Change Effects on
- Flood Ecology
- Food Webs
- Foraging Behavior, Implications of
- Foraging, Optimal
- Forests, Temperate Coniferous
- Forests, Temperate Deciduous
- Freshwater Invertebrate Ecology
- Genetic Considerations in Plant Ecological Restoration
- Genomics, Ecological
- Geoecology
- Geographic Range
- Gleason, Henry
- Grazer Ecology
- Greig-Smith, Peter
- Gymnosperm Ecology
- Habitat Selection
- Harper, John L.
- Harvesting Alternative Water Resources (US West)
- Heavy Metal Tolerance
- Heterogeneity
- Himalaya, Ecology of the
- Host-Parasitoid Interactions
- Human Ecology
- Human Ecology of the Andes
- Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence
- Hutchinson, G. Evelyn
- Indigenous Ecologies
- Industrial Ecology
- Insect Ecology, Terrestrial
- Invasive Species
- Island Biogeography Theory
- Island Biology
- Keystone Species
- Kin Selection
- Landscape Dynamics
- Landscape Ecology
- Laws, Ecological
- Legume-Rhizobium Symbiosis, The
- Leopold, Aldo
- Lichen Ecology
- Life History
- Limnology
- Literature, Ecology and
- MacArthur, Robert H.
- Mangrove Zone Ecology
- Marine Fisheries Management
- Marine Subsidies
- Mass Effects
- Mathematical Ecology
- Mating Systems
- Maximum Sustainable Yield
- Metabolic Scaling Theory
- Metacommunity Dynamics
- Metapopulations and Spatial Population Processes
- Microclimate Ecology
- Mimicry
- Movement Ecology, Modeling and Data Analysis in
- Multiple Stable States and Catastrophic Shifts in Ecosyste...
- Mutualisms and Symbioses
- Mycorrhizal Ecology
- Natural History Tradition, The
- Networks, Ecological
- Niche Versus Neutral Models of Community Organization
- Niches
- Nutrient Foraging in Plants
- Ocean Sprawl
- Oceanography, Microbial
- Odum, Eugene and Howard
- Old Fields
- Ordination Analysis
- Organic Agriculture, Ecology of
- Paleoecology
- Paleolimnology
- Parental Care, Evolution of
- Pastures and Pastoralism
- Patch Dynamics
- Patrick, Ruth
- Peatlands
- Phenotypic Plasticity
- Phenotypic Selection
- Philosophy, Ecological
- Phylogenetics and Comparative Methods
- Physics, Ecology and
- Physiological Ecology of Nutrient Acquisition in Animals
- Physiological Ecology of Photosynthesis
- Physiological Ecology of Water Balance in Terrestrial Anim...
- Physiological Ecology of Water Balance in Terrestrial Plan...
- Plant Blindness
- Plant Disease Epidemiology
- Plant Ecological Responses to Extreme Climatic Events
- Plant-Insect Interactions
- Polar Regions
- Pollination Ecology
- Population Dynamics, Density-Dependence and Single-Species
- Population Dynamics, Methods in
- Population Ecology, Animal
- Population Ecology, Plant
- Population Fluctuations and Cycles
- Population Genetics
- Population Viability Analysis
- Populations and Communities, Dynamics of Age- and Stage-St...
- Predation and Community Organization
- Predation, Sublethal
- Predator-Prey Interactions
- Radioecology
- Reductionism Versus Holism
- Religion and Ecology
- Remote Sensing
- Restoration Ecology
- Rewilding
- Ricketts, Edward Flanders Robb
- Sclerochronology
- Secondary Production
- Seed Ecology
- Senescence
- Serpentine Soils
- Shelford, Victor
- Simulation Modeling
- Socioecology
- Soil Biogeochemistry
- Soil Ecology
- Spatial Pattern Analysis
- Spatial Patterns of Species Biodiversity in Terrestrial En...
- Spatial Scale and Biodiversity
- Species Distribution Modeling
- Species Extinctions
- Species Responses to Climate Change
- Species-Area Relationships
- Stability and Ecosystem Resilience, A Below-Ground Perspec...
- Stoichiometry, Ecological
- Stream Ecology
- Succession
- Sustainable Development
- Systematic Conservation Planning
- Systems Ecology
- Tansley, Sir Arthur
- Terrestrial Nitrogen Cycle
- Terrestrial Resource Limitation
- Territoriality
- Theory and Practice of Biological Control
- Thermal Ecology of Animals
- Tragedy of the Commons
- Transient Dynamics
- Trophic Levels
- Tropical Humid Forest Biome
- Urban Ecology
- Urban Forest Ecology
- Vegetation Classification
- Vegetation Dynamics, Remote Sensing of
- Vegetation Mapping
- Vicariance Biogeography
- Weed Ecology
- Wetland Ecology
- Whittaker, Robert H.
- Wildlife Ecology