[.ca] Complex Population Dynamics: A Theoretical/Empirical ... (ISBN 0691090211)

Essential work for professional:
Politicians often say things like, "Let's not follow each other off a cliff like lemmings," but it's not true that lemmings really follow each other off a cliff in nature. What IS true is that some species of lemmings have huge populations some years, and become almost extinct in other years. Why does the population of lemmings vary so much? It turns out that it has to do with the interaction of the lemmings with their food supply and their predators. When there are a lot of lemmings, then they eat all the edible vegetation and begin starving, and their predators, like weasels, thrive and kill the lemmings off, so that lemmings almost disappear. With no lemmings around, the food can grow again unmolested, and predators, having nothing to eat, die off themselves. That leaves the field clear for lemmings to thrive, and their populations grow, repeating the cycle every three to five years. Peter Turchin formalizes all this for a wide variety of animal species -- from the Larch budmouth to the southern pine beetle, from the red grouse to the snowshoe hare. He develops mathematical models for the populations of all these species and tests the models with known data time series. This landmark book is a must for serious professionals involved in ecology and other biological and natural sciences.