Modeling Populations of Adaptive Individuals

Ecologists now recognise that the dynamics of populations, communities, and ecosystems are strongly affected by adaptive individual behaviours. Yet until now, we have lacked effective and flexible methods for modelling such dynamics.

Traditional ecological models become impractical with the inclusion of behaviour, and the optimisation approaches of behavioural ecology cannot be used when future conditions are unpredictable due to feedbacks from the behaviour of other individuals. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to state- and prediction-based theory, or SPT, a powerful new approach to modelling trade-off behaviours in contexts such as individual-based population models where feedbacks and variability make optimisation impossible.

Modeling Populations of Adaptive Individuals features a wealth of examples that range from highly simplified behaviour models to complex population models. In these models, individuals make adaptive trade-off decisions about habitat and activity selection in highly heterogeneous environments.

Steven Railsback and Bret Harvey explain how SPT builds on key concepts from the state-based dynamic modelling theory of behavioural ecology, and how it combines explicit predictions of future conditions with approximations of a fitness measure. This approach represents how individuals make good—not optimal—decisions that they revise as conditions change. The resulting models are realistic, testable, adaptable, and invaluable for answering fundamental questions in ecology and forecasting ecological outcomes of real-world scenarios.