Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow

Contents......Page 15
1 On Earth as It Is in the Heavens......Page 21
1.1 How Planets Move......Page 22
1.2 How Populations Grow......Page 24
1.3 Metaphors and the Language of Science......Page 26
1.4 Inertial Population Growth......Page 27
2 Does Ecology Have Laws?......Page 29
2.1 Ecological Allometries......Page 30
2.2 Kepler’s Laws......Page 39
2.3 What Is a Law of Nature?......Page 44
2.4 Laws in Ecology......Page 48
3 Equilibrium and Accelerated Death......Page 52
3.1 Accelerated Death......Page 53
3.2 Galileo and Falling Bodies......Page 54
3.3 The Slobodkin Experiment......Page 57
3.4 Falling Bodies and Dying Populations......Page 60
3.5 The Meaning of Abundance Equilibrium......Page 61
3.6 The Damuth Allometry......Page 64
3.7 A Harder Question......Page 66
4 The Maternal Effect Hypothesis......Page 67
4.1 Inertial Growth and the Maternal Effect......Page 68
4.2 The Missing Periods......Page 70
4.3 The Calder Allometry......Page 75
4.4 The Eigenperiod Hypothesis......Page 77
4.5 What Can Be Done in the Laboratory......Page 80
5 Predator–Prey Interactions and the Period of Cycling......Page 82
5.1 An Alternative Limit Myth......Page 83
5.2 Prey-Dependent versus Ratio-Dependent Models......Page 84
5.3 The Fallacy of Instantism......Page 88
5.4 Why Period Travels Bottom Up......Page 92
5.5 Competing Views on Causes and Cyclicity......Page 96
6.1 The Implicit Inertial-Growth Model......Page 101
6.2 Parametric Specification......Page 108
6.3 Malthusian Invariancy......Page 113
6.4 What Is and What Is Not Analogous......Page 118
7.1 Theoretical and Applied Ecology......Page 122
7.2 Managing Inertial Populations......Page 124
7.3 Rates of Evolution......Page 129
7.4 Risk Analysis......Page 131
7.5 The Moral......Page 132
8 Shadows on the Wall......Page 135
8.1 Plato’s Cave......Page 136
8.2 Evidence and Aesthetics......Page 138
8.3 Overfitting......Page 141
8.4 A Simplified Picture of Population Ecology......Page 143
Appendix A: Notes and Further Reading......Page 151
Appendix B: Essential Features of the Maternal Effect Model......Page 161
Bibliography......Page 169
C......Page 179
E......Page 180
L......Page 181
P......Page 182
T......Page 183
Z......Page 184