Sunday, August 3, 2008: 8:30 AM-12:30 PM
101 B, Midwest Airlines Center
WK 8 - New Mathematical Tools for Sensitivity Analysis of Population Models
Sensitivity analysis (including elasticity) has come to play an important role in population biology. It is most often applied to population growth rate; it is now rare to see a calculation of population growth that is not accompanied by a sensitivity or elasticity analysis. These analyses are applied in conservation biology, evolutionary ecology, management, ecotoxicology, and statistics, among other places. However, population growth rates and the linear models that produce them are not the only games in town. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to calculate the sensitivity of other things (e.g., life expectancy, short-term transient dynamics, nonlinear equilibria and cycles, resilience and reactivity, … of pretty much anything that one can calculate from a population model)? It is now possible to do all that and more. The mathematical methods are based on matrix calculus and are (so far) unfamiliar to ecologists. However, they are not difficult to learn or to use. This workshop will teach the basic methods, and show how to implement them numerically. With examples. And interpretations. Prerequisites: you should already be familiar with the basics of matrix population models and the sensitivity and elasticity of population growth rates. If you have a laptop running Matlab, bring it along and you can try out some calculations.
Organizer:	Hal Caswell, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Speaker:	Hal Caswell, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

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See more of The 93rd ESA Annual Meeting (August 3 -- August 8, 2008)