Quantitative ecology is the application of advanced
mathematical and
statistical tools to any number of problems in the field of
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
. It is a small but growing subfield in ecology, reflecting the demand among practicing ecologists to interpret ever larger and more complex data sets using quantitative reasoning. Quantitative ecologists might apply some combination of deterministic or
stochastic
Stochastic (, ) refers to the property of being well described by a random probability distribution. Although stochasticity and randomness are distinct in that the former refers to a modeling approach and the latter refers to phenomena themselv ...
mathematical models
A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, b ...
to theoretical questions or they might use sophisticated methods in
applied statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...
for
experimental design
The design of experiments (DOE, DOX, or experimental design) is the design of any task that aims to describe and explain the variation of information under conditions that are hypothesized to reflect the variation. The term is generally associ ...
and
hypothesis testing. Typical problems in quantitative ecology include estimating the dynamics and status of wild populations, modeling the impacts of anthropogenic or climatic change on ecological communities, and predicting the spread of invasive species or disease outbreaks.
Quantitative ecology, which mainly focuses on statistical and computational methods for addressing applied problems, is distinct from
theoretical ecology which tends to explore focus on understanding the dynamics of simple mechanistic models and their implications for a general set of biological systems using mathematical arguments.
See also
*
Taylor's law
Taylor's power law is an empirical law in ecology that relates the variance of the number of individuals of a species per unit area of habitat to the corresponding mean by a power law relationship. It is named after the ecologist who first propos ...
*
Theoretical ecology
References
Bibliography
* Matthiopoulos, J. 2011. ''How to be a Quantitative Ecologist''. Wiley.
* Hilborn, R. and M. Mangel. 1997. ''The Ecological Detective: Confronting Models with Data''. Princeton University Press.
* Mangel, M. 2006. ''The Theoretical Biologist's Toolbox. Quantitative Methods for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology''. Cambridge University Press.
* Poole, R. 1974. ''Introduction to Quantitative Ecology''. McGraw-Hill.
* Schneider, D. 1994, 2009. ''Quantitative Ecology: Spatial and Temporal Scaling''. Academic Press.
* Turner, M. and R. Gardner (eds). 1991. ''Quantitative methods in landscape ecology''. Springer.
External links
Quantitative Ecology and Resource Managementat the
University of Washington, Seattle
Quantitative Ecologyat
Penn State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a public state-related land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvania. Founded in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania, Penn State became ...
{{Branches of ecology
Subfields of ecology