[Does population ecology have general laws?].
There is a widespread opinion among ecologists that ecology lacks general laws. In this paper the author argues that this opinion is mistaken. Taking the case of population dynamics, the author points out that there are several very general law-like propositions that provide the theoretical basis for most population dynamics models that were developed to address specific issues. Some of these foundational principles, like the law of exponential growth, are logically very similar to certain law of physics (Newton's law of intertia, for example, is almost a direct analogue of exponential growth). The author discusses two other principles (population self-limitation and resource-consumer oscillations), as well as the more elementary postulates that underlie them. None of the "laws" that the author proposes for population ecology are new. Collectively ecologists have been using these general principles in guiding development of their models and experiments since the days of Lotka, Volterra, and Gause.
Turchin
P V
PV
Dept. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3043, USA. peter.turchin@uconn.edu
D000818:Animals; D004463:Ecology; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011157:Population Dynamics