Behaviour of simple population models under ecological processes.

ABSTRACT

The two most popular and extensively-used discrete models of population growth display the generic bifurcation structure of a hierarchy of period- doubling sequence to chaos with increasing growth rates. In this paper we show that these two models, though they belong to a general class of one-dimensional maps, show very different dynamics when important ecological processes such as immigration and emigration/depletion, are considered. It is important that ecologists recognize the differences between these models before using them to describe their data—or develop optimization strategies—based on these models.