If you are interested in population modeling –
and this might apply most if you intend to take biomathematics (BIOL 301), or
fourth-year ecology courses such as BIOL 404 or 408, you will want to begin to
learn the use of modeling software.
You can download a free and quite useful
starter system, called Populus, developed at the University of Minnesota
by Don Alstad. In this system you will find competition and predation models,
population growth and regulation models, and several others; the list grows
with each new release of the system. You are prompted for initial conditions
and/or for population variables, then the model draws graph output to suit. It
is easy to play with the variables to get a sense of their behaviour, and to
determine the robustness of the models to variation.
The link below takes you to the Populus
homepage, where you will find full instructions on how to download and install
the software (easy), as well as much other information. Help instruction is contained
within the package when it downloads, but further links on the Populus
page may also be useful when you’re not sure how to proceed.
Happy modeling, courtesy of Alstad and
colleagues: