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Population ecologists track wild animals over their lifetimes using mark-recapture methods. Odonates are easily marked and remain near water bodies, allowing for high recapture rates. In recent years, the focus in mark-recapture models has switched from population size estimates to survival and recapture rate estimation, and from testing hypotheses to model selection and inference. This chapter presents a review of the literature on mark-recapture studies, with a suggestion of areas where more research is needed. These include the effect of marking on survival and recapture rates, differences in survival between sexes and female colour morphs, the relative importance of processes in the larval and the adult stage in driving population dynamics, and the contribution of local and regional processes in shaping metapopulation dynamics.

This chapter explores the biogeography of endemism and the population ecology of endemic species. The key feature of endemism is stated clearly: the majority of species have a narrow endemic distribution. The diversity of endemic distribution patterns in the Mediterranean flora, and the historical and biogeographic associations of endemic plants are discussed. Endemism is examined in the context of the ecology and dynamics of the plant communities in which they occur. Finally, the ecological and biological correlates of endemism, in particular whether endemic species differ from widespread species in traits linked to ecological function and habitat occupation, are explored.

This chapter focuses on the avian migrant's population ecology. The basic equation for population growth states that change in the population over time equals the birth or natality rate minus the death or mortality rate. This type of population growth is referred to as “density independent.” Although no population is truly independent of its size, as population size is what birth and death rates act upon, in density-independent populations there is little interindividual effect on members based on their numbers alone. This chapter describes an alternative model for density-dependent population limitation in multiple habitats. It then considers other models for migrant population limitation that emphasized breeding habitat availability and assumed that nonbreeding-period effects on population size were assumed to be largely density-independent. It also discusses the density-independent and density-dependent causes of population change in avian migrants.

This introductory chapter defines the scope and breadth of the topic of plant population ecology as the study of plant populations in their habitat. A brief history of the topic is discussed followed by an outline of the goals of plant population ecology along with a list of important books and papers, and presentation of fourteen fundamental questions intended to guide the future direction of the discipline. Four case studies are introduced that are returned to throughout the rest of the book. A road map for using the book is outlined.

This chapter introduces mathematical and statistical modelling approaches in population ecology. It starts with a conceptual section, continues with mathematical and statistical sections, and ends with a perspectives section. The conceptual section motivates the modelling approaches by providing the necessary background to population ecology. The mathematical sections start by constructing an individual-based model in homogeneous space, and then simplifies the model to derive the classical model of logistic population growth. The models are then expanded to heterogeneous space in two contrasting ways, resulting in models called the plant population model and the butterfly metapopulation model. Both types of models are used to analyse the consequences of habitat loss and fragmentation at the population level. To illustrate the interplay between models and data, the statistical section analyses data generated by the mathematical models, with emphasis on the analyses of time-series data, species distribution modelling, and metapopulation modelling.

Serotinus conifers have mature cones that remain closed and attached to the parent tree for 1 or more years after seed maturation; cones open rapidly when removed from the tree or when exposed to temperatures higher than those normally reached in the canopy due to sunlight and warm air. California has more than a dozen species of closed-cone conifers, all in the genera Cupressus, Pinus, and Sequoiadendron. This chapter provides a species-by-species summary of the population ecology of closed-cone pines and cypress in California. It offers suggestions for the management and protection of closed-cone conifers against fire regimes and other human activities.

This chapter uses a combination of models from behavioral and population ecology to address certain aspects of community dynamics. It aims to show how the synthesis of two different scientific traditions (the literature on prey choice by predators and the literature on population dynamics) can lead to new understandings and new empirical challenges. An evolutionary understanding of feeding behavior turns out to be a good starting point for combining the traditions of prey choice by predators and population dynamics. The model provides a quantitative basis for the qualitative pattern of decline of several subpopulations of harbor seal, sea lion, and sea otter.

In their demonstrations that technologies and organizations are sociomaterial, or how they become sociomaterial, scholars have not reflected in any measurable depth on the concept of materiality by itself. This chapter explores how materiality emerges from an organization’s interaction with its environment. The verb “emerge” is used purposefully. To say that materiality is entirely strategically crafted would be to place an undue onus on the agency of a technology’s designer or developer, an onus which the author suggests may be misplaced. Thus to say that materiality emerges is to recognize that the physical and or/digital materials that are arranged into particular forms are arranged by someone. But the selection of those materials or the ways in which people decide to arrange them may not be entirely under their control because they do so within the constraints of an organization’s formal structure. By considering the insights of organizational theories that depict organizations as actively responding to environmental stimuli and other theories which propose that organizations are largely ineffective at responding to environmental pressures and are directly acted upon by their environments, the chapter demonstrates how the micro-level interpretative flexibility of artifacts, the evolution and composition of the set of relevant social groups that contribute to the artifact’s construction, the processes by which an artifact reaches a point of stabilization and closure, and the structure of the technological frames shared by designers are influenced by macro-level organizational responses to and pressures from their environments.

Grassland ecosystems cover 10 percent of California's land area, and this habitat type is home to many endangered animals and plants in the state. This chapter presents a state-of-the-art synthesis by scientists studying California grasslands on the status of our knowledge of the history, ecology, and management of grasslands. It begins with an overview that presents the nomenclature, systematics, and classifications of the important plant species and communities, and also discusses the role of climatic and soil conditions in the distribution of grasslands, including population and community ecology. The book concludes with management and conservation efforts, and the use of restoration science to combat exotic species and restore native biodiversity.

This chapter summarizes the book's main points concerning the ecology, life history, and evolution of migratory birds. It first considers migration as a behavior used to exploit geographically separate environments that differ seasonally in their value for survival and reproduction. It then discusses the avian migrant's breeding period, postbreeding period, fall transient period, wintering period, and spring transient period. It also reviews the avian migrant's population ecology, evolution and biogeography, and its role in the movement and spread of pathogens such as West Nile virus (WNV) and avian influenza, along with the relevance of avian migrant “connectivity” to conservation. Finally, it reflects on the issue of migrant origins and migration as a life history strategy.

In this final chapter populations, population change, and population regulation are discussed, particularly in the context of threats to species and the conservation strategies employed to protect them. Population size, structure, and distribution in relation to ecology and habitat availability are analysed. The movements and establishment of species through natural range expansion and through introduction are considered in the context of climate change, conservation, and threat. The impact and management of emerging avian diseases is discussed. Extinction, the threat of extinction, and conservation efforts are considered and throughout the chapter the roles of professional and citizen scientist ornithologists are emphasized.

The global anarchist movement, while an international phenomenon, is not even distributed through the world. This chapter adopts a meso-structural approach to analyze the variety and distribution of anarchist organizational forms throughout the world. I utilize the Anarchist Yellow Pages (AYP), an international directory of anarchist groupings, which listed over two thousand organizations in 2005. This chapter explores the types of these anarchist organizations and their geographic clustering throughout the world, with special emphasis on 21 countries that had at least 20 such organizations. The concentrations of anarchist organizations found in the AYP suggest that the movement tends to be strongly European-centered. North Americans are disproportionately involved in various media organizations; Spain, France, and Sweden have strong syndicalist tendencies; Italy and Germany tend to have a high percentage of physical spaces like social centers and info shops. Finally, the presence of rights and “democracy” in different countries may, in part, explain where the global anarchist movement is concentrated.