Ecological Modelling Applied to Entomology

About this book

Insects, when studied from the ecological perspective, provide a great opportunity for scientific studies emphasizing population theory. The simple fact of being successful organisms for their ability to colonize different habitats or even for their high reproductive potential, increases the interest of ecologists in conducting studies focused on population and community level. Mathematical models are powerful tools that can capture the essence of many biological systems and investigate ecological patterns associated to ecological stability dependent on endogenous and exogenous factors. This proposal comes from the idea of adding experiences of researchers interested in working at the interface between mathematical and computation theory and problems centered on entomology, showing how mathematical modelling can be an important tool for understanding population dynamics, behavior, pest management, spatial structure and conservation.

Contents

1. Insects and the Ecological Basis for Mathematical Modelling
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Insects and their evolutionary strategies
1.3 Insects and the climate changes
1.4 Insects and their responses
1.5 Insects and the numbers
1.6 Insects and their interactions
1.7 Insects and the models
1.8 This book
1.9 References

2. Demographic processes in spatially structured host-parasitoid systems
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Modelling host-parasitoid dynamics with spatial structure
2.3 Resources quality, frequency and duration
2.4 Foraging and reproductive strategies

3. Abiotic effects on population dynamics of mosquitoes and their influence on dengue transmission
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Mosquito population dynamics
3.3 Dengue transmission
3.4 Results
3.5 Conclusions

4. Modelling the implications of temperature on the life cycle of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Theory from mathematical model
4.3 Results and Discussion
4.4 Conclusions

5. Predictive modelling of insect metacommunities in biomonitoring of aquatic networks
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Simulating insect metacommunities in networks under punctual anthropogenic impacts
5.3 Results
5.4 Implications for biomonitoring

6. Modeling trophic interactions in insect population dynamics
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Continuous time modeling of food web dynamics
6.3 Continuous time modeling in biological control and Integrated Pest Management
6.4 Discrete time modeling of predation between immature stages
6.5 Final considerations

7. Coupled Map Lattice Model for insects and spreadable substances
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The spatial structure and the movement rules
7.3 The model for insects that only have local perception abilities
7.4 The Model for Quasi-Local Perception Insects
7.5 Discussion and final remarks

8. Computational Methods for Accurate Evaluation of Pest Insect Population Size
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Theory of numerical integration
8.3 The coarse grid problem
8.4 Numerical integration in ecological problems
8.5 Highly aggregated density distributions
8.6 Evaluating pest abundance on irregular grids
8.7 Concluding remarks

9. Models for over dispersed data in entomology
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Models for proportion data
9.3 Models for count data
9.4 Discussion

Customer Reviews