Metapopulation Dynamics: Why Extinction Is Normal and Colonization Essential
Local extinctions are expected. What determines survival is whether colonizers keep arriving to restart the cycle.
Ecosystem Services: Putting Value on Nature's Work
How economists learned to count what forests, wetlands, and reefs do for free—and why those numbers matter for every land-use decision.
Lotka-Volterra Equations: The Foundation of Modern Population Ecology
How two simple equations revealed the hidden logic of population cycles and launched quantitative ecology
Carrying Capacity: A Useful Fiction That Guides Ecosystem Management
Understanding why this foundational concept works best when held as framework rather than fixed truth
The Allee Effect: When Small Populations Face Hidden Dangers
Why shrinking populations can suddenly collapse even after the threats that caused their decline are removed
Density Dependence: The Invisible Hand Regulating Wild Populations
How populations push back against their own growth, and why managers must measure that resistance
Ecological Resilience vs. Engineering Resilience: Two Views of Ecosystem Health
Why ecosystems that bounce back quickly can still collapse suddenly—and how to detect the difference before it's too late
Predator Pits: How Predation Creates Population Traps
Why some wildlife populations stay suppressed for decades and what ecological mathematics reveals about helping them recover
Minimum Viable Population: How Small Is Too Small?
Understanding why population viability depends on threat type, environmental context, and timescale rather than simple numerical thresholds.
Competitive Exclusion and Coexistence: How Similar Species Share the Same Space
Why mathematical models predict extinction but nature delivers diversity—and what this reveals about managing competing species
Trophic Cascades: How Removing One Species Rewrites Entire Ecosystems
Discover how apex predators control entire ecosystems through invisible chains of influence that cascade from wolves to willows to riverbanks.
The Paradox of Enrichment: Why More Resources Can Destabilize Ecosystems
How mathematical models reveal that enriching ecosystems with more resources can trigger dangerous population oscillations and increase extinction risk
Why Ecosystems Don't Collapse More Often: The Hidden Mathematics of Stability
Discover the feedback loops, redundancies, and stability landscapes that explain why natural systems absorb shocks that would shatter human-designed networks.
Regime Shifts in Lakes: A Model System for Understanding Ecosystem Flips
How shallow lakes reveal the hidden rules governing ecosystem collapse and recovery across all environments