Computational Ecology

Due to the complexity and non-linearity of most ecological problems, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have attracted attention from ecologists and environmental scientists. This book provides readers with knowledge on algorithms, programs, and applications of ANNs in ecology. It proposes computational ecology.

Graphs, networks and agent-based modeling are the most thriving and attracting sciences used in ecology and environmental sciences. As such, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject in the areas of ecology and environmental sciences.From this integrated and self-contained book, researchers, university teachers and students will be provided with an in-depth and complete insight on knowledge, methodology and recent advances of graphs, networks and agent-based-modeling in ecology and environmental sciences.Java codes and a standalone software package will be presented in the book for easy use for those not familiar with mathematical details.

Due to the complexity and non-linearity of most ecological problems, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have attracted attention from ecologists and environmental scientists in recent years. As these networks are increasingly being used in ecology for modeling, simulation, function approximation, prediction, classification and data mining, this unique and self-contained book will be the first comprehensive treatment of this subject, by providing readers with overall and in-depth knowledge on algorithms, programs, and applications of ANNs in ecology. Moreover, a new area of ecology, i.e., computational ecology, is proposed and its scopes and objectives are defined and discussed.Computational Ecology consists of two parts: the first describes the methods and algorithms of ANNs, interpretability and mathematical generalization of neural networks, Matlab neural network toolkit, etc., while the second provides case studies of applications of ANNs in ecology, Matlab codes, and comparisons of ANNs with conventional methods. This publication will be a valuable reference for research scientists, university teachers, graduate students and high-level undergraduates in the areas of ecology, environmental sciences, and computational science.

"A bold and successful attempt to illustrate the theoretical foundations of all of the subdisciplines of ecology, including basic and applied, and extending through biophysical, population, community, and ecosystem ecology. Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology is a compendium of clear and concise essays by the intellectual leaders across this vast breadth of knowledge."--Harold Mooney, Stanford University "A remarkable and indispensable reference work that also is flexible enough to provide essential readings for a wide variety of courses. A masterful collection of authoritative papers that convey the rich and fundamental nature of modern theoretical ecology."--Simon A. Levin, Princeton University "Theoretical ecologists exercise their imaginations to make sense of the astounding complexity of both real and possible ecosystems. Imagining a real or possible topic left out of the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology has proven just as challenging. This comprehensive compendium demonstrates that theoretical ecology has become a mature science, and the volume will serve as the foundation for future creativity in this area."--Fred Adler, University of Utah "The editors have assembled an outstanding group of contributors who are a great match for their topics. Sometimes the author is a key, authoritative figure in a field; and at other times, the author has enough distance to convey all sides of a subject. The next time you need to introduce ecology students to a theoretical topic, you'll be glad to have this encyclopedia on your bookshelf."--Stephen Ellner, Cornell University “Everything you wanted to know about theoretical ecology, and much that you didn’t know you needed to know but will now! Alan Hastings and Louis Gross have done us a great service by bringing together in very accessible form a huge amount of information about a broad, complicated, and expanding field.”--Daniel Simberloff, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Graphs, networks and agent-based modeling are the most thriving and attracting sciences used in ecology and environmental sciences. As such, this book is the first comprehensive treatment of the subject in the areas of ecology and environmental sciences. From this integrated and self-contained book, researchers, university teachers and students will be provided with an in-depth and complete insight on knowledge, methodology and recent advances of graphs, networks and agent-based-modeling in ecology and environmental sciences. Java codes and a standalone software package will be presented in the book for easy use for those not familiar with mathematical details.

Propelled by advances in software design and increasing connectivity, distributed computational systems are acquiring characteristics reminiscent of social and biological organizations. This volume is a collection of articles dealing with the nature, design and implementation of these open computational systems. Although varied in their approach and methodology, the articles are related by the goal of understanding and building computational ecologies. They are grouped in three major sections. The first deals with general issues underlying open systems, studies of computational ecologies, and their similarities with social organizations. The second part deals with actual implementations of distributed computation, and the third discusses the overriding problem of designing suitable languages for open systems. All the articles are highly interdisciplinary, emphasizing the application of ecological ideas, game theory, market mechanisms, and evolutionary biology in the study of open systems.

Ecology has become one of the most urgent and lively fields in both the humanities and sciences. In a dramatic widening of scope beyond its original concern with the coexistence of living organisms within a natural environment, it is now recognized that there are ecologies of mind, information, sensation, perception, power, participation, media, behavior, belonging, values, the social, the political... a thousand ecologies. This proliferation is not simply a metaphorical extension of the figurative potential of natural ecology: rather, it reflects the thoroughgoing imbrication of natural and technological elements in the constitution of the contemporary environments we inhabit, the rise of a cybernetic natural state, with its corresponding mode of power. Hence this ecology of ecologies initiates and demands that we go beyond the specificity of any particular ecology: a general thinking of ecology which may also constitute an ecological transformation of thought itself is required. In this ambitious and radical new volume of writings, some of the most exciting contemporary thinkers in the field take on the task of revealing and theorizing the extent of the ecologization of existence as the effect of our contemporary sociotechnological condition: together, they bring out the complexity and urgency of the challenge of ecological thought-one we cannot avoid if we want to ask and indeed have a chance of affecting what forms of life, agency, modes of existence, human or otherwise, will participate-and how-in this planet's future.