Mathematical ecology is the application of mathematics to describe and understand ecosystems. There are two main approaches. One is to describe natural communities and induce statistical patterns or relationships which should generally occur. However, this book is devoted entirely to introducing the student to the second approach: to study deterministic mathematical models and, on the basis of mathematical results on the models, to look for the same patterns or relationships in nature. This book is a compromise between three competing desiderata. It seeks to: maximize the generality of the...