| Summary: | Population ecology is a major sub-field of ecology that deals with the dynamics of species populations and how these populations interact with the environment. The first journal publication of the Society of Population Ecology, titled Population Ecology (originally called Researches on Population Ecology), was released in 1952. Population ecology is concerned with the study of groups of organisms that live together in time and space. One of the first laws of population ecology is Thomas Malthus' exponential law of population growth. This law states that: "a population will grow (or decline) exponentially as long as the environment experienced by all individuals in the population remains constant." "At its most elementary level, interspecific competition involves two species utilizing a similar resource. It rapidly gets more complicated, but stripping the phenomenon of all its complications, this is the basic principal: two consumers consuming the same resource. This premise in population ecology provides the basis for formulating predictive theories and tests that follow. Simplified population models usually start with four key variables including death, birth, immigration, and emigration. Mathematical models used to calculate changes in population demographics and evolution hold the assumption (or null hypothesis) of no external influence. Models can be more mathematically complex where several competing hypotheses are simultaneously confronted with the data".
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