Demographic Methods across the Tree of Life

Demography is everywhere in our lives: from birth to death. Indeed, the universal currencies of survival, development, reproduction, and recruitment shape the performance of all species, from microbes to humans. The number of techniques for demographic data acquisition and analyses across the entire tree of life (microbes, fungi, plants, and animals) has drastically increased in recent decades. These developments have been partially facilitated by the advent of technologies such as GIS and drones, as well as analytical methods including Bayesian statistics and high-throughput molecular analyses. However, despite the universality of demography and the significant research potential that could emerge from unifying: (i) questions across taxa, (ii) data collection protocols, and (iii) analytical tools, demographic methods to date have remained taxonomically siloed and methodologically disintegrated. This is the first book to attempt a truly unified approach to demography and population ecology in order to address a wide range of questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology across the entire spectrum of life.

This novel book provides the reader with the fundamentals of data collection, model construction, analyses, and interpretation across a wide repertoire of demographic techniques and protocols. It introduces the novice demographer to a broad range of demographic methods, including abundance-based models, life tables, matrix population models, integral projection models, integrated population models, individual based models, and more. Through the careful integration of data collection methods, analytical approaches, and applications, clearly guided throughout with fully reproducible R scripts, Demographic Methods across the Tree of Life provides an up-to-date and authoritative overview of the most popular and effective demographic tools.

Demographic Methods across the Tree of Life is aimed at graduate students and professional researchers in the fields of demography, ecology, animal behaviour, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematical biology, and wildlife management.

Foreword / Tim Coulson
Introduction: From Lions, to Lion's Manes, and Dandelions: Why Using (which types of) Demographic Data and Methods / Roberto Salguero-Gómez and Marlène Gamelon

Part I. Demographic Data Collection: From Genes to Environment
1. Genetic Data Collection, Pedigrees and Phylogenies / Emily G. Simmonds, Henrik Jensen, Alina Niskanen and Steven Smith
2. Biochemical and Physiological Data Collection / Oldrich Tomasek, Alan A. Cohen, Erola Fenollosa, Maurizio Mencuccini, Sergi Munné-Bosch and Fanie Pelletier
3. Social Data Collection and Analyses / Marie J.E. Charpentier, Marie Pelé, Julien P. Renoult and Cédric Sueur
4. Growth Rings across the Tree of Life: Demographic Insights from Biogenic Time Series Data / Margaret E. K. Evans, Bryan A. Black, Donald A. Falk, Courtney L. Giebink and Emily L. Schultz
5. Longitudinal Demographic Data Collection / Marlène Gamelon, Josh A. Firth, Mathilde Le Moullec, William K. Petry and Roberto Salguero-Gómez
6. Drivers of Demography: Past Challenges and a Promise for a Changed Future / Pedro F. Quintana-Ascencio, Eric S. Menges, Geoffrey S. Cook, Johan Ehrlén and Michelle E. Afkhami

Part II. Data and Research Question-Driven Methods
7. Abundance Based Approaches / Jonas Knape and Andreas Lindén
8. Life Tables: Construction and Interpretation / Owen R. Jones
9. Introduction to Matrix Population Models / Yngvild Vindenesa, Christie Le Coeura and Hal Caswell
10. Integral Projection Models / Edgar J. González, Dylan Z. Childs, Pedro F. Quintana-Ascencio and Roberto Salguero-Gómez
11. Transient Analyses of Population Dynamics Using Matrix Projection Models / David N. Koons, David T. Iles and Iain Stott
12. Individual-Based Models / Viktoriia Radchuk, Stephanie Kramer-Schadt, Uta Berger, Cédric Scherer, Pia Backmann and Volker Grimm
13. Survival Analyses / Sarah Cubaynes, Simon Galas, Myriam Richaud, Ana Sanz Aguilar, Roger Pradel, Giacomo Tavecchia, Fernando Colchero, Sebastien Roques, Richard Shefferson and Carlo Giovanni Camarda
14. Efficient use of demographic Data: Integrated Population Models / Marlène Gamelon, Stefan J.G. Vriend, Marcel E. Visser, Caspar A. Hallmann, Suzanne T.E. Lommen and Eelke Jongejans

Part III. Applications
15. Spatial Demography / Guillaume Péron
16. Evolutionary Demography / Shripad Tuljapurkar and Wenyun Zuo
17. Reproductive value and analyses of population dynamics of age-structured populations / Bernt-Erik Sæther and Steinar Engen
18. Applying Comparative Methods to Different Databases: Lessons from Demographic Analyses Across Mammal Species / Jean-Michel Gaillard, Victor Ronget, Jean-François Lemaître, Christophe Bonenfant, Guillaume Péron, Pol Capdevila, M.arlène Gamelon and Roberto Salguero-Gómez
19. Adaptive Management: Making Recurrent Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty / James D. Nichols
20. Heritability, Polymorphism and Population Dynamics: Individual-Based Eco-Evolutionary Simulations / Anna Kuparinen
21. Demographic Processes in Socially Structured Populations / Maria Paniw, Gabriele Cozzi, Stefan Sommer and Arpat Ozgul
22. Demographic Methods in Epidemiology / Petra Klepac and C. Jessica E. Metcalf