ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses population models, where state variables are numbers of individuals or species. It provides an overview of the available models of plant growth, that is, models of primary production, and an overview of modeling population dynamics. It is important in modeling population dynamics to account for the influence of the age structure, which establishes the proportion of the population belonging to each age class. The chapter presents several models in this area to facilitate the development of population dynamic models for the readers. It deals with biodemographic models, characterized by numbers of individuals or species as units for state variables. The chapter focuses on models of primary production, age distributions, growth, and species interactions, and mainly describes deterministic models. Parasitism is similar to that of predation, but differs from the latter in that members of the host species affected are seldom killed, but may live for some time after becoming parasitized.
