Beáta Oborny, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest
1. Introduction - Patterns and pattern-generating processes
- A.S. Watt's notion on "pattern and process" revisited.
- An example: a spatial game.
- Notes on the emergence of self-organized patterns.
2. Spreading and survival of populations in space
- Space: assumptions and some consequent techniques for modelling.
- A simple, non-spatial approach to population growth and competition.
- The first step into space: the Levins model for metapopulations.
- Second step: spatially explicit modelling.
3. Isolation and fragmentation of habitats, and the danger of extinction
- Effects of habitat patchiness on population dynamics.
- Effects of temporally variable patchiness.
- Isolation, fragmentation, and their consequences.
4. Spatial constraints on dispersal and interactions between species
- Are spatial patterns really important?
- Null models and their extensions.
- From a single population to two, competing populations.
- A crucial decision: founder control vs. dominance control.
5. Species coexistence and biodiversity in space
- Does space solve the riddle of the plankton paradox?
- There are many ways to die: the dynamics of competitive exclusion.
- Multi-species extensions.
- Plant strategies of competition for space.