Population: a central concept for ecology?

When my colleague Mauricio Lima sent me the accompanying paper (Camus and Lima 2002) it rekindled my interest in an unfinished manuscript that attempts to address some of the questions and problems they pose. The ideas presented in this essay are based on the premise that ecology needs a central unifying concept upon which to build a coherent and practical discipline. I will argue that, from a practical point of view, the "population" is the most logical choice for that central concept and that, because of this, the concept requires a precise and unambiguous meaning. This leads me to propose a definition for "population" that, I think, has these qualities.

[1]  A. Łomnicki.  Population ecology of individuals , 1988 .

[2]  P. J. Boer,et al.  Spreading of risk and stabilization of animal numbers , 1968 .

[3]  A. Lomnicki,et al.  Population ecology of individuals. , 1989, Monographs in population biology.

[4]  E. Mayr.  Populations, Species, and Evolution, An Abridgment of Animal Species and Evolution , 1970 .

[5]  J. Gee,et al.  Ecology (3rd edn) , 1991 .

[6]  H. G. Andrewartha,et al.  The Ecological Web: More on the Distribution and Abundance of Animals , 1984 .

[7]  M. Gilpin,et al.  Metapopulation Biology: Ecology, Genetics, and Evolution , 1997 .

[8]  Erkki Korpimäki,et al.  Predation and Population Cycles of Small Mammals A reassessment of the predation hypothesis , 1996 .

[9]  Alan A. Berryman,et al.  Principles of Population Dynamics and Their Application , 2020 .

[10]  Erkki Korpimäki,et al.  Do breeding nomadic avian predators dampen population fluctuations of small mammals , 1991 .

[11]  T. Royama,et al.  Analytical Population Dynamics , 1994, Population and Community Biology Series.

[12]  Alan A. Berryman,et al.  Population Systems: A General Introduction , 2008 .

[13]  G. Hartvigsen.  Metapopulation biology: Ecology, genetics, and evolution , 1997 .

[14]  P. Camus.  Populations, metapopulations, and the open‐closed dilemma: the conflict between operational and natural population concepts , 2002 .

[15]  A. Galston.  Fundamentals of Ecology , 1972, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[16]  S. Goldhor.  Ecology , 1964, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine.

[17]  T. Morrison-Scott,et al.  Principles of Animal Taxonomy , 1962, Nature.

[18]  G. Bush.  SYMPATRIC HOST RACE FORMATION AND SPECIATION IN FRUGIVOROUS FLIES OF THE GENUS RHAGOLETIS (DIPTERA, TEPHRITIDAE) , 1969, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[19]  D. DeAngelis,et al.  Individual-Based Models and Approaches in Ecology , 1992 .