Hierarchical demography: a general approach with an application to honey bees.

ABSTRACT: Hierarchical population structure, where individuals are aggregated into colonies or similar groups that themselves grow, survive or perish, and potentially produce offspring groups, is an important feature of many biological systems, most notably eusocial organisms such as the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Despite this hierarchical structure, there is a paucity of analytical models and theory linking the dynamics of individuals within colonies to the dynamics of a population of colonies. We present an analytical framework that provides a simple, robust, and predictive theory for the population dynamics of hierarchical organisms. Our framework explicitly describes and links demographic dynamics for the different levels in the hierarchy (individuals, groups, population). We illustrate the appl

SUBMITTER: Al-Khafaji K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6761922 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature