A collection of related models underlie the literature of population ecology and basic community ecology, covering exponential growth, logistic growth, competition, predation, mutualism, and so forth. Their structure describes the various kinds of interactions observed among species and parallels the development of the field over the 20th century. However, the wide array of model styles and parameters that have resulted from this rich history can make it difficult to introduce students to the field, and can hinder attempts to model the growth of some populations, including humans.
Results/Conclusions
Here, we demonstrate how this collection of models can be unified into a single equation. Our results show that variations of parameters in the unified equation account for the differences among the basic forms of growth and interaction in the literature, and reveal two kinds of single-species dynamics, three kinds of two-species dynamics, and 40 kinds of three-species dynamics -- many of which have not yet been explored theoretically and some of which lead to new understanding of ecological dynamics. We will explain how this unified approach simplifies the traditional models of ecology, expands their scope, emphasizes their interconnections, identifies some long-standing misconceptions, and provides a systematic path to create arbitrarily general models of ecology.