Lev Ginzburg
Ecology and Evolution
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY, USA
http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/ginzburg.html
The lecture follows the upcoming book by Ginzburg and Colyvan (2003,
Oxford University Press). The main thesis is to show that populations are
inertial in the sense that Malthusian growth in ecology plays the role of the
first Newton's law in physics. The mechanism of inertia which is most
noticeable in data is the maternal effect, or transfer of quality between
mothers and daughters. This mechanism induces a delayed reaction of growth on
the time scale of generations. Single species theory of cycles viewed on
generational, not chronological time scale, presents a strong competition to
the traditional predator-prey view on causes of cyclicity. The goal is to
present a research program in theoretical ecology in which single species are
viewed at the start as two-dimensional entities. Partial success of this
program include explanations of periods of cyclic species and some of the
known body size allometries.