Lectures on Theoretical Ecology

A university textbook that builds population and community ecology from simple models, covering exponential and logistic growth, competition, predation and mutualism. Each model comes with computer code so you can run the math yourself.

Clarence Lehman, Shelby Loberg, Adam Clark

A university course on how animal populations grow, compete and cycle, with units on age structure, population regulation and predator-prey systems. It closes with behavioral ecology case studies of African mammals such as bats.

National Open University of Nigeria

Oxford lecture notes that model single species, interacting populations and harvesting with differential and difference equations. Ideal if you already know calculus and want to see how ecologists predict insect outbreaks and population cycles.

Ruth E. Baker

Charles Elton's 1927 classic that laid the foundations of animal community ecology, introducing food chains, the ecological niche and the pyramid of numbers. Still a clear, readable account of how animal populations are organized and regulated.

Charles Elton