Generalized modeling of ecological population dynamics

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive introduction to generalized modeling in ecology, emphasizing its interpretability and efficiency, and introduces methods to accelerate model formulation and refinement with biological insights.

Contribution

It offers a pedagogical overview of generalized modeling and proposes a shortcut and iterative procedure for faster, more accurate ecological models.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of generalized modeling concepts

A new shortcut for model formulation

An iterative refinement procedure for models

Abstract

Over the past years several authors have used the approach of generalized modeling to study the dynamics of food chains and food webs. Generalized models come close to the efficiency of random matrix models, while being as directly interpretable as conventional differential-equation-based models. Here we present a pedagogical introduction to the approach of generalized modeling. This introduction places more emphasis on the underlying concepts of generalized modeling than previous publications. Moreover, we propose a shortcut that can significantly accelerate the formulation of generalized models and introduce an iterative procedure that can be used to refine existing generalized models by integrating new biological insights.