Ecology Letters (2011) 14 : 959–970 Abstract Empirical models are central to effective conservation and population management, and should be predictive of real‐world dynamics. Available modelling methods are diverse, but analysis usually focuses on long‐term dynamics that are unable to describe the complicated short‐term time series that can arise even from simple models following ecological disturbances or perturbations. Rece...

Sensitivity and elasticity analysis of population projection matrices (PPMs) are established tools in the analysis of structured populations, allowing comparison of the contributions made by different demographic rates to population growth. In some commonly used structures of PPM, however, there are mathematically inevitable patterns in the relative sensitivity and elasticity of certain demographic rates. We take a simulation...