Animal Sciences Commons^™

Metamodels For Transdisciplinary Analysis Of Wildlife Population Dynamics, Robert C. Lacy, Philip S. Miller, Philip J. Nyhus, J. P. Pollak, B. E. Raboy, S. L. Zeigler

Philip J. Nyhus

Wildlife population models have been criticized for their narrow disciplinary perspective when analyzing complexity in coupled biological – physical – human systems. We describe a “metamodel” approach to species risk assessment when diverse threats act at different spatiotemporal scales, interact in non-linear ways, and are addressed by distinct disciplines. A metamodel links discrete, individual models that depict components of a complex system, governing the flow of information among models and the sequence of simulated events. Each model simulates processes specific to its disciplinary realm while being informed of changes in other metamodel components by accessing common descriptors of the system, …