Marc Mangel is Professor of Mathematical Biology and Fellow of Stevenson College at the University of California, Santa Cruz campus.

• Preface; 1. Four examples and a metaphor; 2. Topics from ordinary and partial differential equations; 3. Probability and some statistics; 4. The evolutionary ecology of parasitoids; 5. The population biology of disease; 6. An introduction to some of the problems of sustainable fisheries; 7. The basics of stochastic population dynamics; 8. Applications of stochastic population dynamics to ecology, evolution and biodemography.

'…this is a hugely engaging and interesting book. It's written with many asides and snippets of information about the topic, and particularly about the key figures in the history of theoretical biology … I do recommend this book as an excellent read and insight into the methodology of the theoretical biologist at work …' Biologist