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Integral Projection Models (IPMs) use information on how an individual's state influences its vital rates - survival, growth and reproduction - to make population projections. IPMs are constructed from regression models predicting vital rates from state variables (e.g., size or age) and covariates (e.g., environment). By combining regressions of vital rates, an IPM provides mechanistic insight into emergent ecological patterns such as population dynamics, species geographic distributions, or life history strategies. Here, we review important resources for building IPMs and provide a comprehensive guide, with extensive R code, for their construction. IPMs can be applied to any stage-structured population; here we illustrate IPMs for a series of plant life histories of increasing complexity and biological realism, highlighting the utility of various regression methods for capturing biological patterns. We also present case studies illustrating how IPMs can be used to predict species’ geographic distributions and life history strategies. IPMs can represent a wide range of life histories at any desired level of biological detail. Much of the strength of IPMs lies in the strength of regression models. Many subtleties arise when scaling from vital rate regressions to population-level patterns, so we provide a set of diagnostics and guidelines to ensure that models are biologically plausible. Moreover, IPMs can exploit a large existing suite of analytical tools developed for Matrix Projection Models.

Data used in:  Advancing population ecology with integral projection models: a practical guide

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• When using this data, please cite the original publication:

  Merow C, Dalgren JP, Metcalf CJE, Childs DZ, Evans MEK, Jongejans E, Record S, Rees M, Salguero-Gómez R, McMahon S (2014) Advancing population ecology with integral projection models: a practical guide. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5(2): 99-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12146

  Additionally, please cite the Dryad data package:

  Merow C, Dalgren JP, Metcalf CJE, Childs DZ, Evans MEK, Jongejans E, Record S, Rees M, Salguero-Gómez R, McMahon S (2013) Data from: Advancing population ecology with integral projection models: a practical guide. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6575f

1. demography
2. elasticity
3. integral projection models
4. IPM
5. life history
6. matrix projection model
7. population growth rate
8. population projection model
9. Resources @ Dryad
10. Resources @ QUBES - Data
11. sensitivity
12. stage structure
13. vital rates