On Nonlinear Age- and Stage-Structured Population Models

The scope of this review article is to present and discuss various aspects of discrete nonlinear age- and stage-structured population models. We show that such models cover species which exhibit a wide range of different life histories and that one may use them in order to deduce fairly general ecological principles with respect to stability and dynamical outcomes. From a mathematical point of view, we give several examples of the fact that the nonstationary dynamics generated by such maps is indeed rich as a result of different types of bifurcations of various nature as well as other mechanisms like frequency locking and crises that may occur.