What are the effects of herbivory on population growth rate?
Purpose: To understand how a demographic matrix model works using a modeling program (R). To use demographic modeling to calculate population growth rate for control plants and then modify the model to understand how herbivory treatments change the results. Students will find that individual level consequences (examined in figure set 1) do not always translate into population level consequences. Students will then calculate an elasticity matrix to understand that not all vital rates contribute equally to the population growth rate.
