Zeitschriftenartikel

From the Price equation to a decomposition of population change

Abstract

Heterogeneity is a pervasive problem for analyses in biology and related fields in which it is of interest to get information unbiased by a change in the composition of the population. I show here how a reformulation of the Price equation leads to a decomposition method to address this issue. The derived equation gives the exact contributions of the average change in the surviving individuals and the change due to selective disappearance to the aggregate population change.