A Brief and Biased Look at Spatial Structure in Ecological Models: A Route to Individual‐based Models

Abstract

The significance of spatial structure in ecological dynamics has been recognized for more than eighty years, but only in the last quarter century have substantial numbers of ecological models incorporated spatial dynamics. This paper provides a brief look at some early models that include spatial dynamics and traces their evolution through spatially explicit models and on to individual‐based models. We conclude with a more detailed look at two of the most well developed individual‐based models, inSTREAM and MORPH.