Models

Individual-based models play a special role in applications of mathematics to biological problems. They describe a population as a heterogeneous family of individuals and the relationships between them. This description is relatively simple and convenient to simulate by computer and to determine various model parameters. Moreover, a macroscopic description of the population can be obtained from an individual-based model by appropriate limits. In this chapter we give a general characterization of individual-based models and we present examples of models to illustrate their possible applications. Examples of applications include age, size and phenotype models, coagulation-fragmentation process, and models of genome evolution.