I Modelli compartimentali nello studio della dinamica delle popolazioni naturali

Compartmental models are in common use in the study of many biological, agricultural and economic systems. The present paper is an attempt for a review of the great potentialities of the compartmental model originally proposed by Argentesi, De Bernardi and Di Cola (1974 a,b) for the study of the dynamics of single species populations with continuous recruitment.By means of this mathematical model it is possible to derive a simple methodology for an indirect estimation of some dynamic parameters which are not directly evaluable with experiments but which are essential for the biological interpretation of the biotic and abiotic interactions of the populations.The examples which are reported of application of the compartmental model to several experimental situations show that the methodology may be used to evidence the regulatory and perturbatory processes acting on fecundity and mortality rates of populations.In the compartmental framework the population dynamics can also be expressed as biomass in order to evaluate the population production.The parameters of the ordinary differential equations can be estimated via linear programming, which easily permits the introduction of constraints on the parameter value,and the derivative estimation via base function,that avoids the error amplifications of the numerical derivative.