The benefits of ‘informalising’ formal demography

DSU’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science seminar

Non-human animal demography and plant demography have benefited from decades of theoretical predictions, frameworks, and analytical tools developed for human demography (aka ‘formal demography’). Here, after having benefitted myself from all this progress, I will present ways to break the artificial divide between formal (human) demography and rest-of-the-Tree-of-Life (informal??) demography, to contribute back to human demography. Using a combination of comparative analyses of humans, other animals, and plants, as well as field and lab experiments, I will highlight how some of the predictions, frameworks, and analytical approaches of ‘informal demography’ can in turn help harmonise current debates in ‘formal demography’.

Rob Salguero-Gómez is an Associate Professor in Ecology at the Department of Biology of Oxford University, and Tutorial Fellow in Ecology at Pembroke College. His work focuses on the ecology of natural populations of animals and plants, the evolution of senescence, and macro-ecological mechanisms and patterns of species distributions

If you would like to join the seminars in person or online, please email LCDS.Office@demography.ox.ac.uk two days in advance.