A tribute to graduate school
One of my best semesters in graduate school has to have been the one where I was taking three seminars simultaneously each reading a different book (Evolutionary Theory by Sean H. Rice, Species Invasions ed by Sax, Stachowicz, and Gaines, and Speciation by Coyne and Orr). The amount I learned was surely greater than the sum of the parts.
Another semester, I spent a going through A Biologist’s Guide to Mathematical Modeling (or here) by Sarah Otto and Troy Day as part of a graduate reading group. We took our time tackling just one chapter per week and I got a tremendous amount of information out of this book. Anyone just starting out building models should take a look at this excellent book.
Also, I’ve really enjoyed many of the books in the Monographs in Population Biology series from Princeton University press.
Kept handy and recommended
- A Biologist’s Guide to Mathematical Modeling by Sarah Otto and Troy Day
- The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution by John N. Thompson
- Genetics of Populations by Philip W. Hedrick
- Evolutionary Ecology of Parasites by Robert Poulin
- Evolutionary Dynamics by Martin Nowak
- Matlab user manual by Mathworks is always a good reference
- The Structure and Dynamics of Networks by Mark Newman, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, and Duncan J. Watts
- Fitness Landscapes and the Origin of Species by Sergey Gavrilets
- Genetic Structure and Selection in Subdivided Populations by François Rousset