Recent investigations involving stochastic population models

After some introductory general remarks on recent investigations involving population models, two broad classes of stochastic model are discussed further, viz. spatial nearest-neighbour lattice models and doubly stochastic models.In Section 1 of the paper, the first type of model is considered primarily for its relevance to recent work by the author and others affecting the practical design and analysis of replicated field experiments.In Section 2, doubly stochastic processes are discussed more theoretically, particularly models investigated recently by the author involving infinitesimal transition operators in continuous time linear in the (variable) parameters.Some new numerical results on extinction and other ‘absorption' probabilities are presented; these are intended to throw further light on the extent to which the assumption of ‘white-noise' variability of the parameters can be a useful approximation to more realistic models.