Aquatic ecosystems are increasingly threatened by multiple human-induced stressors
associated with climate and anthropogenic changes, including warming, nutrient pollution …

The two main challenges of ecological modelling are to yield more general understanding
and theory and to provide testable and robust predictions. To achieve this, emergence …

Despite the increasing use of standards for documenting and testing agent-based models
(ABMs) and sharing of open access code, most ABMs are still developed from scratch. This …

The metaphor of the Medawar zone describes the relationship between the difficulty of a
scientific problem and the potential payoff of solving it. This zone represents the realm where …

Virtually all current major social and environmental challenges such as financial crises,
migration, the erosion of democratic institutions, and the loss of biodiversity involve complex …

Individual‐based models are doubly complex: as well as representing complex ecological
systems, the software that implements them is complex in itself. Both forms of complexity …

Climate change has rapidly altered marine ecosystems and is expected to continue to push
systems and species beyond historical baselines into novel conditions. Projecting …

Regeneration is an essential demographic step that affects plant population persistence,
recovery after disturbances, and potential migration to track suitable climate conditions …

The issues of calibrating and validating a theoretical model are considered, when it is
required to select the parameters that better approximate the data among a finite number of …

Abstract The Virtual Special Issue" Agents for Theory" discusses theory development using
agent-based models (ABMs). The six contributions focus on how the word" theory" is used in …