2.4: Present State
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As a surprising side note, the standard models commonly taught in ecology courses are not complete, and a main purpose of this book is to help make them more so. One aspect of theory related to simple species, for instance—called orthologistic population growth— is rarely even studied, much less taught, yet is essential for understanding rapidly growing populations, including human populations in millennia past. For two-species interactions, another theory concerning mutualisms and a related kind of population growth is highly under-developed, and the theory of three-species interactions is even less complete.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) The eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility. —A. Einstein