Progress in mathematical population dynamics and ecology

The international conference "Models in Population Dynamics and Ecology 2012" (MPDE'12) was held at the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, from 10 to 13 September, 2012. MPDE'12 consisted of 9 keynote talks, 3 mini-symposia, 30 contributed talks and 23 posters and gathered about 100 participants from 10 different countries of the Americas and Europe. The meeting explored a wide spectrum of topics such as biological invasions and spread of epidemics, behavioral ecology, collective dynamics, individual animal movement, ecological pattern formation, evolutionary dynamics, epidemiology and eco-epidemiology. This special issue of Ecological Complexity consists of 9 carefully selected papers presented at the conference. Here, we highlight some of the new findings and results of these papers. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.