The black bear population model developed in the previous section is an example of a Leslie matrix. A Leslie matrix model of a population gives the rates at which individuals go from one life stage to another. In this case, we have two life stages, juvenile and adult. The diagonal entries give the fraction of the population that stays within the same life stage, while the off-diagonal entry in the top row gives the birth rate of juveniles. The off-diagonal entry in the bottom row is the transition rate from the juvenile stage to the adult stage. Therefore, in the model
M = [ 0.65 0.5 ]
ㅤㅤ[ 0.25 0.9 ]
65% of juveniles remain juveniles and 90% of adults remain adults in any given year. Furthermore, 25% of juveniles in a given year mature into adults, and the average adult has 0.5 (female) offspring.
Come up with a Leslie matrix model for a fictional species with two life stages and describe the meaning of its entries, as above.