Volterra’s principle resolves a seeming paradox in environmental control- that an attempt to eradicate a pest may increase pest levels, if the intervention also interferes with existing predators. This writeup considers two such examples- the cottony cushion scale insect in the USA, and fishing in the Adriatic Sea – and derives the principle mathematically through consideration of Lotka-Volterra differential equations for predator/prey interaction.

Lyapunov (Liapunoff) stability is the standard notion of stability and a vital notion in the study of dynamical systems (including applications such as Mathematical Biology). It appears on the syllabus of many courses at Bath. This writeup covers the defintion (with plain-english interpretation), describes the direct method, and proves the Lyapunov stability theorem. Lyapunov functions and asymptotic stability are briefly mentioned.