Neyman, Park and Scott (1956) describe an experiment which they performed to determine the spatial distribution of Tribolium confusum developing within a closed container. To explain the concentration of beetles at the boundary a birth–death–migration model is developed in which the beetles may migrate over a set of lattice points, and this is shown to produce a distribution of the required shape. Not only is this distribution independent of the number of lattice points, but it is also indistinguishable from the associated diffusion process.

This paper examines a model for ecological and epidemiological spread. Expressions are derived for mean waveforms and expectation velocities for two specific contact distributions. Whilst one distribution may be bounded above by a negative exponential function the other may not, and these two situations respectively give rise to finite and infinite asymptotic expectation velocities.

A population is composed of an infinite number of colonies situated at the integer points of a single co-ordinate axis. Each colony develops according to a simple birth and death process and migration is allowed between nearest neighbours only. Exact expressions are derived for both the asymptotic velocity of propagation and the shape of the wave profile as the population spreads along the axis, and it is shown that they are identical with the saddle point approximations developed by Daniels.