A group of population ecologists met on a course this September to learn about methods in population ecology. As a treat we also give an introduction to FATES, and started discussing how data from population ecology could be integrated into FATES, and the potential integration of data from population ecology databases. We also discussed whether there were some important aspects from population ecology lacking in FATES. We will present our thoughts in this seminar, and hope to get some good discussion between population ecologists and modelers.