In ecology, the patterns usually refer to all kinds of nonrandom spatial and temporal structures of ecosystems driving by multiple ecological processes. Pattern recognition is an important step to reveal the complicated relationship between ecological patterns and processes. To review and present some advances about ecological modeling, patterns recognition, and computer simulation, an international workshop on Mathematical and Numerical Ecology with the theme "Pattern recognition and simulation in ecology" was held in in October 2014 in Guangzhou, China, and the International Society of Computational Ecology was the co-sponsor. Eight peer-reviewed papers those were originally presented at this workshop covering three themes: patterns in phylogeny, patterns in communities and ecosystems, and spatial pattern analysis are included in this special issue.