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Author: Mark Vellend
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691208999
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, population genetics theory. The Theory of Ecological Communities takes this as a starting point to pull together community ecology's various perspectives into a more unified whole. Mark Vellend builds a theory of ecological communities based on four overarching processes: selection among species, drift, dispersal, and speciation. These are analogues of the four central processes in population genetics theory—selection within species, drift, gene flow, and mutation—and together they subsume almost all of the many dozens of more specific models built to describe the dynamics of communities of interacting species. The result is a theory that allows the effects of many low-level processes, such as competition, facilitation, predation, disturbance, stress, succession, colonization, and local extinction to be understood as the underpinnings of high-level processes with widely applicable consequences for ecological communities. Reframing the numerous existing ideas in community ecology, The Theory of Ecological Communities provides a new way for thinking about biological composition and diversity.
Author: Mark Vellend
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691208999
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, population genetics theory. The Theory of Ecological Communities takes this as a starting point to pull together community ecology's various perspectives into a more unified whole. Mark Vellend builds a theory of ecological communities based on four overarching processes: selection among species, drift, dispersal, and speciation. These are analogues of the four central processes in population genetics theory—selection within species, drift, gene flow, and mutation—and together they subsume almost all of the many dozens of more specific models built to describe the dynamics of communities of interacting species. The result is a theory that allows the effects of many low-level processes, such as competition, facilitation, predation, disturbance, stress, succession, colonization, and local extinction to be understood as the underpinnings of high-level processes with widely applicable consequences for ecological communities. Reframing the numerous existing ideas in community ecology, The Theory of Ecological Communities provides a new way for thinking about biological composition and diversity.
Author: Anne E. Magurran
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118687922
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics. Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimation of species richness and abundance. Explores the concept of ecological diversity, bringing new perspectives to a field beset by contradictory views and advice. Discussion spans issues such as the meaning of community in the context of ecological diversity, scales of diversity and distribution of diversity among taxa Highlights advances in measurement paying particular attention to new techniques such as species richness estimation, application of measures of diversity to conservation and environmental management and addressing sampling issues Includes worked examples of key methods in helping people to understand the techniques and use available computer packages more effectively
Author: A. Townsend Peterson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691136882
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Terminology, conceptual overview, biogeography, modeling.
Author: James H. Brown
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226076156
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283
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Book Description
In Macroecology, James H. Brown proposes a radical new research agenda designed to broaden the scope of ecology to encompass vast geographical areas and very long time spans. While much ecological research is narrowly focused and experimental, providing detailed information that cannot be used to generalize from one ecological community or time period to another, macroecology draws on data from many disciplines to create a less detailed but much broader picture with greater potential for generalization. Integrating data from ecology, systematics, evolutionary biology, paleobiology, and biogeography to investigate problems that could only be addressed on a much smaller scale by traditional approaches, macroecology provides a richer, more complete understanding of how patterns of life have moved across the earth over time. Brown also demonstrates the advantages of macroecology for conservation, showing how it allows scientists to look beyond endangered species and ecological communities to consider the long history and large geographic scale of human impacts. An important reassessment of the direction of ecology by one of the most influential thinkers in the field, this work will shape future research in ecology and other disciplines. "This approach may well mark a major new turn in the road in the history of ecology, and I find it extremely exciting. The scope of Macroecology is tremendous and the book makes use of its author's exceptionally broad experience and knowledge. An excellent and important book."—Lawrence R. Heaney, Center for Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, the Field Museum
Author: Mark A. McPeek
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069120487X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
A comprehensive framework for understanding species coexistence Coexistence is the central concept in community ecology, but an understanding of this concept requires that we study the actual mechanisms of species interactions. Coexistence in Ecology examines the major features of these mechanisms for species that coexist at different positions in complex food webs, and derives empirical tests from model predictions. Exploring the various challenges species face, Mark McPeek systematically builds a model food web, beginning with an ecosystem devoid of life and then adding one species at a time. With the introduction of each new species, he evaluates the properties it must possess to invade a community and quantifies the changes in the abundances of other species that result from a successful invasion. McPeek continues this process until he achieves a multitrophic level food web with many species coexisting at each trophic level, from omnivores, mutualists, and pathogens to herbivores, carnivores, and basic plants. He then describes the observational and experimental empirical studies that can test the theoretical predictions resulting from the model analyses. Synthesizing decades of theoretical research in community ecology, Coexistence in Ecology offers new perspectives on how to develop an empirical program of study rooted in the natural histories of species and the mechanisms by which they actually interact with one another.
Author: David Tilman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691083025
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
One of the central questions of ecology is why there are so many different kinds of plants and animals. Here David Tilman presents a theory of how organisms compete for resources and the way their competition promotes diversity. Developing Hutchinson's suggestion that the main cause of diversity is the feeding relations of species, this book builds a mechanistic, resource-based explanation of the structure and functioning of ecological communities. In a detailed analysis of the Park Grass Experiments at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England, the author demonstrates that the dramatic results of these 120 years of experimentation are consistent with his theory, as are observations in many other natural communities. The consumer-resource approach of this book is applicable to both animal and plant communities, but the majority of Professor Tilman's discussion concentrates on the structure of plant communities. All theoretical arguments are developed graphically, and formal mathematics is kept to a minimum. The final chapters of the book provide some testable speculations about resources and animal communities and explore such problems as the evolution of "super species," the differences between plant and animal community diversity patterns, and the cause of plant succession.
Author: Aaron M. Ellison
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172706
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
"Scale - the understanding of ecological phenomena through levels of biological organization across time and space - is one of most important concepts in ecology. It is often challenging for ecologists to find systems that lend themselves to study across scales; however, Sarracenia, a pitcher plant indigenous to the eastern United States, is unique because it can be studied at a hierarchy of scales: individuals, communities, and whole ecosystems. Ecologists Aaron Ellison and Nicolas Gotelli have studied Sarracenia for decades and, in this book, they synthesize their research and show how this system can inform the broad and challenging question of scaling in ecology. The authors' goal is to deepen the current understanding of major ecological processes, and how they operate across scales"--
Author: Mathew A. Leibold
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691049165
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 512
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Book Description
Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions, selection, and stochasticity—with larger-scale issues such as dispersal and habitat heterogeneity. Until now, the field has focused on evaluating the relative importance of distinct processes, with niche-based environmental sorting on one side and neutral-based ecological drift and dispersal limitation on the other. This book moves beyond these artificial categorizations, showing how environmental sorting, dispersal, ecological drift, and other processes influence metacommunity structure simultaneously. Mathew Leibold and Jonathan Chase argue that the relative importance of these processes depends on the characteristics of the organisms, the strengths and types of their interactions, the degree of habitat heterogeneity, the rates of dispersal, and the scale at which the system is observed. Using this synthetic perspective, they explore metacommunity patterns in time and space, including patterns of coexistence, distribution, and diversity. Leibold and Chase demonstrate how these processes and patterns are altered by micro- and macroevolution, traits and phylogenetic relationships, and food web interactions. They then use this scale-explicit perspective to illustrate how metacommunity processes are essential for understanding macroecological and biogeographical patterns as well as ecosystem-level processes. Moving seamlessly across scales and subdisciplines, Metacommunity Ecology is an invaluable reference, one that offers a more integrated approach to ecological patterns and processes.
Author: J. Emmett Duffy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190534
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
A comprehensive introduction to ocean ecology and a new way of thinking about ocean life Marine ecology is more interdisciplinary, broader in scope, and more intimately linked to human activities than ever before. Ocean Ecology provides advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners with an integrated approach to marine ecology that reflects these new scientific realities, and prepares students for the challenges of studying and managing the ocean as a complex adaptive system. This authoritative and accessible textbook advances a framework based on interactions among four major features of marine ecosystems—geomorphology, the abiotic environment, biodiversity, and biogeochemistry—and shows how life is a driver of environmental conditions and dynamics. Ocean Ecology explains the ecological processes that link organismal to ecosystem scales and that shape the major types of ocean ecosystems, historically and in today's Anthropocene world. Provides an integrated new approach to understanding and managing the ocean Shows how biological diversity is the heart of functioning ecosystems Spans genes to earth systems, surface to seafloor, and estuary to ocean gyre Links species composition, trait distribution, and other ecological structures to the functioning of ecosystems Explains how fishing, fossil fuel combustion, industrial fertilizer use, and other human impacts are transforming the Anthropocene ocean An essential textbook for students and an invaluable resource for practitioners
Author: Rory Putman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780412545009
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
"Chapter 1 establishes the context of such a search for pattern, presenting essential definitions and exploring early work on community structure and organization. The various biotic and abiotic factors which may influence communities and their dynamics are reviewed in Chapter 2, while the way in which the interrelationships between organisms are structured within the community in food webs or in the partitioning of available resources are considered in separate chapters on food webs, niche relationships and species guilds. Later chapters explore the factors determining the assembly of communities, species composition and pattern of relative abundance and the relative roles of deterministic and stochastic processes in determining community structure. The concluding section explores the implications of observed patterns of structure and organization for stability. The mathematical analyses which are an essential component of this topic are included only where essential for understanding and are presented in special box features. Each mathematical section has been carefully structured and fully explained in biological terms. Community Ecology presents a refreshingly readable course text for advanced undergraduates in ecology."--BOOK JACKET.
