Ecology

The Asian elephant has had a unique cultural association with people. Unfortunately, elephants and people have also been in conflict, resulting in the decline in elephants throughout their former range in Southern Asia. This book provides an ecological...

This informative book, first published in 1987, presents the theories of community ecology within the context of a natural example. The text describes and examines issues in community ecology and shows how research on salamanders has helped to solve some...

As experimental organisms, spiders offer ecologists a unique opportunity to examine the concept of the ecological community and the role which field experimentation can play in evaluating theories of population and community ecology. In this book, David...

It is generally recognized that larger animals eat more, live longer, have larger offspring, and so on; but it is unusual to see these commonplace observations as a basis for scientific biology. A large number of empirically based relationships describe...

When this book was first published in 1989, attempts to reintroduce plants or animals into their native habitat were still relatively rare, and those that were adequately planned, designed, funded and monitored over the course of years are even scarcer...

Tropical fish present some of the best examples of how new species evolve and how complex ecological communities are maintained. Their study has generated important new ideas on the roles of ecology and behaviour in the evolution of species and...

Mutualistic interactions between ants and plants involve rewards offered by plants and services performed by ants in a mutually advantageous relationship. The rewards are principally food and/or nest sites, and ants in turn perform a number of services...

This book was first published in 1979. If we are to improve our control and conservation of the food resources of the oceans of the world it is particularly important to increase our understanding of the basic mechanisms that control the abundance,...

When this book was first published in 1991, developments in the study of theoretical ecology had led to the appearance of more complex concepts in ecosystem theory. As a result, ecosystems may be viewed as networks of coexisting living organisms and...

Eastern African rain forests are remarkable in their high level of endemism. Miocene uplift of the central African plateau separated these montane and coastal forests from the main Guineo-Congolian forest of west and central Africa. Since then, stable...

Arthropods are the most diverse group of organisms on our planet and the tropical rainforests represent the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. This book, written by 79 authors contributing to 35 chapters, aims to provide an overview of data...

Nearly all cultures, from ancient times to today, have used plants as a source of medicine. In many developing countries, traditional medicine is still the mainstay of health care and most of the drugs and cures used come from plants. In developed...

Scientists tend to take the thought processes that drive their research for granted, often learning them indirectly by observing first their supervisors and then their colleagues. This book emphasises the advantages of being explicit about these thought...

Power analysis is an essential tool for determining whether a statistically significant result can be expected in a scientific experiment prior to the experiment being performed. Many funding agencies and institutional review boards now require power...

Insect Pest Management and Ecological Research explores the ecological research required for development of strategies to manage pest insects, with particular emphasis on the scientific principles involved in the design and conduct of pest-related...

Habitat management is commonly used to maintain and enhance the biological interest of many areas of semi-natural habitat where natural processes no longer create suitable conditions for desired species. Habitat restoration and creation is increasingly...

This book introduces readers to a set of powerful and extremely flexible modelling techniques, starting at "square one" and continuing with carefully chosen applications. Some of these applications of methodology include insect oviposition...

The world's marine fisheries are in trouble, as a direct result of overfishing and the overcapacity of fishing fleets. Despite intensive management efforts, the problems still persist in many areas, resulting in many fisheries being neither sustainable...

The predictability of the physical arrangement of plants, at whatever scale it is viewed, is referred to as their spatial pattern. Spatial pattern is a crucial aspect of vegetation which has important implications not only for the plants themselves, but...

The multitrophic level approach to ecology addresses the complexity of food webs much more realistically than the traditional focus on simple systems and interactions. Only in the last few decades have ecologists become interested in the nature of more...

Pinus is a remarkable genus of trees with a very large distribution range in the northern hemisphere. Where they occur, pines usually form the dominant vegetation cover and are extremely important components of ecosystems. They also provide a wide range...

Conserving Living Natural Resources is an introductory textbook for students of conservation biology and resource management. It presents the historical and conceptual contexts of three seminal approaches to the management of living natural resources:...

Models of Adaptive Behaviour sets out a framework for adaptive explanations of behaviour, and applies this to give analyses of a range of biological issues such as energetic gain, energy-predation trade-offs, dynamic games, state-dependent life...

The human population of the world is increasing by about 1.5% per annum, adding about one hundred million people to the human ark each year. Not all agree that population growth on this scale constitutes a problem, but there is wide acceptance that the...

Attempts to model the effects of global change are inhibited by a lack of information about how individual plant and animal species will respond. One way of reducing the problem is to develop models treating a smaller number of groups or 'functional...

Invertebrate Conservation and Agricultural Ecosystems explores the diverse interests of invertebrate conservation and agricultural production. It is both an introduction to invertebrate conservation biology for agriculturists and an introduction to crop...

Improving the health of people and animals, and improving the health, integrity or sustainability of ecosystems are laudable and important objectives. Can we do both? There are no ecosystems untouched by human activity, and there are worrying signs that...

How is the staggering biodiversity of the parasitoid insects maintained? This book, first published in 1994, explores patterns in host-parasitoid interactions, including parasitoid community richness, the importance of parasitoids as mortality factors,...

Humans have been fascinated by bees for centuries. Bees display a wide spectrum of behaviours and ecological roles that have provided biologists with a vast amount of material for study. Among the types observed are both social and solitary bees, those...

The largest land mammals are constrained in their activities by their large body size, a theme that is emphasized in this account of their general ecology. The book begins by raising the question as to why these once abundant and widely distributed...

The two volumes of John Wiens' Ecology of Bird Communities have applications and importance to the whole field of ecology. The books contain a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of the patterns of organisation of bird communities and of the...

The two volumes of John Wiens' Ecology of Bird Communities, first published in 1992, are recognised as having applications and importance beyond the study of birds to the wider study of ecology in general. The books contain a detailed synthesis of our...

This book provides a comprehensive review of the ecology of freshwater bivalves and gastropods worldwide. It deals with the ecology of these species in its broadest sense, including diet, habitat and reproductive biology, emphasising in particular the...

Ecologists are making increasing use of computer methods in analyzing ecological data on plant and animal communities. Ecological problems naturally involve numerous variables and numerous individuals or samples. Multivariate techniques permit the...

This book was originally published in 1985. In the twenty years preceding publication very considerable advances were made in our understanding of the physiology and ecology of lichens and of the functional nature of the symbiosis between the algal and...

The central thesis for plant ecology is that climate exerts the dominant control on the distribution of the major vegetation types of the world. This book sets out to examine this often neglected area in two ways. In the first part the author analyses...

Originally published in 1986, this book is concerned with the ways in which seabirds function as predators in the marine environment; in particular about how they find and catch food and how much of it they consume. It reviews both the feeding ecology of...

The features so characteristic of the Fenland, its flatness, its flooding, its vast stretches of silt land and black peat, its drainage channels, meres, buried forests, abundant water fowl and aquatic plants, its special crops, all relate to the special...

This book focuses on the European otter, describing its life history, including fresh information and providing details of survey methods and the state of populations throughout the range. Otters have decreased substantially in numbers and range during...

Social insects are amongst the most successful species. This study concentrates on the production ecology of ants and termites. Ants and termites are highly socialised and their groupings in their most developed form enable them to function as large...