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Reflecting the recent surge of activity in food web research fueled by new empirical data, this authoritative volume successfully spans and integrates the areas of theory, basic empirical research, applications, and resource problems. Written by recognized leaders from various branches of ecological research, this work provides an in-depth treatment of the most recent advances in the field and examines the complexity and variability of food webs through reviews, new research, and syntheses of the major issues in food web research. Food Webs features material on the role of nutrients, detritus and microbes in food webs, indirect effects in food webs, the interaction of productivity and consum...
This book synthesizes and reconciles modern and classical perspectives into a general unified theory.
Paying special attention to the fertile boundaries between terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, this work shows not only what this new methodology means for ecology, conservation, and agriculture but also serves as a fitting tribute to Gary Polis and his major contributions to the field
Food webs are diagrams depicting which species interact or in other words, who eats whom. An understanding of the structure and function of food webs is crucial for any study of how an ecosystem works, including attempts to predict which communities might be more vulnerable to disturbance and therefore in more immediate need of conservation. Although it was first published twenty years ago, Stuart Pimm's Food Webs remains the clearest introduction to the study of food webs. Reviewing various hypotheses in the light of theoretical and empirical evidence, Pimm shows that even the most complex food webs follow certain patterns and that those patterns are shaped by a limited number of biological processes, such as population dynamics and energy flow. Pimm provides a variety of mathematical tools for unravelling these patterns and processes, and demonstrates their application through concrete examples. For this edition, he has written a new foreword covering recent developments in the study of food webs and demonstrates their continuing importance to conservation biology.
Insects are a dominant component of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems and play a key role in mediating the relationship between plants and ecosystem processes. This volume examines their effects on ecosystem functioning, focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on herbivorous insects. Renowned authors with extensive experience in the field of plant-insect interactions, contribute to the volume using examples from their own work.
The first stand-alone textbook for at least ten years on this increasingly hot topic in times of global climate change and sustainability in ecosystems. Ecological biochemistry refers to the interaction of organisms with their abiotic environment and other organisms by chemical means. Biotic and abiotic factors determine the biochemical flexibility of organisms, which otherwise easily adapt to environmental changes by altering their metabolism. Sessile plants, in particular, have evolved intricate biochemical response mechanisms to fit into a changing environment. This book covers the chemistry behind these interactions, bottom up from the atomic to the system's level. An introductory part e...
In ecosystems with many species, food webs form highly complex networks of resource-consumer interactions. At the same time, the food web as itself needs sufficient resources to develop and survive. So in fact, food web ecology is about how natural resources form the basis of biological communities, in terms of species richness and abundances as well as how species are organised in communities on the basis of the resource availability and use. The central theme of this book is that patterns in the utilisation of energy result from the trophic interactions among species, and that these patterns form the basis of ecosystem stability. The authors integrate the latest work on community dynamics, ecosystem energetics, and stability, and in so doing attempt to dispel the categorisation of the field into the separate subdisciplines of population, community, and ecosystem ecology. Energetic Food Webs represents the first attempt to bridge the gap between the energetic and species approaches to ecology.
How do animals interact within an ecosystem? What is an animal’s role within their food chain? This life science guide introduces readers to familiar and exotic producers, consumers, and decomposers to give them a well-rounded look at the flow of energy through the food chain. This important life science concept is illustrated by color photographs of each animal, and fascinating facts about their place in their ecosystem.
'Aquatic Food Webs' provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. The textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.
This book presents new approaches to studying food webs, using practical and policy examples to demonstrate the theory behind ecosystem management decisions.