Product Description: All organisms live in clusters, but such fractured local populations, or demes, nonetheless maintain connectivity with one another by some amount of gene flow between them. Most such metapopulations occur naturally, like clusters of amphibians in vernal ponds or baboon troops spread across the African veldt...read more

Global temperatures and seawater levels rise; the world’s smallest porpoise species looms at the edge of extinction; and a tiny emerald beetle from Japan flourishes in North America—but why does it matter? Who cares? With this concise, accessible, and up-to-date book, Charles J. Krebs answers critics and enlightens students and environmental advocates alike, revealing not why phenomena like these deserve our attention, but why they demand it. Highlighting key principles in ecology—from species extinction to the sun’s role in powering ecosystems—each chapter introduces a general question, illustrates that question with real-world examples, and links it to pressing ecological issues in which humans play a central role, such as the spread of invasive species, climate change, overfishing, and biodiversity conservation. While other introductions to ecology are rooted in complex theory, math, or practice and relegate discussions of human environmental impacts and their societal implications to sidebars and appendices, Why Ecology Matters interweaves these important discussions throughout. It is a book rooted in our contemporary world, delving into ecological issues that are perennial, timeless, but could not be more timely.

Product Description: Das Projekt fur dieses Buch entstand im Mai 1990 anlasslich des jahrlichen Treffens des populationsbiologischen Arbeitskreises der Gesellschaft fur Okologie (GfO). Die Autoren mochten damit den gegenwartigen Stand der populations biologischen Forschung im deutschsprachigen Raum dokumentieren und einen Uberblick uber das Spektrum dieser Forschungsrichtung geben...read more

Product Description: In contrast with the fundamental ecological expectation that similarity induces competition and loss of species, temporal dynamics allows similar species to co-occur. In fact, the coexistence of similar species contributes significantly to species diversity and could affect ecosystem response to climate change...read more

Product Description: The goal of this book is to search for a balance between simple and analyzable models and unsolvable models which are capable of addressing important questions on population biology. Part I focusses on single species simple models including those which have been used to predict the growth of human and animal population in the past...read more

Product Description: An increasing variety of biological problems involving resource management, conservation and environmental quality have been dealt with using the principles of population biology (defined to include population dynamics, genetics and certain aspects of community ecology)...read more

Product Description: Until fairly recently, populations were handled as homogenized averages, which made modeling feasible but which ignored the essential fact that in any population there is a great variety of individuals of different ages, sizes, and degrees of fitness...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The book that you hold in your hands is the second in a series. The two titles in the series are the following: Genetic Influences on Human Fertility and Sexuality: Theoretical and Empirical Contributions from the Biological and Behavior Sciences Edited by Joseph Lee Rodgers, David C...read more

TO ACCOMPANY A MAJOR ITV DOCUMENTARY We are poisoning our planet and destroying the lives of our children. In the west arguments rage over how much nuclear radiation and toxic dumping is safe, while children continue to breath filthy air and eat food full of pesticides. In the third World, over four million children die each year from drinking unclean water. Adults make the decisions but children pay the highest price. They are physically vulnerable and politically powerless. When the Bough Breaks... is about the world we are creating for our children. For too long we have used what we want from our planet now, refusing to think about the future. But it may still not be too late. The book sets out what must be done and describes how people throughout the world are uniting to clean up the mess we have made.

Product Description: An overview of speciation theory reveals an increasingly held view that many events leading to the origin of new species occur in transient, unstable populations. A transient, unstable population should be under­ stood as a fast episodic phase in a population subjected to genetic and environmental factors that tend to disrupt its cohesive, balanced genome architecure, thus enhancing its probability to produce a new species...read more

Product Description: The effects of isolation, area size, and habitat quality on the survival of animal and plant populations in the cultural landscape are central aspects of a research project started in Germany in 1993 (,Forschungsverbund, Isolation, FHichengroBe und BiotopquaIiHit', abbreviated to 'FIFB')...read more

Product Description: At last both ecology and evolution are covered in this study on the dynamics of size-structured populations. How does natural selection shape growth patterns and life cycles of individuals, and hence the size-structure of populations? This book will stimulate biologists to look into some important and interesting biological problems from a new angle of approach, concerning: - life history evolution, - intraspecific competition and niche theory, - structure and dynamics of ecological communities...read more

Product Description: When we wrote this book it was, admittedly, flrst of all for the sake of our own enjoyment and enlightenment. We will, however, add our sincerely meant (but rather traditional) hope that it will prove interesting to graduate students, to colleagues and to anyone else, who will bother to read it...read more

Product Description: A user-friendly primer to the essential techniques of quantitative field ecology, or paleoecology, integrating the intuitive approach of the field researcher with the rational analytical tools of the statistician. Designed as a comprehensive introduction and handy methodological reference for students and professionals alike, this book is filled with lucid explanations, real-world examples, practice problem sets, more than one hundred illustrations and tables, and many applications to research issues of current concern...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Surveying Natural Populations is a user-friendly primer to the essential methodologies of quantitative field ecology or paleoecology. Combining the intuitive methods of the field researcher with the mathematical precision of the statistician, the volume determines, through real biodiversity and ecological examples, the necessary measures for a complete community assessment while clarifying the confusions between biological and statistical terminology...read more

Product Description: The major subdisciplines of ecology--population ecology, community ecology, ecosystem ecology, and evolutionary ecology--have diverged increasingly in recent decades. What is critically needed today is an integrated, real-world approach to ecology that reflects the interdependency of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning...read more

Conservation biology -- using concepts from traditional resource management and modern population biology to preserve biological diversity -- has emerged as one of the most important areas of ecology In order to really understand the problems of decreasing diversity and the solutions to maintaining it, the attention of ecologists must be focused on larger spatial and temporal scales than they are used to. The book discusses methods and statistical techniques that can be used to analyze spatial patterns in geographic populations. These techniques incorporate ideas from fractal geometry to develop measures of geographic range fragmentation, and can be used to ask questions regarding the conservation of biodiversity.

Product Description: This collection of essays considers the foundation and historical development of population biology and its relationship to population genetics and population ecology. It also considers its relationship to the rapidly growing fields of molecular quantitative genetics, genomics and bioinformatics...read more

Population ecologists study how births and deaths affect the dynamics of populations and communities, while ecosystem ecologists study how species control the flux of energy and materials through food webs and ecosystems. Although all these processes occur simultaneously in nature, the mathematical frameworks bridging the two disciplines have developed independently. Consequently, this independent development of theory has impeded the cross-fertilization of population and ecosystem ecology. Using recent developments from dynamical systems theory, this advanced undergraduate/graduate level textbook shows how to bridge the two disciplines seamlessly. The book shows how bifurcations between the solutions of models can help understand regime shifts in natural populations and ecosystems once thresholds in rates of births, deaths, consumption, competition, nutrient inputs, and decay are crossed. Mathematical Ecology is essential reading for students of ecology who have had a first course in calculus and linear algebra or students in mathematics wishing to learn how dynamical systems theory can be applied to ecological problems.