Ecological Versatility and Community Ecology

by Ralph C. MacNally

Overview

There are mounting concerns that the management of our natural global heritage is failing to arrest the rapid extinction of enormous numbers of "specialized" species, especially in the tropics. This book is about specialization and generalization in the use of resources and habitats. The author employs a broad ecological perspective to address three main questions: how ecologists study variation in resource and habitat use and what we learn from these studies; how well existing theory accounts for observations and what the common threads among disciplines are; and finally, what the relationship between resource and habitat use is. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive analysis of ecological versatility and as such, will be of great interest to students and researchers in ecology and environmental biology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521119269
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/17/2009
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Ecology
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. An introduction to ecological versatility; 2. Defining and measuring versatility; 3. Studies of versatility in natural populations; 4. The influence of interspecific interactions on versatility; 5. The influence of population structure on versatility; 6. Ecological versatility and population dynamics; 7. Versatility and interspecific competition; 8. Ubiquity or habitat diversity; 9. Recapitulation and commentary; Glossary of terms; Appendices; References.

Editorial Reviews

"MacNally provides a thorough and thought-provoking overview of resource use and habitat selection in organisms....This book presents a view of resource use, habitat selection, and competition that is more realistic and complex than the rigid theory that has traditionally dominated community ecology." Choice

"This text presents a comprehensive analysis of ecological versitality and community ecology." Biosis

"Mac Nally defines 'ecological versatility' as the match between a species' fitness gain from its resources and the availability of resources in the environment. Thus versatility is a measure of how generalized a species is in its use of the resources available in a particular place at a particular time and is consequently a property of neither an organism nor of an environment but of their interaction. Mac Nally reviews the literature on issues related to this match very well, including distinctions about the roles of ontogenetic niche shifts, polymorphisms, and plasticity." Ecology

"This is a fresh, strong, provocative book....Libraries should hasten to put it on their shelves...." James D. Thomson, EcoScience

From the Publisher