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The technique of allometry investigates the effects of size on such variables as food intake, energy requirements, growth rates and age at first reproduction. This book brings together much of what is known about the consequences of size and provides a new and mathematically rigorous framework within which many quantitative predictions are made and tested using published and unpublished data. Explanations are proposed for many previously unexplained phenomena such as why in some species females are thousands of times heavier than males, whereas in no species are males more than about eight times heavier than females. The models presented afford a synthesis of the effects of size and open up pathways for further theoretical investigation and experimental testing. Care has been taken to give verbal presentations of all the mathematical conclusions to ensure that the text is widely intelligible.
Allometry, the study of the growth rate of an organism's parts in relation to the whole, has produced exciting results in research on animals. Now distinguished plant biologist Karl J. Niklas has written the first book to apply allometry to studies of the evolution, morphology, physiology, and reproduction of plants. Niklas covers a broad spectrum of plant life, from unicellular algae to towering trees, including fossil as well as extant taxa. He examines the relation between organic size and variations in plant form, metabolism, reproduction, and evolution, and draws on the zoological literature to develop allometric techniques for the peculiar problems of plant height, the relation between body mass and body length, and size-correlated variations in rates of growth. For readers unfamiliar with the basics of allometry, an appendix explains basic statistical methods. For botanists interested in an original, quantitative approach to plant evolution and function, and for zoologists who want to learn more about the value of allometric techniques for studying evolution, Plant Allometry makes a major contribution to the study of plant life.
Much effort has been devoted to developing theories to explain the wide variation we observe in reproductive allocation among environments. Reproductive Allocation in Plants describes why plants differ in the proportion of their resources that they allocate to reproduction and looks into the various theories. This book examines the ecological and evolutionary explanations for variation in plant reproductive allocation from the perspective of the underlying physiological mechanisms controlling reproduction and growth. An international team of leading experts have prepared chapters summarizing the current state of the field and offering their views on the factors determining reproductive allocation in plants. This will be a valuable resource for senior undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers in ecology, plant ecophysiology, and population biology. - 8 outstanding chapters dedicated to the evolution and ecology of variation in plant reproductive allocation - Written by an international team of leading experts in the field - Provides enough background information to make it accessible to senior undergraduate students - Includes over 60 figures and 29 tables
Millions of trees live and grow all around us, and we all recognize the vital role they play in the world’s ecosystems. Publicity campaigns exhort us to plant yet more. Yet until recently comparatively little was known about the root causes of the physical changes that attend their growth. Since trees typically increase in size by three to four orders of magnitude in their journey to maturity, this gap in our knowledge has been a crucial issue to address. Here at last is a synthesis of the current state of our knowledge about both the causes and consequences of ontogenetic changes in key features of tree structure and function. During their ontogeny, trees undergo numerous changes in their physiological function, the structure and mechanical properties of their wood, and overall architecture and allometry. This book examines the central interplay between these changes and tree size and age. It also explores the impact these changes can have, at the level of the individual tree, on the emerging characteristics of forest ecosystems at various stages of their development. The analysis offers an explanation for the importance of discriminating between the varied physical properties arising from the nexus of size and age, as well as highlighting the implications these ontogenetic changes have for commercial forestry and climate change. This important and timely summation of our knowledge base in this area, written by highly respected researchers, will be of huge interest, not only to researchers, but also to forest managers and silviculturists.
Describes in detail how the physical size of an organism affects its biology. Presents the largest single compilation of inter-specific size relations and instructs the reader on their comparison, combination, and criticism.
Several books have been published on scaling in biology and its ramifications in the animal kingdom. However, none has specifically examined the multifaceted effects of how changes in human height create disproportionately larger changes in weight, surface area, strength and other physiological parameters. Yet, the impact of these non-linear effects on individual humans as well as our world's environment is enormous. Since increasing human body size has widespread ramifications, this book presents findings on the human species and its ecological niche. its community and how the species interacts with its environment. Thus, a few chapters provide an ecological overview of how increasing human body size relates to human evolution, fitness, health, survival and the environment. This book provides a unique purview of the laws of scaling on human performance, health, longevity and the environment. Numerous examples from various research disciplines are used to illustrate the impact of increasing body size on many aspects of human enterprises, including work output, athletics and intellectual performance.
Earthworms (Verms) have long been described as the intestine of the earth, friends of farmers and so on, because of their manifold functions in the soil. Recently, earthworms have come to be recognized as one of the bioreactors due to their ability to degrade organic waste materials into available vermin-compost and the technology is being described as vermiculture technology or Vermitechnology. Due to population explosion beyond the limit and rapid urbanization, total agricultural land area is decreasing day by day. These are directly affecting the crop production. Although due to the usage of various chemical fertilizers and pesticides, yield of crop production have been increased multi-folds, but their excessive and imbalance usage causing tremendous alterations in natural soil environment. In order to cope with this trenchant problem, the vermitechnology has become the most suitable remedial device of the day. Therefore, the present book entitled Verms & Vermitechnology has been edited to make the low cost vermitechnology a grand success among the farmers, researchers and academicians.
The first detailed account of post-copulatory sexual selection and the evolution of reproduction in mammals.
Global Overshoot is a multidisciplinary analysis (including history and pre-history) from an ecological and evolutionary perspective of the contemporary world system. This book compares and critiques attitudes held by people with different world views to the hypothetical prospect of large widespread falls in quality of life. It also draws insights from these two analyses to develop and suggest a philosophy of Ecohumanism to people of good will who want to think constructively about the world’s converging problems, i.e. think altruistically and ‘think like an evolving ecosystem.’