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Spatial and temporal heterogeneity.
An attractive, promising, and frustrating feature of ecology is its complex ity, both conceptual and observational. Increasing acknowledgment of the importance of scale testifies to the shifting focus in large areas of ecology. In the rush to explore problems of scale, another general aspect of ecolog ical systems has been given less attention. This aspect, equally important, is heterogeneity. Its importance lies in the ubiquity of heterogeneity as a feature of ecological systems and in the number of questions it raises questions to which answers are not readily available. What is heterogeneity? Does it differ from complexity? What dimensions need be considered to evaluate heterogeneity ade quately? Can heterogeneity be measured at various scales? Is heterogeneity apart of organization of ecological systems? How does it change in time and space? What are the causes of heterogeneity and causes of its change? This volume attempts to answer these questions. It is devoted to iden tification of the meaning, range of applications, problems, and methodol ogy associated with the study of heterogeneity. The coverage is thus broad and rich, and the contributing authors have been encouraged to range widely in discussions and reflections. vi Preface The chapters are grouped into themes. The first group focuses on the conceptual foundations (Chapters 1-5). These papers exarnine the meaning of the term, historical developments, and relations to scale. The second theme is modeling population and interspecific interactions in hetero geneous environments (Chapters 6 and 7).
A wide-ranging review of the effects of heterogeneity on individuals, populations, communities and biodiversity.
There is a new emerging interest in the effects of gaps and patches on succession and biodiversity. This innovative volume is a synthesis of studies of plant responses to temporal and spatial heterogeneity, the exploitation of resources from pulses and patches by plants, and their competition with neighbors in the face of this variability.Aboveground, the book focuses upon the nature of canopy patchiness, consequences of this heterogeneity for the light environment, and the mechanisms by which plants respond to and exploit this patchiness. Belowground, the text explores the heterogeneity of soil environments and how root systems obtain nutrients and water in the context of this temporal and spatial variability. As a new reference in an evolving and growing field, this text is sure to be a valuable tool for researchers and advanced students in plant physiology, ecology, agronomy, and forestry alike.
Presents advances in the measurement and interpretation of the impacts of environmental heterogenity upon organisms and ecological processes. The 18 contributions from the March 1999 symposium discuss the effects of spatial and temporal heterogeneity on individuals, populations, communities and biodiversity; and the management and conservation implications of environmental heterogeneity. Topics include plant response to patchy soils, heterogeneity in plant quality and its impact on the population ecology of insect herbivores, and genetic variation and adaptation in tree populations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
This book examines the effects of environmental heterogeneity, or patchiness, on populations of plants and animals. The factors explored include variations in space, time, climactic conditions, food and other resources, and exposure to predators and parasites. In contrast to the once-prevailing view that environmental variation can be averaged-out without losing essential dynamics, the contributors to this volume find such heterogeneities often play a significant role in structuring large populations, especially in lessening the risk of extinction. Topics include the ways animals choose between patches that will expose them to different probabilities of starvation and predation, conservation in a variable environment and the optimal size of reserves, sex determination and sex ratios, patchiness and community structure, and extinctions of populations in correlated environments. The book will be of interest to ecologists, entomologists, environmental scientists, population geneticists, and biologists specializing in evolution, population, or conservation.
Understanding and predicting species diversity in ecological communities is one of the great challenges in community ecology. Popular recent theory contends that the traits of species are "neutral" or unimportant to coexistence, yet abundant experimental evidence suggests that multiple species are able to coexist on the same limiting resource precisely because they differ in key traits, such as body size, diet, and resource demand. This book presents a new theory of coexistence that incorporates two important aspects of biodiversity in nature--scale and spatial variation in the supply of limiting resources. Introducing an innovative model that uses fractal geometry to describe the complex physical structure of nature, Mark Ritchie shows how species traits, particularly body size, lead to spatial patterns of resource use that allow species to coexist. He explains how this criterion for coexistence can be converted into a "rule" for how many species can be "packed" into an environment given the supply of resources and their spatial variability. He then demonstrates how this rule can be used to predict a range of patterns in ecological communities, such as body-size distributions, species-abundance distributions, and species-area relations. Ritchie illustrates how the predictions closely match data from many real communities, including those of mammalian herbivores, grasshoppers, dung beetles, and birds. This book offers a compelling alternative to "neutral" theory in community ecology, one that helps us better understand patterns of biodiversity across the Earth.
Recommended for viewing on a colour tablet. The Bird Atlas 2007–2011 is the definitive statement on breeding and winter bird distributions in Britain and Ireland.
This groundbreaking work connects the knowledge of system function developed in ecosystem ecology with landscape ecology's knowledge of spatial structure. The book elucidates the challenges faced by ecosystem scientists working in spatially heterogeneous systems, relevant conceptual approaches used in other disciplines and in different ecosystem types, and the importance of spatial heterogeneity in conservation resource management.