By Michel Loreau
The foremost subdisciplines of ecology--population ecology, neighborhood ecology, atmosphere ecology, and evolutionary ecology--have diverged more and more in fresh a long time. what's significantly wanted this present day is an built-in, real-world method of ecology that displays the interdependency of biodiversity and surroundings functioning. From Populations to Ecosystems proposes an cutting edge theoretical synthesis that might allow us to boost our basic realizing of ecological platforms and aid us to reply to ultra-modern rising worldwide ecological situation. Michel Loreau starts by means of explaining how the rules of inhabitants dynamics and environment functioning will be merged. He then addresses key matters within the research of biodiversity and ecosystems, akin to sensible complementarity, foodstuff webs, balance and complexity, fabric biking, and metacommunities. Loreau describes the newest theoretical advances that hyperlink the houses of person populations to the mixture homes of groups, and the houses of sensible teams or trophic degrees to the functioning of entire ecosystems, putting certain emphasis at the dating among biodiversity and surroundings functioning. eventually, he turns his cognizance to the arguable factor of the evolution of complete ecosystems and their homes, laying the theoretical foundations for a real evolutionary surroundings ecology. From Populations to Ecosystems issues find out how to a much-needed synthesis in ecology, person who deals a fuller realizing of surroundings methods within the wildlife.
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Extra resources for From Populations to Ecosystems: Theoretical Foundations for a New Ecological Synthesis (MPB-46) (Monographs in Population Biology, 46)
Sample text
MacArthur’s niche model based on explicit consumer–resource dynamics. The niches of consumer species i and j are described by their consumption functions ai(z) and aj(z) along the resource gradient z. The intrinsic rate of natural increase, r(z), the carrying capacity, k(z), and the energy content, g(z), of resources may also vary along the gradient. consumers have simple linear functional responses (corresponding to the linear part of a type-1 functional response, as in Lotka–Volterra models).
Overall, these studies have provided mixed support for the theory: interspecific competition and unambiguous patterns of niche differentiation do occur under natural conditions, but they often concern a subset of dominant species or ecologically related species that belong to the same guild within broader communities. This is a fairly reasonable conclusion given that competition should not be expected to be the sole factor at work in natural ecosystems. In contrast, to my knowledge no tests have been attempted on functional or quantitative predictions derived from the mechanistic foundations of the theory.
In particular, it serves as a direct introduction to the next chapter, which examines the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in simple systems with a single trophic level. NICHE THEORY AND THE COEXISTENCE OF SPECIES IN HOMOGENEOUS ENVIRONMENTS PHENOMENOLOGICAL MODELS Phenomenological models are models that describe a phenomenon without explicit consideration of the mechanisms that generate this phenomenon. These models may be very apt at reproducing an observation, but they usually have limited predictive power outside the conditions that gave rise to this observation.