The Theory of Ecological Communities

· Monographs in Population Biology Boek 57 · Princeton University Press
E-boek
248
Pagina's
Geschikt
Beoordelingen en reviews worden niet geverifieerd. Meer informatie

Over dit e-boek

A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, population genetics theory. The Theory of Ecological Communities takes this as a starting point to pull together community ecology's various perspectives into a more unified whole.

Mark Vellend builds a theory of ecological communities based on four overarching processes: selection among species, drift, dispersal, and speciation. These are analogues of the four central processes in population genetics theory—selection within species, drift, gene flow, and mutation—and together they subsume almost all of the many dozens of more specific models built to describe the dynamics of communities of interacting species. The result is a theory that allows the effects of many low-level processes, such as competition, facilitation, predation, disturbance, stress, succession, colonization, and local extinction to be understood as the underpinnings of high-level processes with widely applicable consequences for ecological communities.

Reframing the numerous existing ideas in community ecology, The Theory of Ecological Communities provides a new way for thinking about biological composition and diversity.

Over de auteur

Mark Vellend is professor of biology at the Université de Sherbrooke. He is a 2015 recipient of an E. W. R. Steacie Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Dit e-boek beoordelen

Geef ons je mening.

Informatie over lezen

Smartphones en tablets
Installeer de Google Play Boeken-app voor Android en iPad/iPhone. De app wordt automatisch gesynchroniseerd met je account en met de app kun je online of offline lezen, waar je ook bent.
Laptops en computers
Via de webbrowser van je computer kun je luisteren naar audioboeken die je hebt gekocht op Google Play.
eReaders en andere apparaten
Als je wilt lezen op e-ink-apparaten zoals e-readers van Kobo, moet je een bestand downloaden en overzetten naar je apparaat. Volg de gedetailleerde instructies in het Helpcentrum om de bestanden over te zetten op ondersteunde e-readers.