Ever since the acorn woodpecker was observed and described by Spanish explorers, its behavior--particularly the unique habit of caching acorns in specialized storage trees or granaries--has impressed observers.
This book maintains that higher plants manifest some degree of sexual selection, and it begins to build a framework that unifies many features of plant reproduction previously considered unrelated.
Many animals regulate their population density by patterns of behavior that would be easy to explain if the forces of natural selection acted to optimize group properties.
To show the importance of stochastic processes in the change of gene frequencies, the authors discuss topics ranging from molecular evolution to two-locus problems in terms of diffusion models.
This book deals with a key area of population genetics: the ratio of the sexes in a population, or the allocation of resources to male versus female reproductive function.
The variety of social systems among the New World blackbirds (Family Icteridae) and the structural simplicity of their foraging environment provide excellent opportunities for testing theorics about the adaptive significance of their behavior.
In this study of arthropod predador-prey systems Michael Hassell shows how many of the components of predation may be simply modeled in order to reveal their effects on the overall dynamics of the interacting populations.
Although ecologists have long considered morphology and life history to be important determinants of the distribution, abundance, and dynamics of plants in nature, this book contains the first theory to predict explicitly both the evolution of plant traits and the effects of these traits on plant community structure and dynamics.
A common tendency in the field of population ecology has been to overlook individual differences by treating populations as homogeneous units; conversely, in behavioral ecology the tendency has been to concentrate on how individual behavior is shaped by evolutionary forces, but not on how this behavior affects population dynamics.
Professor Levins, one of the leading explorers in the field of integrated population biology, considers the mutual interpenetration and joint evolution of organism and environment, occurring on several levels at once.
In spite of the fact that parasites represent more than half of all living species of plants and animals, their role in the evolution of life on earth has been substantially underestimated.
A number of scholars have found that concepts such as mutation, selection, and random drift, which emerged from the theory of biological evolution, may also explain evolutionary phenomena in other disciplines as well.
Through use of the models Professor Horn has devised, plant ecologists, foresters, and botanists will be able to predict the growth and productivity of a forest, the invading and senile species in a forest, the effect of shade tolerance on forest succession, and similar questions.
Professor Cody's monograph emphasizes the role of competition at levels above single species populations, and describes how competition, by way of the niche concept, determines the structure of communities.
In this pathbreaking and far-reaching work George Oster and Edward Wilson provide the first fully developed theory of caste evolution among the social insects.
The only comprehensive photographic guide to the ferns, clubmosses, quillworts and horsetails of BritainThis is a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated and user-friendly photographic identification guide to the fifty-seven ferns and seventeen other pteridophytes that occur in Britain.
Spatial Ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the dynamics of individual species and on the structure, dynamics, diversity, and stability of multispecies communities.
Evolutionary Community Ecology develops a unified framework for understanding the structure of ecological communities and the dynamics of natural selection that shape the evolution of the species inhabiting them.
Pursuing the questions of how we learn and how memory is made, Edward Kosower introduces a novel and rich approach to connecting molecular properties with the biological properties that enable us to write and read, to create culture and ethics, and to think.
This volume represents work by five distinguished ecological geneticists, offering an up-to-date source for theoretical concepts and experiments in an exciting field.
Research into the lives of animals in their natural environments has revealed a rich tapestry of complex social relationships and previously unsuspected social and mating systems.
This volume brings together more than a decade of information collected in the field and lab on the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a northeast African mammal unique for its physical characteristics and eusociality.
A richly illustrated, state-of-the-art field guide for identifying European passerines in flight-the first of its kindOpening up new frontiers in birdwatching, this is the first field guide to focus specifically on the identification of European passerines and related landbirds in flight.
John Tyler Bonner, a major participant in the development of biology as an experimental science, is the author not only of important monographs but also of a wonderfully readable book, Life Cycles, which is both a personal memoir and a profound commentary on the central themes of biology.
The modern ecologist usually works in both the field and laboratory, uses statistics and computers, and often works with ecological concepts that are model-based, if not model-driven.
In 1951, the geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza was teaching in Parma when a student--a priest named Antonio Moroni--told him about rich church records of demography and marriages between relatives.
Throughout the twentieth century, biologists investigated the mechanisms that stabilize biological populations, populations which--if unchecked by such agencies as competition and predation--should grow geometrically.
The seemingly innocent observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in environments is so obvious that it seems an unlikely focus for a new line of thinking about evolution.
An authoritative and accessible introduction to the concepts and tools needed to make ecology a more predictive scienceEcologists are being asked to respond to unprecedented environmental challenges.
News headlines are forever reporting diseases that take huge tolls on humans, wildlife, domestic animals, and both cultivated and native plants worldwide.
Population genetics has made great strides in applying statistical analysis and mathematical modeling to understand how genes mutate and spread through populations over time.
