Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological Patterns

Hardback  302 pp, 81 diags, 5 illus, 27 tabs  ISBN 0521817129      £65.00

Paperback  302 pp  ISBN 0521520371      £28.00

In Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological Patterns, Peter Price establishes a completely new vision of the central themes in ecology. For the first time in book form, the study of distribution, abundance, and population size variation in animals is cast in an evolutionary framework. The book argues that evolved characters of organisms such as morphology, behavior, and life history influence strongly their ecological relationships, including the way that populations fluctuate through time and space. The central ideas in the book are supported by data gathered from over 20 years of research, primarily into plant and herbivore interactions, concentrating on insects. The huge diversity of insect herbivores provides the immense comparative power necessary for a strong evolutionary study of ecological principles. The book is intended as essential reading for all researchers and students of ecology, evolutionary biology, and behavior, and for entomologists working in agriculture, horticulture, and forestry

Contents

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. The general thesis; 2. Historical views on distribution, abundance, and population dynamics; 3. The focal species - basic biology; 4. The focal species - emergent properties; 5. The focal group - the common sawflies; 6. Convergent constraints in divergent taxonomic groups; 7. Divergent constraints and emergent properties; 8. Common constraints and divergent emergent properties; 9. The thesis applied to parasitoids, vertebrate taxa, and plants; 10. Theory development and synthesis; Glossary; References; Author index; Taxonomic index; Subject index.