Scale, Heterogeneity, and the Structure and Diversity of Ecological Communities
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A01=Mark E. Ritchie
Akaike information criterion
Amphibian
Analysis of covariance
Author_Mark E. Ritchie
Bacteria
Beta diversity
Biodiversity
Biogeography
Biological interaction
Biomass (ecology)
Carbohydrate
Category=RG
Community Structure
Conservation biology
Consumer-resource systems
Dung beetle
Ecological
Ecological equivalents
Ecological niche
Ecology
Ecosystem
Ecosystem ecology
Endemism
Environmental factor
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
Evolutionary ecology
Evolutionary pressure
Food chain
Foraging
Fractal dimension
Fractal landscape
Functional response
Habitat destruction
Habitat fragmentation
Herbivore
Heterotroph
Landscape ecology
Logarithm
Macroecology
Mammal
Metacommunity
Microorganism
Mutualism (biology)
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
Natural history
Niche differentiation
Nutrient
Opportunity cost
Optimal foraging theory
Organism
Phytoplankton
Plant strategies
Population
Population dynamics
Population ecology
Population size
Power law
Predation
Prediction
Probability
Requirement
Spatial distribution
Spatial ecology
Spatial heterogeneity
Spatial scale
Species diversity
Species–area curve
Taxon
Theoretical ecology
Trade-off
Trophic level
Tropical rainforest
Vascular plant
Product details
- ISBN 9780691090702
- Weight: 28g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 18 Oct 2009
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Mark E. Ritchie is professor of biology at Syracuse University.
