Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
The Evolutionary Strategies That Shape Ecosystems
Download The Evolutionary Strategies That Shape Ecosystems full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online The Evolutionary Strategies That Shape Ecosystems ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Book Synopsis The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems by : J. Philip Grime
Download or read book The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems written by J. Philip Grime and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-03-26 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIES THAT SHAPE ECOSYSTEMS In 1837 a young Charles Darwin took his notebook, wrote “I think”, and then sketched a rudimentary, stick-like tree. Each branch of Darwin’s tree of life told a story of survival and adaptation – adaptation of animals and plants not just to the environment but also to life with other living things. However, more than 150 years since Darwin published his singular idea of natural selection, the science of ecology has yet to account for how contrasting evolutionary outcomes affect the ability of organisms to coexist in communities and to regulate ecosystem functioning. In this book Philip Grime and Simon Pierce explain how evidence from across the world is revealing that, beneath the wealth of apparently limitless and bewildering variation in detailed structure and functioning, the essential biology of all organisms is subject to the same set of basic interacting constraints on life-history and physiology. The inescapable resulting predicament during the evolution of every species is that, according to habitat, each must adopt a predictable compromise with regard to how they use the resources at their disposal in order to survive. The compromise involves the investment of resources in either the effort to acquire more resources, the tolerance of factors that reduce metabolic performance, or reproduction. This three-way trade-off is the irreducible core of the universal adaptive strategy theory which Grime and Pierce use to investigate how two environmental filters selecting, respectively, for convergence and divergence in organism function determine the identity of organisms in communities, and ultimately how different evolutionary strategies affect the functioning of ecosystems. This book refl ects an historic phase in which evolutionary processes are finally moving centre stage in the effort to unify ecological theory, and animal, plant and microbial ecology have begun to find a common theoretical framework. Companion website This book has a companion website www.wiley.com/go/grime/evolutionarystrategies with Figures and Tables from the book for downloading.
Book Synopsis Plant Functional Diversity by : Eric Garnier
Download or read book Plant Functional Diversity written by Eric Garnier and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is based on 'Diversitae fonctionnelle des Plantes - Traits des Organismes, Structure des Communautaes, Propriaetaes des Ecosystaemes' authored by Eric Garnier and Marie-Laure Navas, and published in 2013 by De Boeck. It has been substantially enriched compared to the French version, and some chapters have been extensively revised and completed"--Page vii.
Book Synopsis Green Roof Ecosystems by : Richard K. Sutton
Download or read book Green Roof Ecosystems written by Richard K. Sutton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-04 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an up-to-date coverage of green (vegetated) roof research, design, and management from an ecosystem perspective. It reviews, explains, and poses questions about monitoring, substrate, living components and the abiotic, biotic and cultural aspects connecting green roofs to the fields of community, landscape and urban ecology. The work contains examples of green roof venues that demonstrate the focus, level of detail, and techniques needed to understand the structure, function, and impact of these novel ecosystems. Representing a seminal compilation of research and technical knowledge about green roof ecology and how functional attributes can be enhanced, it delves to explore the next wave of evolution in green technology and defines potential paths for technological advancement and research.
Book Synopsis Plant Strategies by : Daniel Laughlin
Download or read book Plant Strategies written by Daniel Laughlin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-27 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do plants make a living? Some plants are gamblers, others are swindlers. Some plants are habitual spenders while others are strugglers and miserly savers. Plants have evolved a spectacular array of solutions to the existential problems of survival and reproduction in a world where resources are scarce, disturbances can be deadly, and competition is cut-throat. Few topics have both captured the imagination and furrowed the brows of plant ecologists, yet no topic is more important for understanding the assembly of plant communities, predicting plant responses to global change, and enhancing the restoration of our rapidly degrading biosphere. The vast array of plant strategy models that characterize the discipline now require synthesis. These models tend to emphasize either life history strategies based on demography, or functional strategies based on ecophysiology. Indeed, this disciplinary divide between demography and physiology runs deep and continues to this today. The goal of this accessible book is to articulate a coherent framework that unifies life history theory with comparative functional ecology to advance prediction in plant ecology. Armed with a deeper understanding of the dimensionality of life history and functional traits, we are now equipped to quantitively link phenotypes to population growth rates across gradients of resource availability and disturbance regimes. Predicting how species respond to global change is perhaps the most important challenge of our time. A robust framework for plant strategy theory will advance this research agenda by testing the generality of traits for predicting population dynamics.
Book Synopsis A Primer of Life Histories by : Jeffrey A. Hutchings
Download or read book A Primer of Life Histories written by Jeffrey A. Hutchings and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life histories can be defined as the means by which individuals (or more precisely genotypes) vary their age- or stage-specific expenditures of reproductive effort in response to genetic, phenotypic, and environmental correlates of survival and fecundity. Life histories reflect the expression of traits most closely related to individual fitness, such as age and size at maturity, number and size of offspring, and the timing of the expression of those traits throughout an individual's life. In addition to addressing questions of fundamental importance to ecology and evolution, life-history research plays an integral role in species conservation and management. This accessible primer encompasses the basic concepts, theories, and applied elements of life history evolution, including patterns of trait variability, underlying mechanisms of plastic/evolutionary change, and the practical utility of life-history traits as metrics of species/population recovery, sustainable exploitation, and risk of extinction. Empirical examples are drawn from the entire spectrum of life. A Primer of Life Histories is designed for readers from a broad range of academic backgrounds and experience including graduate students and researchers of ecology and evolutionary biology. It will also be useful to a more applied audience of academic/government researchers in fields such as wildlife biology, conservation biology, fisheries science, and the environmental sciences.
Book Synopsis Perspectives for Biodiversity and Ecosystems by : Carsten Hobohm
Download or read book Perspectives for Biodiversity and Ecosystems written by Carsten Hobohm and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-05 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The novelty of the book is a strong focus on perception, perspectives and prediction by scientists with profound insight into the ecology of ecosystems or into human demands and activity. The challenge is to bridge from empirical data and the knowledge of the past to the possibilities of the performance in the future. We assume that there is scope for more cooperation between the fields of ecology and practical philosophy or other social sciences in organising ecosystems and shaping the cultural future of humankind, and that such collaboration should be accorded considerably more priority. This book deals with environmental processes seen within a framework of the nature of ecosystems and human cultures. The future of the environment, the development of ecosystems and effective nature conservation management are the essentials of this book. Human nature and culture, and in particular their interactions, are interpreted as a set of rules and as given. The aim is not only to assess the significance of human influence on species composition and biodiversity but also to weigh up the subsequent potentials for action. In this book we will analyze the problems independently of one another, even if they are interconnected. This book focuses on perspectives and prognoses for the impacts of anthropogenic activity on ecosystems and thus on species conservation. Its goal is to improve assessments of the impacts of human activity on the environment. We are aware that prognoses have very often proven to be false. It is difficult to impossible to be able to predict with precision how evolution and ecosystems will change in future under anthropogenic influence. This strengthens our resolve to attempt to retain the highest possible degree of scientific integrity and professionalism and not to shy away from expressing the uncertainty of our own ideas and prognoses. We venture prognoses in this book and we will fail. However, we hope that we will be wrong on the right side.
Book Synopsis Tropical Ecosystems in the 21st Century by :
Download or read book Tropical Ecosystems in the 21st Century written by and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Ecological Research, Volume 62, the latest release in this ongoing series, covers a long list of topics, including Monitoring tropical insects in the 21st Century, The distribution and structure of long-term and large-scale fire manipulation experiments, The Agua Salud Project: Basic and applied research informing management of tropical landscapes for the 21st century, Conservation strategies and principles for tropical forests, Assessing forest quality using satellite remote sensing data: A test case using the Sabah Biodiversity Experiment, eDNA approaches to understand the current state and future of biodiversity of the Amazonian biome: pitfalls, improvements and challenges, and much more. Provides information that relates to a thorough understanding of the field of ecology Deals with topical and important reviews on the physiologies, populations and communities of plants and animals
Download or read book Food Webs written by John C. Moore and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents new approaches to studying food webs, using practical and policy examples to demonstrate the theory behind ecosystem management decisions.
Book Synopsis Philosophy of Nature by : Svein Anders Noer Lie
Download or read book Philosophy of Nature written by Svein Anders Noer Lie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of naturalness has largely disappeared from the academic discourse in general but also the particular field of environmental studies. This book is about naturalness in general – about why the idea of naturalness has been abandoned in modern academic discourse, why it is important to explicitly re-establish some meaning for the concept and what that meaning ought to be. Arguing that naturalness can and should be understood in light of a dispositional ontology, the book offers a point of view where the gap between instrumental and ethical perspectives can be bridged. Reaching a new foundation for the concept of ‘naturalness’ and its viability will help raise and inform further discussions within environmental philosophy and issues occurring in the crossroads between science, technology and society. This topical book will be of great interest to researchers and students in Environmental Studies, Environmental Philosophy, Science and Technology Studies, Conservation Studies as well as all those generally engaged in debates about the place of ‘man in nature’.
Download or read book Ecology written by Michael Begon and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-11-11 with total page 864 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive guide to the depth and breadth of the ecological sciences, revised and updated The revised and updated fifth edition of Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems – now in full colour – offers students and practitioners a review of the ecological sciences. The previous editions of this book earned the authors the prestigious ‘Exceptional Life-time Achievement Award’ of the British Ecological Society – the aim for the fifth edition is not only to maintain standards but indeed to enhance its coverage of Ecology. In the first edition, 34 years ago, it seemed acceptable for ecologists to hold a comfortable, objective, not to say aloof position, from which the ecological communities around us were simply material for which we sought a scientific understanding. Now, we must accept the immediacy of the many environmental problems that threaten us and the responsibility of ecologists to play their full part in addressing these problems. This fifth edition addresses this challenge, with several chapters devoted entirely to applied topics, and examples of how ecological principles have been applied to problems facing us highlighted throughout the remaining nineteen chapters. Nonetheless, the authors remain wedded to the belief that environmental action can only ever be as sound as the ecological principles on which it is based. Hence, while trying harder than ever to help improve preparedness for addressing the environmental problems of the years ahead, the book remains, in its essence, an exposition of the science of ecology. This new edition incorporates the results from more than a thousand recent studies into a fully up-to-date text. Written for students of ecology, researchers and practitioners, the fifth edition of Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems is anessential reference to all aspects of ecology and addresses environmental problems of the future.
Book Synopsis Biology Made Real by : Christian Moore-Anderson
Download or read book Biology Made Real written by Christian Moore-Anderson and published by Christian Moore-Anderson. This book was released on 2023-04-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This outstanding book... deserves to be very widely read. I hope it makes a major contribution to how school biology is taught.' —Dr Michael J. Reiss, Professor of Science Education, University of London 'This is a book that all teachers, not just biology teachers should read.' —Ben Strathearn-Burrows, Head of Biology, Emanuel School What you'll find inside: —A vision for an integrated and meaningful biology education. —A framework for teaching for meaning-making, which cuts planning time. —Ways of creating a unified narrative across disparate topics. —A taxonomy of understanding that unlocks problem-solving with minimal workload. —Tried and tested examples from mixed-attainment biology classrooms. Introduction I've been motivated to discover what biology is to us as humans. What it means to understand biology, and how I could make it meaningful for my students. I've read as much as I could and reflected, I've discussed and listened, I've taught and observed. While it doesn't cover all aspects of biology education, this book is about sharing what I've learnt on my journey of synthesising and trialling ideas with my secondary-school mixed-attainment biology classes. 'Not only is this book likely to change how you teach biology but also how you perceive yourself within the living world.' —Dr Alex Sinclair, Institute of Education, St Mary's University, Twickenham Chapter 1: Meaningful biology relates principally to organisms: This sets the scene for the whole book. It brings together many threads to define what I see as most meaningful to secondary biology students. And therefore what we could do about it when designing our lessons & curricula and thinking about how students progress through their biology education. Planning for meaning-making has vastly enhanced interest and motivation to learn in my classroom. Chapters 2 & 3: Teaching for meaning using variation theory: Next I introduce a powerful—relatively unknown and often misunderstood—pedagogical theory. Variation theory. In these chapters I set out to show how useful it is—and easy to use—in the secondary biology classroom, with many examples. Chapter 4: How to integrate organisms, ecology & evolution: Now I pull together the previous chapters to present a new framework for teaching for meaning-making that cuts planning time & focuses on biology. 'An excellent text demanding we think not just about what we teach but also why and how.’ —Dr Paul Ganderton, Consultant and researcher Chapter 5: Concepts of the organism that unite a biology course: Here I discuss two concepts that I think can unify all the topics on the curriculum. 1. Seeing biology through thermodynamic systems lens and, 2. Seeing biology through an ecological-evolutionary lens via the concept of life strategies. I lay out the reasons why and discuss how I've introduced these ideas with students. Chapter 6: Teaching systems thinking to help students see interconnectedness: This chapter is dedicated to systems thinking. Firstly I show how stock and flow diagrams are very useful for the biology classroom and give examples. Next, I introduce a new taxonomy of understanding biological systems. Chapter 7: Establishing a thinking classroom: This chapter is focused on the whys and hows of embedding the taxonomy into my biology curricula. I give examples of how I use it and examples of my students answers from lower and upper secondary courses. Chapter 8: Navigating classroom and biological complexity: This chapter rounds up the book by considering the complexity of our subject and the classroom. ‘Biology Made Real comes with an education health warning—be prepared to have your beliefs challenged.' —Dr Alex Sinclair
Book Synopsis Ecological Responses at Mount St. Helens: Revisited 35 years after the 1980 Eruption by : Charles M. Crisafulli
Download or read book Ecological Responses at Mount St. Helens: Revisited 35 years after the 1980 Eruption written by Charles M. Crisafulli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book builds on existing work exploring succession, disturbance ecology, and the interface between geophysical and biological systems in the aftermath of the 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens. The eruption was dramatic both in the spatial extent of impacts and the range of volcanic disturbance types and intensities. Complex geophysical forces created unparalleled opportunities to study initial ecological responses and long-term succession processes that occur in response to a major contemporary eruption across a great diversity of ecosystems—lowland to alpine forests, meadows, lakes, streams, and rivers. These factors make Mount St. Helens an extremely rich environment for learning about the ecology of volcanic areas and, more generally, about ecosystem response to major disturbance of many types, including land management. Lessons about ecological recovery at Mount St. Helens are shaping thought about succession, disturbance ecology, ecosystem management, and landscape ecology. In the first five years after the eruption several syntheses documented the numerous, intensive studies of ecological recovery. The 2005 volume “Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens” (Springer Publishing) was the first ecological synthesis since 1987 of the scores of ecological studies underway in the area. More than half of the world’s published studies on plant and animal responses to volcanic eruptions have taken place at Mount St. Helens. The 25-year synthesis, which generally included investigations (i.e., data) from 1980-2000, made it possible to more thoroughly analyze initial stages of ecological responses and to test the validity of early interpretations and the duration of early phenomena. And 35 years after the eruption, it is time for many of the scientists working in the first three-decade, post-eruption period to pass the science baton to the next generation of scientists to work at Mount St. Helens, and a synt hesis a t this time of transfer of responsibility to a younger cohort of scientists will be an enormous asset to the continuation of work at the volcano.
Book Synopsis Handbook of Trait-Based Ecology by : Francesco de Bello
Download or read book Handbook of Trait-Based Ecology written by Francesco de Bello and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trait-based ecology is rapidly expanding. This comprehensive and accessible guide covers the main concepts and tools in functional ecology.
Book Synopsis Trait-Based Ecology - From Structure to Function by :
Download or read book Trait-Based Ecology - From Structure to Function written by and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theme of this volume is Trait-Based Ecology - From Structure to Function. Advances in Ecological Research is one of the most successful series in the highly competitive field of ecology Each volume publishes topical and important reviews, interpreting ecology as widely as in the past, to include all material that contributes to our understanding of the field Topics in this invaluable series include the physiology, populations, and communities of plants and animals, as well as landscape and ecosystem ecology
Book Synopsis A Framework for Community Ecology by : Paul A. Keddy
Download or read book A Framework for Community Ecology written by Paul A. Keddy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-09 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a unifying framework for community ecology by addressing how communities are assembled from species pools.
Book Synopsis Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics by : Stan Booth
Download or read book Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics written by Stan Booth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconsidering Extinction in Terms of the History of Global Bioethics continues the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series by exploring approaches to the bioethics of extinction from disparate disciplines, from literature, to social sciences, to history, to sustainability studies, to linguistics. Van Rensselaer Potter coined the phrase “Global Bioethics” to define human relationships with their contexts. This and subsequent volumes return to Potter’s founding vision from historical perspectives, and asks, how did we get here from then? Extinction can be understood in terms of an everlasting termination of shape, form, and function; however, until now life has gone on. Where would we humans be if the dinosaurs had not become extinct? And we still manage to communicate, only not in proto-Indo-European, but in a myriad of languages, some more common than others. The answer is simple, after extinction events, evolution continues. But will it always be so? Has the human race set planet earth on a collision course with nothingness? This volume explores areas of bioethical interpretation in relation to the complex concept of extinction.
Book Synopsis Recombinant Ecology - A Hybrid Future? by : Ian D. Rotherham
Download or read book Recombinant Ecology - A Hybrid Future? written by Ian D. Rotherham and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-18 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a challenging new approach to understanding ecological systems especially in urban and urbanised areas. Synthesising current ideas and approaches the book develops an historic context to ecological fusion and recombinant or hybrid ecosystems. With massive climate change and other environmental fluxes, this volume provides insight into consequences for future ecologies. Invasive and non-native or alien species are spreading, often aggressively around the globe. However, much current thinking in ecology and nature conservation fails to accommodate the consequences of changing environmental conditions and fusion of both species and ecological communities. Whether or not conservationists accept ecological change, factors such as urbanisation and globalisation combine with climate and other changes to trigger new hybrid communities and ecologies. Embedding this approach into current ecological thinking this book presents an overview of ideas set in the exemplar case study area of the British Isles. However, the approaches, ideas and conclusions presented here will find application in ecosystem studies and in nature conservation around the world.
