How Species Interact

Altering the Standard View on Trophic Ecology
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-991383-1
Verlag: OUP US

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 449 g

Understanding the functioning of ecosystems requires the understanding of the interactions between consumer species and their resources. How do these interactions affect the variations of population abundances? How do population abundances determine the impact of predators on their prey? The view defended in this book is that the "null model" that most ecologists tend to use is inappropriate because it assumes that the amount of prey consumed by each predator is insensitive to the number of conspecifics. The authors argue that the amount of prey available per predator, rather than the absolute abundance of prey, is the basic determinant of the dynamics of predation. This so-called ratio dependence is shown to be a much more reasonable "null model."

Zielgruppe

Ecologists and graduate students

Autoren/Hrsg.

Arditi, Roger

Ginzburg, Lev

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Ökologie
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Angewandte Ökologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Preface

- 1. Alternative theories of trophic interaction

- 1.1 Monod vs. Contois: resource-dependent and ratio-dependent bacteria

- 1.2 The standard predator-prey model of ecology

- 1.3 The Arditi-Ginzburg ratio-dependent model

- 1.4 Donor control and ratio dependence

- 1.5 Predator-dependent models

- 1.6 What happens at low consumer density? The gradual interference hypothesis

- 1.7 Biomass conversion

- 2. Direct measurements of the functional response

- 2.1 Insect predators and parasitoids, snails, fish, and others: laboratory measurements

- 2.1.1 Manipulating the consumer density alone

- 2.1.2 Measuring interference in the presence of a saturating functional response

- 2.1.3 The Arditi-Akçakaya predator-dependent model

- 2.1.4 Application to literature data

- 2.1.5 Does interference increase gradually?

- 2.2 Wasps and chrysomelids: a field experiment

- 2.3 Wolves and moose: field observations

- 2.3.1 Wolf social structure and spatial scales

- 2.3.2 Model fitting and model selection methods

- 2.3.3 The wolf-moose functional response is ratio-dependent

- 2.4 Additional direct tests of ratio dependence

- 2.4.1 Bark beetles

- 2.4.2 Shrimps

- 2.4.3 Egg parasitoids

- 2.4.4 Benthic flatworms

- 2.5 Identifying the functional response in time series

- 3. Indirect evidence: food chain equilibria

- 3.1 Cascading responses to harvesting at the top of the food chain

- 3.2 Enrichment response when the number of trophic levels is fixed

- 3.3 Enrichment response when the number of trophic levels increases with enrichment

- 3.4 The paradox of enrichment

- 3.5 Donor control and stability of food webs

- 3.6 Why the world is green

- 4. How gradual interference and ratio dependence emerge

- 4.1 Experimental evidence of the role of predator clustering

- 4.1.1 A microcosm experiment with cladocerans

- 4.1.2 Predator aggregations lead to ratio dependence

- 4.2 Refuges and donor control

- 4.2.1 A simple exploratory theoretical model

- 4.2.2 From donor control to ratio dependence

- 4.3 The role of directed movements in the formation of population spatial structures

- 4.3.1 Self-organization due to accelerated movement

- 4.3.2 Spatially-structured predator-prey systems

- 4.3.3 Generalization

- 4.4 Ratio dependence and biological control

- 4.4.1 The biological control paradox

- 4.4.2 Trophotaxis and biological control

- 4.5 Emergence of gradual interference: an individual-based approach

- 4.5.1 A qualitative model based on predator home ranges

- 4.5.2 An individual-based model based on trophotaxis

- 5. The ratio dependence controversy

- 5.1 How interference estimates can be wrong

- 5.2 The paradox of enrichment and the cascading enrichment response: Is there any evidence that they exist?

- 5.3 The fallacy of instantism

- 5.4 Are population cycles really caused by predation?

- 5.5 Mechanistic vs. phenomenological theories

- 5.6 "The truth is always in the middle": How much truth is in this statement?

- 6. It must be beautiful

- 6.1 Scale invariance and symmetries

- 6.2 Kolmogorov's insight

- 6.3 Akçakaya's ratio-dependent model for lynx-hare cycling

- 6.4 The "limit myth"

- Appendices

- 3.A Food chain responses to increased primary production

- 3.A.1 Prey-dependent four-level food chain

- 3.A.2 Ratio-dependent three-level food chain

- 3.B Cascading response in the ratio-dependent model

- 6.A How a revised ecology textbook could look

- References

Über Autor(innen)

Arditi, Roger
Roger Arditi is a "professor of exceptional class" in Paris, France. He works for INRA, the French National Institute for Agronomic Research, in the research unit of Ecology and Evolution at University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He has published both in theoretical and applied areas of population and community ecology, authoring more than 100 scientific publications. His theoretical and experimental work on trophic interactions is focused on a reappraisal of the foundations of the dynamics of predation.

Ginzburg, Lev
Lev Ginzburg has been a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University since 1977. He has published widely on theoretical and applied ecology, population genetics, and risk analysis, and has authored or edited eight books and more than 100 scientific papers. His research in population inertia and interactions in food chains has sparked a controversial revision of the fundamental equations used in ecological theories.

Roger Arditi is a distinguished professor at AgroParisTech in Paris, France. He works for INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, in the research unit of Ecology and Evolution at University Pierre et Marie Curie. His theoretical and experimental work is focused to basic questions of predation dynamics and applied work addresses agroecological problems.

Lev R. Ginzburg has been a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University since 1977. He has published widely on theoretical and applied ecology, population genetics, and risk analysis. Ginzburg is co-author, with Mark Colyvan, of the popular title Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow, published by Oxford University Press in 2004.