McCann | Food Webs | Buch | 978-0-691-13418-5 | sack.de

Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 412 g

Reihe: Monographs in Population Biology

McCann

Food Webs


Erscheinungsjahr 2011
ISBN: 978-0-691-13418-5
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 151 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 412 g

Reihe: Monographs in Population Biology

ISBN: 978-0-691-13418-5
Verlag: Princeton University Press


Human impacts are dramatically altering our natural ecosystems but the exact repercussions on ecological sustainability and function remain unclear. As a result, food web theory has experienced a proliferation of research seeking to address these critical areas. Arguing that the various recent and classical food web theories can be looked at collectively and in a highly consistent and testable way, Food Webs synthesizes and reconciles modern and classical perspectives into a general unified theory. Kevin McCann brings together outcomes from population-, community-, and ecosystem-level approaches under the common currency of energy or material fluxes. He shows that these approaches--often studied in isolation--all have the same general implications in terms of population dynamic stability. Specifically, increased fluxes of energy or material tend to destabilize populations, communities, and whole ecosystems. With this understanding, stabilizing structures at different levels of the ecological hierarchy can be identified and any population-, community-, or ecosystem-level structures that mute energy or material flow also stabilize systems dynamics. McCann uses this powerful general framework to discuss the effects of human impact on the stability and sustainability of ecological systems, and he demonstrates that there is clear empirical evidence that the structures supporting ecological systems have been dangerously eroded. Uniting the latest research on food webs with classical theories, this book will be a standard source in the understanding of natural food web functions.

McCann Food Webs jetzt bestellen!

Autoren/Hrsg.


Weitere Infos & Material


Preface xi

Part 1: THE PROBLEM AND THE APPROACH

Chapter 1. The Balance of Nature: What Is It and Why Care? 3

1.1 Balancing a Noisy System 3

1.2 Ecosystem Stability and Sustainability 6

1.3 Of Food Webs, Stability, and Function 9

1.4 Ecological Instability and Collapse 10

1.5 A Theory for Food Webs 17

Chapter 2. A Primer for Dynamical Systems 20

2.1 Qualitative Approaches to Complex Problems 20

2.2 Dynamical Systems 22

2.3 Case Study: Hopf Bifurcation in an Aquatic Microcosm 42

2.4 Summary of Key Points 45

Chapter 3. Of Modules, Motifs, and Whole Webs 47

Part 2: FOOD WEB MODULES: FROM POPULATIONS TO SMALL FOOD WEBS

Chapter 4. Excitable and Nonexcitable Population Dynamics 53

4.1 Continuous Resource Dynamics 53

4.2 From Nonexcitable to Excitable Population Dynamics 56

4.3 Stage-Structured Resource Dynamics 61

4.4 Empirical Evidence for Excitable Dynamics 63

4.5 Summary: The Dual Nature of Population Growth Rates 65

Chapter 5. Consumer-Resource Dynamics: Building Consumptive Food Webs 67

5.1 Interaction Strength 67

5.2 Consumer-Resource Interactions: Two Qualitative Responses to Changes in a Parameter 71

5.3 Summary 79

5.4 Further Assumptions about the C-R Model 80

5.5 Some Nonequilibrium Thoughts 83

5.6 C-R Dynamics in Nature 84

5.7 Summary 88

Chapter 6. Lagged Consumer-Resource Dynamics 89

6.1 Discrete Consumer-Resource Interactions 90

6.2 Stage-Structured Consumer-Resource Dynamics 94

6.3 Stage-Structured Interactions and Alternative States 97

6.4 Empirical Results 100

6.5 Summary 101

Chapter 7. Food Chains and Omnivory 103

7.1 A Familiar Modular Example: Food Chains 105

7.2 Omnivory 110

7.3 Stage Structure and Food Chain Stability 116

7.4 Empirical Results 118

7.5 Summary 121

Chapter 8. More Modules 123

8.1 Generalists and Food Web Dynamics 123

8.2 The Diamond and the Intraguild Predator 132

8.3 Empirical Results 137

8.4 Summary 140

Part 3: TOWARD WHOLE SYSTEMS

Chapter 9. Coupling Modules in Space: A Landscape Theory 145

9.1 Variability, Space, and Food Webs 145

9.2 Individual Traits and a Landscape-Scale Module 147

9.3 Mobile Adaptive Consumers 151

9.4 Food Webs in Space 155

9.5 Asymmetric Flux Rates through Food Webs 160

9.6 Dynamical Implications on the Landscape 162

9.7 Empirical Evidence 164

9.8 Summary 169

Chapter 10. Classic Food Web Theory 170

10.1 The Classic Approach 170

10.2 Matrices and Local Stability 172

10.3 Gershgorin Discs for Community Matrices: An Intuitive Approach to Eigenvalues 172

10.4 A Controlled Approach to Food Web Matrices 175

10.5 Some Classic Whole-Matrix Results 178

10.6 Recent Whole Community Approaches 184

10.7 Summary 188

Chapter 11. Adding the Ecosystem 189

11.1 Grazing Food Webs and Whole Ecosystems 189

11.2 The N-R-D Module 192

11.3 Detritus and C-R Interactions 194

11.4 Nonequilibrium Dynamics and Detritus as a Distributor 197

11.5 Discussion 199

11.6 Summary 199

Chapter 12. Food Webs as Complex Adaptive Systems 201

12.1 Searching for Empirical Signatures 201

12.2 Adaptive Behavior, Changing Food Web Topology, and Ecosystem Size 202

12.3 Empirical Results for Canadian Shield Lake Ecosystems 206

12.4 Subsidies, Opportunists, and Homogenization 213

12.5 Humans in the Food Web 215

Bibliography 219

Index 235


McCann, Kevin S
Kevin S. McCann is associate professor of integrative biology at the University of Guelph.



Ihre Fragen, Wünsche oder Anmerkungen
Vorname*
Nachname*
Ihre E-Mail-Adresse*
Kundennr.
Ihre Nachricht*
Lediglich mit * gekennzeichnete Felder sind Pflichtfelder.
Wenn Sie die im Kontaktformular eingegebenen Daten durch Klick auf den nachfolgenden Button übersenden, erklären Sie sich damit einverstanden, dass wir Ihr Angaben für die Beantwortung Ihrer Anfrage verwenden. Selbstverständlich werden Ihre Daten vertraulich behandelt und nicht an Dritte weitergegeben. Sie können der Verwendung Ihrer Daten jederzeit widersprechen. Das Datenhandling bei Sack Fachmedien erklären wir Ihnen in unserer Datenschutzerklärung.