Spatial ecology :

Included Index

Preface --
List of contributors --
Part I. Single species dynamics in spatial habitats. Population dynamics in spatial habitats / David Tilman, Clarence L. Lehman, and Peter Kareiva ; Predictive and practical metapopulation models : the incidence function approach / Ilkka Hanski ; Variablility, patchiness, and jump dispersal in the spread of an invading population / Mark A. Lewis --
Part II. Parasites, pathogens, and predators in the spatially complex world. Dynamics of spatially distributed host-parasitoid systems / Michael P. Hassell and Howard B. Wilson ; Basic epidemiological concepts in a spatial context / Elizabeth Eli Holmes ; Measles : persistence and synchronicity in disease dynamics / Neil M. Ferguson, Robert M. May, and Roy M. Anderson ; Genetics and the spatial ecology of species interactions : the Silene-Ustilago system / Janis Antonovics, Peter H. Thrall, and Andrew M. Jarosz --
Part III. Competition in a spatial world. Competition in spatial habitats / Clarence L. Lehman and David Tilman ; Biologically generated spatial pattern and the coexistence of competing species / Stephen W. Pacala and Simon A. Levin ; Habitat destruction and species extinctions / David Tilman and Clarence L. Lehman ; Local and regional processes as controls of species richness / Howard V. Cornell and Ronald H. Karlson --
Part IV. The final analysis: does space matter or not? And how will we test our ideas? Theories of simplification and scaling of spatially distributed processes / Simon A. Levin and Stephen W. Pacala ; Production functions from ecological populations : a survey with emphasis on spatially implicit models / Jonathan Roughgarden ; Challenges and opportunities for empirical evaluation of "spatial theory" / Eleanor K. Steinberg and Peter Kareiva --
References --
Index.

Spatial Ecology addresses the fundamental effects of space on the dynamics of individual species and on the structure, dynamics, diversity, and stability of multispecies communities. Although the ecological world is unavoidably spatial, there have been few attempts to determine how explicit considerations of space may alter the predictions of ecological models, or what insights it may give into the causes of broad-scale ecological patterns. As this book demonstrates, the spatial structure of a habitat can fundamentally alter both the qualitative and quantitative dynamics and outcomes of ecological processes.



Spatial Ecology highlights the importance of space to five topical areas: stability, patterns of diversity, invasions, coexistence, and pattern generation. It illustrates both the diversity of approaches used to study spatial ecology and the underlying similarities of these approaches. Over twenty contributors address issues ranging from the persistence of endangered species, to the maintenance of biodiversity, to the dynamics of hosts and their parasitoids, to disease dynamics, multispecies competition, population genetics, and fundamental processes relevant to all these cases. There have been many recent advances in our understanding of the influence of spatially explicit processes on individual species and on multispecies communities. This book synthesizes these advances, shows the limitations of traditional, non-spatial approaches, and offers a variety of new approaches to spatial ecology that should stimulate ecological research.