Their natural enemies largely determine the population size and dynamic behavior of many plant-eating insects. Any reduction in enemy number can result in an insect outbreak. Applied biological control is thus one strategy for restoring functional biodiversity in many agroecosystems. Predators and Parasitoids addresses the role of natural enemies i
An Introduction to Aquatic Toxicology is an introductory reference for all aspects of toxicology pertaining to aquatic environments. As water sources diminish, the need to understand the effects that contaminants may have on aquatic organisms and ecosystems increases in importance. This book will provide you with a solid understanding of aquatic toxicology, its past, its cutting-edge present and its likely future. An Introduction to Aquatic Toxicology will introduce you to the global issue of aquatic contamination, detailing the major sources of contamination, from where they originate, and their effects on aquatic organisms and their environment. State-of-the-art toxicological topics covered include nanotoxicology, toxicogenomics, bioinformatics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, as well as water management and the toxicological effects of major environmental issues such as algal blooms, climate change and ocean acidification. This book is intended for anyone who wants to know more about the impact of toxicants on aquatic organisms and ecosystems, or to keep up to date with recent and future developments in the field. - Provides with the latest perspectives on the impacts of toxicants on aquatic environments, such as nanotoxicology, toxicogenomics, ocean acidification and eutrophication - Offers a complete overview, beginning with the origins of aquatic toxicology and concluding with potential future challenges - Includes guidance on testing methods and a glossary of aquatic toxicology terms
The exigencies of life in the desert environment have resulted in the se lection of a diversity of adaptations, both morphological and physiologi cal, in the flora and fauna. At the same time, many plants and most small animals are able not merely to exist but even to thrive under desert conditions - mainly by avoiding thermal extremes and by the refine ment of pre-existing abilities to economise in water. In the same way, the biotic interactions of the flora and fauna of the desert do not involve many new principles. Nevertheless, conditions in arid regions frequently do invoke refinements of the complex interrelations between predators and their prey, parasites and their hosts, as well as between herbivores and the plants upon which they feed. In this book, I shall discuss not only such interactions and their feedback effects, but also community processes and population dynamics in the desert. The physical conditions of the desert that principally affect predators and their prey are its openness and the paucity of cover. This is re stricted to scattered plants, occasional rocks, holes, and crevices in the ground. Furthermore, nightfall does not confer relative invisibility, as it does in many other ecobiomes, because of the clarity of the atmosphere. The bright starlight of the desert renders nearby objects visible even to the human eye, while an incandescent moon bathes the empty landscape with a flood of silver light. Consequently, adaptive coloration is func tional at all hours of the day and night.
Predation is considered one of the distinct phenomena related to the interrelationships between species on the Earth. In general, predation is widespread not only in wildlife but also in marine environments where big fishes eat small fishes and other organisms of the sea. This book considers predation in organisms and is aimed at the prevention of predation in wildlife and marine environments.
The classic literature on predation dealt almost exclusively with solitary predators and their prey. Going back to Lotka-Volterra and optimal foraging theory, the theory about predation, including predator-prey population dynamics, was developed for solitary species. Various consequences of sociality for predators have been considered only recently. Similarly, while it was long recognized that prey species can benefit from living in groups, research on the adaptive value of sociality for prey species mostly emerged in the 1970s. The main theme of this book is the various ways that predators and prey may benefit from living in groups. The first part focusses on predators and explores how group membership influences predation success rate, from searching to subduing prey. The second part focusses on how prey in groups can detect and escape predators. The final section explores group size and composition and how individuals respond over evolutionary times to the challenges posed by chasing or being chased by animals in groups. This book will help the reader understand current issues in social predation theory and provide a synthesis of the literature across a broad range of animal taxa. - Includes the whole taxonomical range rather than limiting it to a select few - Features in-depth analysis that allows a better understanding of many subtleties surrounding the issues related to social predation - Presents both models and empirical results while covering the extensive predator and prey literature - Contains extensive illustrations and separate boxes that cover more technical features, i.e., to present models and review results
Black & white print. Concepts of Biology is designed for the typical introductory biology course for nonmajors, covering standard scope and sequence requirements. The text includes interesting applications and conveys the major themes of biology, with content that is meaningful and easy to understand. The book is designed to demonstrate biology concepts and to promote scientific literacy.
This series presents studies that have used the paradigm of landscape ecology. Other approaches, both to landscape and landscape ecology are common, but in the last decade landscape ecology has become distinct from its predecessors and its contemporaries. Landscape ecology addresses the relationships among spatial patterns, temporal patterns and ecological processes. The effect of spatial configurations on ecological processes is fundamental. When human activity is an important variable affecting those relationships, landscape ecology includes it. Spatial and temporal scales are as large as needed for comprehension of system processes and the mosaic included may be very heterogeneous. Intellec tual utility and applicability of results are valued equally. The Inter national Association for Landscape Ecology sponsors this series of studies in order to introduce and disseminate some of the new knowledge that is being produced by this exciting new environmental science. Gray Merriam Ottawa, Canada Foreword This is a book about real nature, or as close to real as we know - a nature of heterogeneous landscapes, wild and humanized, fine-grained and coarse-grained, wet and dry, hilly and flat, temperate and not so temper ate. Real nature is never uniform. At whatever spatial scale we examine nature, we encounter patchiness. If we were to look down from high above at a landscape of millions of hectares, using a zoom lens to move in and out from broad overview to detailed inspection of a square meter we would see that patterns visible at different scales overlay one another.
At last both ecology and evolution are covered in this study on the dynamics of size-structured populations. How does natural selection shape growth patterns and life cycles of individuals, and hence the size-structure of populations? This book will stimulate biologists to look into some important and interesting biological problems from a new angle of approach, concerning: - life history evolution, - intraspecific competition and niche theory, - structure and dynamics of ecological communities.
Animal Vigilance builds on the author's previous publication with Academic Press (Social Predation: How Group Living Benefits Predators and Prey) by developing several other themes including the development and mechanisms underlying vigilance, as well as developing more fully the evolution and function of vigilance. Animal vigilance has been at the forefront of research on animal behavior for many years, but no comprehensive review of this topic has existed. Students of animal behavior have focused on many aspects of animal vigilance, from models of its adaptive value to empirical research in the laboratory and in the field. The vast literature on vigilance is widely dispersed with often little contact between models and empirical work and between researchers focusing on different taxa such as birds and mammals. Animal Vigilance fills this gap in the available material. - Tackles vigilance from all angles, theoretical and empirical, while including the broadest range of species to underscore unifying themes - Discusses several newer developments in the area, such as vigilance copying and effect of food density - Highlights recent challenges to assumptions of traditional models of vigilance, such as the assumption that vigilance is independent among group members, which is reviewed during discussion of synchronization and coordination of vigilance in a group - Written by a top expert in animal vigilance
Predation, one of the most dramatic interactions in animals' lives, has long fascinated ecologists. This volume presents carnivores, raptors and their prey in the complicated net of interrelationships, and shows them against the background of their biotic and abiotic settings. It is based on long-term research conducted in the best preserved woodland of Europe's temperate zone. The role of predation, whether limiting or regulating prey (ungulate, rodent, shrew, bird, and amphibian) populations, is quantified and compared to parts played by other factors: climate, food resources for prey, and availability of other potential resources for predators.