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The first book to deal in an integrated manner the full range of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems that occur in Costa Rica, Costa Rican Ecosystems provides an overview of Costa Rica’s main ecosystems by compiling information about their physical settings, biogeography, species diversity, and much more. Rather than follow a technical or clinical approach with a hierarchical categorization of ecosystems, Costa Rica’s dense ecology is explored in a “journey-wise” sequence that provides familiarity and understanding of the country’s full, varied range of intergrading seascapes and landscapes. The book begins with three introductory chapters focusing on Costa Rica’s climate, geology, and soils to provide an understanding of the medium in which its ecology has developed, and then proceeds with a presentation of each of the country’s ecosystems. These chapters review the research to provide a detailed description of each ecosystem, from its location, extent, and general function, to its characteristic species and the ways in which these species interact. The authors provide a summary of the effects that humans have had on the environment in each case, as well as the history, challenges, and successes of the relevant conservation efforts. This book, a culmination of decades of scientific achievement and experience, provides an intellectual template upon which sustainability can be built for Costa Rica and a model for an ecosystems overview that all nations should aspire to and emulate.

Why do species live where they live? What determines the abundance and diversity of species in a given area? What role do species play in the functioning of entire ecosystems? All of these questions share a single core concept—the ecological niche. Although the niche concept has fallen into disfavor among ecologists in recent years, this book argues that the niche is an ideal tool with which to unify disparate research and theoretical approaches in contemporary ecology. The authors define the niche as including both what an organism needs from its environment and how that organism's activities shape its environment. Drawing on the theory of consumer–resource interactions, as well as its graphical analysis, they develop a framework for understanding niches that is flexible enough to include a variety of small- and large-scale processes, from resource competition, predation, and stress to community structure, biodiversity, and ecosystem function.

Ants are probably the most dominant insect group on Earth, representing 10–15 percent of animal biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. Flowering plants, meanwhile, owe their evolutionary success to an array of interspecific interactions—such as pollination, seed dispersal, and herbivory—that have helped to shape their great diversity. This book brings together findings from the scientific literature on the coevolution of ants and plants to provide a better understanding of the unparalleled success of these two groups, of interspecific interactions in general, and ultimately, of terrestrial biological communities. It synthesizes the dynamics of ant–plant interactions, including the sources of variation in their outcomes. The book captures both the emerging appreciation of the importance of these interactions within ecosystems and the developing approaches that place studies of these interactions into a broader ecological and evolutionary context.

Complexity is all around us now to the point where practitioners across many fields must engage with it. But complexity comes with uncertainty, ambiguity and contradiction that makes it arcane on first encounter. Of all the theories surrounding complexity, hierarchy theory is the most intuitive and tractable because hierarchies and levels are habitual parts of human thinking. Hierarchies are associated with shifts across scale. Engineers rescale as they must, but always work one level at a time so as to avoid collapse through emergence. By contrast rescaling to find new levels leads to a fundamental disconnect that requires hierarchy theory to chart the way across a multi-layered labyrinth. Hierarchy theory uses holons, which are simultaneously quasi-autonomous wholes while also being a part of some larger holon. Part-whole status is contradictory; suddenly conventional, familiar hierarchies are not so comfortable. Nonlinearity can curve so far as to introduce infinities that created new levels. Models have to be internally consistent, but in the contradictions of moves between levels narratives save the day by abandoning verity as an issue in favor of asserting a point of view. While normal science relies on linking models, hierarchies tell narratives which can be inconsistent but still powerful. Hierarchy theory investigates the role of the observer in complex systems. This book parses out the implications of all of that.

We live in a globalized world in which people and goods are transported across ecosystem boundaries in greater volumes and faster than ever before. One consequence of globalization has been the introduction, establishment, and spread of many thousands of species beyond the ecosystems in which they evolved. Many of these species cause harm, and are referred to as invasive. This sub-set of non-native species is now recognized to be one of the largest global drivers of environmental change, and policy is being developed at local, national and international scales to address the issues. Enacting policies that will successfully reduce the impacts of invasive species requires contributions from economists, ecologists, legal scholars, historians, engineers, and many more. Many experts from these disciplines are working on invasive species, but this work has rarely crossed disciplinary boundaries. This book brings together experts from many disciplines to present multi-disciplinary perspectives on the impacts of invasive species, and how policy can be created and enacted to reduce those impacts.

Pioneered in the late 1980s, the concept of macroecology—a framework for studying ecological communities with a focus on patterns and processes—revolutionized the field of ecology. Although this approach has been applied mainly to terrestrial ecosystems, there is increasing interest in quantifying macroecological patterns in the sea and understanding the processes that generate them. Taking stock of the current work in the field and advocating a research agenda for the decades ahead, this book draws together insights and approaches from a diverse group of scientists to show how marine ecology can benefit from the adoption of macroecological approaches. Divided into three parts, the book first provides an overview of marine diversity patterns and offers case studies of specific habitats and taxonomic groups. In the second part, chapters focus on process-based explanations for marine ecological patterns. The third part presents new approaches to understanding processes driving the macroecolgical patterns in the sea.

From a small island in the Baltic Sea to the large tropical islands of Borneo and Madagascar, this book is a global tour of these natural, water-bound laboratories. The book draws upon the many islands on which fieldwork was performed to convey key themes in ecology. By exploring the islands' biodiversity as an introduction to general issues, the book helps us to learn how species and communities interact in fragmented landscapes, how evolution generates biodiversity, and how this biodiversity is maintained over time. Beginning each chapter on a particular island, the book reflects on field studies before going on to pursue a variety of ecological questions, including: What is the biodiversity crisis? What are extinction thresholds and extinction debts? What can the biodiversity hypothesis tell us about rapidly increasing allergies, asthma, and other chronic inflammatory disorders? The world's largest island, Greenland, for instance, is the starting point for a journey into the benefits that humankind acquires from biodiversity, including the staggering biodiversity of microbes in the ecosystems that are closest to us—the ecosystems in our guts, in our respiratory tracts, and under our skin. Conceptually oriented but grounded in an adventurous personal narrative, the book lifts the natural mysteries of islands from the sea, bringing to light the thrilling complexities and connections of ecosystems worldwide.

An exploration of the statistical foundations of scientific inference, this book asks what constitutes scientific evidence and whether scientific evidence can be quantified statistically. The chapters explore the relationships among hypotheses, models, data, and inference on which scientific progress rests in an attempt to develop a new quantitative framework for evidence. Informed by interdisciplinary discussions among scientists, philosophers, and statisticians, the chapters propose a new “evidential” approach, which may be more in keeping with the scientific method. The book argues that all scientists should care more about the fine points of statistical philosophy because therein lies the connection between theory and data.

How did rodent outbreaks in Germany help to end World War I? What caused the destructive outbreak of rodents in Oregon and California in the late 1950s, the large population outbreak of lemmings in Scandinavia in 2010, and the great abundance of field mice in Scotland in the spring of 2011? Population fluctuations, or outbreaks, of rodents constitute one of the classic problems of animal ecology, and this book sifts through the last eighty years of research to draw out exactly what we know about rodent outbreaks and what should be the agenda for future research. The author has synthesized the research in this area, focusing mainly on the voles and lemmings of the Northern Hemisphere—his primary area of expertise—but also referring to the literature on rats and mice. He covers the patterns of changes in reproduction and mortality, the mechanisms that cause these changes—including predation, disease, food shortage, and social behavior—and how landscapes can affect population changes, methodically presenting the hypotheses related to each topic before determining whether or not the data supports them. The author ends on an expansive note, by turning his gaze outward and discussing how the research on rodent populations can apply to other terrestrial mammals.

As a village grows into a city, its surfaces increasingly become covered by materials that prevent rain from soaking into the ground. Even small rainfalls on these impervious surfaces produce high stormwater flows of short duration, which pick up sediments, heat, and pollutants, and requires the construction of pipes to carry the flow that further concentrates the stormwater. High volumes of polluted water discharged into streams causes loss and damage to downstream ecosystems and the water resources that people need. This book presents and explains the diverse scientific aspects of urban stormwater by summarizing the primary academic literature with more than 250 plots, figures, and tables, and a bibliography of more than 450 references. Ideally suited for individual study or an advanced undergraduate or graduate seminar, each chapter provides several suggested references for deeper analysis. The 13 chapters are grouped into three parts covering urban conditions, environmental harms, and solutions. Urban conditions covers the water cycle and climate change, pollution emissions and deposition, and the various facets of imperviousness. Individual chapters on environmental harms cover distinct pollutant categories such as nutrients, mercury, and heat, as well as chapters detailing stormwater influences on streams, groundwater, and ecosystem responses. Solutions are grouped into two chapters, one covering the services provided by natural ecosystems and another chapter discussing the benefits of design features ranging from rain barrels to porous pavement to careful construction practices.