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Evolutionary Strategies That Shape Ecosystems

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ISBN-10: 0470674822

ISBN-13: 9780470674826

Edition: 7th 2012

Authors: J. Philip Grime, Simon Pierce

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In 1837 a young Charles Darwin took his notebook, wrote “I think”, and then sketched a rudimentary, stick–like tree. Each branch of Darwin’s tree of life told a story of survival and adaptation – adaptation of animals and plants not just to the environment but also to life with other living things. However, more than 150 years since Darwin published his singular idea of natural selection, the science of ecology has yet to account for how contrasting evolutionary outcomes affect the ability of organisms to coexist in communities and to regulate ecosystem functioning.In this book Philip Grime and Simon Pierce explain how evidence from across the world is revealing that, beneath the wealth of…    
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Book details

Edition: 7th
Copyright year: 2012
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Limited
Publication date: 4/10/2012
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 264
Size: 6.73" wide x 9.69" long x 0.51" tall
Weight: 1.210

<span style="line–height: 115%; font–family: "Cambria","serif"; font–size: 10pt;" lang="EN–GB">Philip Grime is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Sheffield where he currently maintains long–term experiments at the Buxton Climate Change Impacts Laboratory in North Derbyshire. As a pioneer of experimental approaches to communities and ecosystems Professor Grime is an elected member of the Dutch and British Royal Societies and was the inaugural recipient in 2011 of the Alexander von Humboldt Medal awarded by the International Association for Vegetation Science.</p><span style="line–height: 115%; font–family:…    

Preface
Chapter Summaries
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Evolution and Ecology: a Janus Perspective?
Evolutionary biology
Ecology
The emergence of a science of adaptive strategies
Summary
Primary Strategies: the Ideas
MacArthur's 'blurred vision'
The mechanism of convergence; trade-offs
The theory of r- and K-selection
CSR Theory
Summary
Primary Adaptive Strategies in Plants
The search for adaptive strategies
Theoretical work
Measuring variation in plant traits: screening programmes
Screening of plant growth rates
The Integrated Screening Programme
Further trait screening
The application of CSR theory
Virtual plant strategies
Summary
Primary Adaptive Strategies in Organisms Other Than Plants
The architecture of the tree of life
r, K and beyond K
Empirical evidence for three primary strategies in animals
The universal three-way trade-off
Mammalia (mammals)
Aves (avian therapods)
Squamata (snakes and lizards) (with notes on other extant reptile clades)
Amphibia (amphibians)
Osteichthyes (bony fishes)
Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fishes)
Insecta (insects)
Aracnida (spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks)
Crustacea (crustaceans)
Echinodermata (sea urchins, starfish, crinoids, sea cucumbers)
Mollusca (snails, clams, squids)
Annelida (segmented worms)
Cnidaria (corals, sea anemones, jellyfish, hydras, sea pens)
Eumycota (fungi) (including notes on lichens)
Archaea
Proteobacteria
Firmicutes
Cyanobacteria
Viruses
Extinct groups
Universal adaptive strategy theory - the evolution of CSR and beyond K theories
First steps towards a universal methodology
Summary
From Adaptive Strategies to Communities
Plant communities
Productive disturbed communities
Productive undisturbed communities
Unproductive relatively undisturbed communities
Plant community composition
The humped-back model
Origins
Formulation
Independent confirmation and compatibility with new research
Species-pools, filters and community composition
Evidence for the action of twin filters
Additional mechanisms promoting diversity
Genetic diversity, intraspecific functional diversity and species diversity
Microbial communities
The effects of plant strategies on soil microbial communities
Facilitation in bacterial communities
Coexistence in marine surface waters
Novel techniques for investigating microbial adaptive strategies
Animal communities
Primary producers delimit animal diversity/productivity relationships
Twin filters and animal community assembly
Adaptive radiation and community assembly
Summary
From Strategies to Ecosystems
Back to Bayreuth
The Darwinian basis of ecosystem assembly
How do primary adaptive strategies drive ecosystem functioning?
The plant traits that drive ecosystems
The propagation of trait influences through food chains
Complicating factors
Ecosystem processes
Dominance and mass ratio effects
Fluxes and feedbacks between communities
Top-down control by herbivores
Top-down control by carnivores
The key role of eco-evolutionary dynamics
Summary
The Path from Evolution to Ecology
What has been learned?
What are the implications for conservation and management?
Research priorities for the next decade
References
Organism Index
Subject Index