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This book provides a first synthetic view of an emerging area of ecology and biogeography, linking individual- and population-level processes to geographic distributions and biodiversity patterns. Problems in evolutionary ecology, macroecology, and biogeography are illuminated by this integrative view. The book focuses on correlative approaches known as ecological niche modeling, species distribution modeling, or habitat suitability modeling, which use associations between known occurrences of species and environmental variables to identify environmental conditions under which populations can be maintained. The spatial distribution of environments suitable for the species can then be estimated: a potential distribution for the species. This approach has broad applicability to ecology, evolution, biogeography, and conservation biology, as well as to understanding the geographic potential of invasive species and infectious diseases, and the biological implications of climate change. The book lays out conceptual foundations and general principles for understanding and interpreting species distributions with respect to geography and environment. Focus is on development of niche models. While serving as a guide for students and researchers, the book also provides a theoretical framework to support future progress in the field.

The broad arc of islands north of Australia, extending from Indonesia east towards the central Pacific, is home to a set of human populations whose diversity is unsurpassed elsewhere. Approximately 20% of the world's languages are spoken here, and the biological and genetic heterogeneity among the groups is also extraordinary. This book describes the origins of the genetic and linguistic variation there. It lays out the very complex structure of the variation within and among the islands in this relatively small but important region. This book applies genetic analyses to an intensively sampled set of populations, and subjects these and complementary linguistic data to a variety of phylogenetic analyses. This reveals a number of heretofore unknown ancient Pleistocene genetic variants that are only found in these island populations, and identifies the genetic footprints of more recent migrants from Southeast Asia who were the ancestors of the Polynesians. Finally, a number of explanatory models are tested to see which best account for the observed pattern of genetic variation. The results indicate that a number of commonly used models of evolutionary divergence and biogeography are overly simple in their assumptions, and that human diversity often has accumulated in very complex ways.

This book offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to desert ecology, and adopts a strong evolutionary focus. As with other titles in the Biology of Habitats Series, the emphasis in the book is on the organisms that dominate this harsh environment, although conservation and experimental aspects are also considered. Deserts are defined by their arid conditions; a consequence of this aridity is that most of the area occupied by desert is barren and monotonous, leading many people to regard it as wasteland. However, deserts are widespread and represent surprisingly biodiverse environments, although it is the relative simplicity of these ecosystems that makes them more tractable for study than more complex environments. In these resource-poor locations, natural selection is working at its greatest extreme, and provides some of the best-known examples of Darwinian selection. The Biology of Deserts includes a wide range of ecological and evolutionary issues, including morphological and physiological adaptations of desert plants and animals, species interactions, the importance of predation and parasitism, food webs, biodiversity, and conservation. It features a balance of plant and animal (both invertebrate and vertebrate) examples, and also emphasizes topical applied issues such as desertification and invasive species. The book concludes by considering the positive aspects of desert conservation.

The largest seaweed, giant kelp (Macrocystis) is the fastest growing and most prolific of all plants found on earth. Growing from the seafloor and extending along the ocean surface in lush canopies, giant kelp provides an extensive vertical habitat in a largely two-dimensional seascape. It is the foundation for one of the most species-rich, productive, and widely distributed ecological communities in the world. This review takes the reader from Darwin's early observations to contemporary research, providing a historical perspective for the modern understanding of giant kelp evolution, biogeography, biology, and physiology. The chapters furnish a discussion of kelp species and forest ecology worldwide, with considerations of human uses and abuses, management and conservation, and the current and likely future impacts of global change.

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.

Tropical East Asia is home to over 1 billion people and faces massive human impacts from its rising population and rapid economic growth. It has already lost more than half of its forest cover and has the highest rates of deforestation and logging in the tropics. Hunting and the trade in wildlife products threaten all its large and many smaller vertebrates. Despite these problems, the region still supports an estimated 15–25 per cent of global terrestrial biodiversity and is thus a key focus for global conservation. This book therefore deals with plants, animals, and the ecosystems they inhabit, as well as the diverse threats to their survival and the options for their conservation. It provides the background knowledge of the region’s ecology needed by both specialists and non-specialists to put their own work into a broader context. The first edition was the first book to describe the terrestrial ecology of the entire East Asian tropics and subtropics, from southern China to western Indonesia, and the second edition extended the coverage to include the very similar ecosystems of Northeast India, Bangladesh, and Bhutan. The third edition updates the contents and gives more prominence to Anthropocene impacts and possible conservation responses. The accessible style, comprehensive coverage, and engaging illustrations make this advanced textbook an essential read for senior undergraduate and graduate-level students studying the terrestrial ecology of the East Asian tropics, as well as an authoritative reference for professional ecologists, conservationists, and interested amateurs worldwide.

This book offers a concise but comprehensive introduction to desert ecology and adopts a strong evolutionary and applied focus. Deserts are defined by their arid conditions. Deserts are widespread and represent surprisingly diverse environments, although it is their relative simplicity that makes them more tractable for study than more mesic environments. In these resource-poor environments, natural selection is working at its most extreme and provides some of the best-known examples of natural selection. This book covers a wide range of ecological and evolutionary issues including morphological and physiological adaptations of desert plants and animals, species interactions, the importance of competition, facilitation, predation and parasitism, food webs, biodiversity, and conservation. This book features a balance of plant and animal examples, and also addresses topical applied issues such as desertification and invasive species. In this edition, considerable attention is also focused on the effects of climate change and some of its likely effects on deserts. Too much emphasis has been placed on global warming and not global changes per se. While ultimately the world will continue to heat up as fossil fuels are burned, many people struggle to understand that it is human-induced changes in the world rather than a simple case of warming that is likely to occur. Thus, greater variations in temperature and rainfall are also consequences of the ways that we are altering our world. Among these varied effects, desertification is often among the most egregious, leading ultimately to the increasing size of arid and semi-arid regions.

Molecular studies have revealed highly ordered geographic patterns in plant and animal groups, and this book discusses examples from the tropics. During evolution, phases of community immobilism that lead to allopatric differentiation alternate with phases of mobilism that lead to range expansion and overlap of taxa. Both phases are caused by geological and climatic factors rather than group-specific factors such as ecology or means of dispersal. In primates, the endemism of high-level taxa in tropical America (New World monkeys) and Madagascar (lemurs) is attributed to Gondwana breakup, while the extensive overlap of clades in South America, Africa, and Asia may have been caused by range expansion during Cretaceous marine transgressions. In the central Pacific, former high islands of the Cretaceous (now seamounts and atolls) may have been important source areas for the biotas of the current islands. The integration of earth history, biogeography, and ecology proposed here leads to an alternative view of evolution, in which groups are much older than suggested by the fossil record and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. The book concludes with a critique of adaptation by selection, based on biogeography and recent work in genetics.