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A goal of every science is comprehensive theory that is predictive, realistic, and parsimonious. Is such theory possible in ecology? The sheer complexity, historical contingency, and scale-dependence of organisms and their interactions with their surroundings suggest to many a negative answer. This book answers yes. Rather than building and combining mechanistic models of ecosystems, the approach here is grounded in information theory and the logic of inference. Paralleling the derivation of thermodynamics from the maximum entropy principle, the state variable theory of ecology developed in the book predicts realistic forms for all metrics of ecology that describe patterns in the distribution, abundance, and energetics of species across multiple spatial scales. Part I is foundational, discussing the nature of theory, the relationship of ecology to other sciences, and the concept of the logic of inference. Parts II and III, respectively, present the fundamentals of macroecology and of maximum information entropy from the ground up. Part IV integrates the fundamentals, leading to the derivation and testing of the predictions of the maximum entropy theory of ecology (METE). Part V widens the perspective by showing how METE can help clarify several major issues in conservation biology, placing METE in context with other theories, and pointing readers along avenues for future research.

Essentials of Landscape Ecology is a new, comprehensive text that presents the principles, theory, methods, and applications of landscape ecology in an engaging and accessible format, supplemented by numerous examples and case studies from a variety of systems, including freshwater and marine “scapes.” Human activity has transformed landscapes worldwide on a scale that rivals or exceeds even the largest of natural forces, giving rise to a new geological age, the Anthropocene. As humans alter the structure and function of landscapes, the biological diversity and ecological relationships within those landscapes are also inevitably altered, to the extent that this may interfere with humanity’s efforts to sustain the productivity and multifunctional use of these landscapes. Landscape ecology has thus emerged as a new, multidisciplinary science to investigate the effects of human land use and environmental heterogeneity on ecological processes across a wide range of scales and systems: from the effects of habitat or resource distributions on the individual movements, gene flow, and population dynamics of plants and animals; to the human alteration of landscapes affecting the structure of biological communities and the functioning of entire ecosystems; to the sustainable management of natural resources and the ecosystem goods and services upon which society depends.

This book presents an integrative approach tomathematical and statistical modelling in ecology and evolutionary biology. After an introductory chapter, the book devotes one chapter for movement ecology, one for population ecology, one for community ecology, and one for genetics and evolutionary ecology. Each chapter starts with a conceptual section, which provides the necessary biological background and motivates the modelling approaches. The next three sections present mathematical modelling approaches, followed by one section devoted to statistical approaches. Each chapter ends with a perspectives section, which summarizes the key messages and discusses the limitations of the approaches considered. To illustrate how the very same modelling approaches apply in different fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, the book uses movement models as a building block to construct single-species models of population dynamics, the models of which are further expanded to models of species communities and to models of evolutionary dynamics. In all chapters, the book starts by making assumptions at the level of individuals, leading to individual-based simulationmodels. To derive analytical insights and to compare the behaviours of different types of models, the book shows how the individual-based models can be simplified, e.g. to yield models formulated directly at the population level. The book has a special emphasis on the integration of models with data. To achieve this, it applies statistical methods to data generated by mathematical models, and thus asks to what extent does the data contain signals of the underlying mechanisms.

This book demonstrates how cheetahs are adapted to arid savannahs like the southern Kalahari, and makes comparisons with other areas, especially the Serengeti. Topics dealt with are: demography and genetic status; feeding ecology, i.e. methods used for studying diet, diets of different demographic groups, individual diet specializations of females, prey selection, the impact of cheetah predation on prey populations, activity regimes and distances travelled per day, hunting behaviour, foraging success and energetics; interspecific competition; spatial ecology; reproductive success and the mating system; and conservation. The major findings show that cheetahs are well adapted to arid ecosystems and are water independent. Cheetah density in the study area was stable at 0.9/100 km² and the population was genetically diverse. Important prey were steenbok and springbok for females with cubs, gemsbok, and adult ostrich for coalition males, and steenbok, springhares, and hares for single animals. Cheetahs had a density-dependent regulatory effect on steenbok and springbok populations. Females with large cubs had the highest overall food intake. Cheetahs, especially males, were often active at night, and competition with other large carnivores, both by exploitation and interference, was slight. Although predation on small cubs was severe, cub survival to adolescence was six times higher than in the Serengeti. There was no difference in reproductive success between single and coalition males. The conservation priority for cheetahs should be to maintain protected areas over a spectrum of landscapes to allow ecological processes, of which the cheetah is an integral part, to proceed unhindered.