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Understanding and predicting species diversity in ecological communities is one of the great challenges in community ecology. Popular recent theory contends that the traits of species are "neutral" or unimportant to coexistence, yet abundant experimental evidence suggests that multiple species are able to coexist on the same limiting resource precisely because they differ in key traits, such as body size, diet, and resource demand. This book presents a new theory of coexistence that incorporates two important aspects of biodiversity in nature--scale and spatial variation in the supply of limiting resources. Introducing an innovative model that uses fractal geometry to describe the complex physical structure of nature, Mark Ritchie shows how species traits, particularly body size, lead to spatial patterns of resource use that allow species to coexist. He explains how this criterion for coexistence can be converted into a "rule" for how many species can be "packed" into an environment given the supply of resources and their spatial variability. He then demonstrates how this rule can be used to predict a range of patterns in ecological communities, such as body-size distributions, species-abundance distributions, and species-area relations. Ritchie illustrates how the predictions closely match data from many real communities, including those of mammalian herbivores, grasshoppers, dung beetles, and birds. This book offers a compelling alternative to "neutral" theory in community ecology, one that helps us better understand patterns of biodiversity across the Earth.

Animal population density. --- Biotic communities. --- Biodiversity. --- Ecological heterogeneity. --- Animal populations --- Density, Animal population --- Population density, Animal --- Population biology --- Zoogeography --- Allee effect --- Biocenoses --- Biocoenoses --- Biogeoecology --- Biological communities --- Biomes --- Biotic community ecology --- Communities, Biotic --- Community ecology, Biotic --- Ecological communities --- Ecosystems --- Natural communities --- Ecology --- Biological diversification --- Biological diversity --- Biotic diversity --- Diversification, Biological --- Diversity, Biological --- Biology --- Biocomplexity --- Ecological heterogeneity --- Numbers of species --- Heterogeneity, Ecological --- Biodiversity --- Fragmented landscapes --- Density

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Most organisms show substantial changes in size or morphology after they become independent of their parents and have to find their own food. Furthermore, the rate at which these changes occur generally depends on the amount of food they ingest. In this book, André de Roos and Lennart Persson advance a synthetic and individual-based theory of the effects of this plastic ontogenetic development on the dynamics of populations and communities. De Roos and Persson show how the effects of ontogenetic development on ecological dynamics critically depend on the efficiency with which differently sized individuals convert food into new biomass. Differences in this efficiency--or ontogenetic asymmetry--lead to bottlenecks in and thus population regulation by either maturation or reproduction. De Roos and Persson investigate the community consequences of these bottlenecks for trophic configurations that vary in the number and type of interacting species and in the degree of ontogenetic niche shifts exhibited by their individuals. They also demonstrate how insights into the effects of maturation and reproduction limitation on community equilibrium carry over to the dynamics of size-structured populations and give rise to different types of cohort-driven cycles. Featuring numerous examples and tests of modeling predictions, this book provides a pioneering and extensive theoretical and empirical treatment of the ecology of ontogenetic growth and development in organisms, emphasizing the importance of an individual-based perspective for understanding population and community dynamics.

Ontogeny. --- Niche (Ecology) --- Animal populations. --- Ontogenesis --- Biology --- Embryology --- Developmental biology --- Microhabitat --- Biotic communities --- Competition (Biology) --- Ecology --- Habitat (Ecology) --- Demography, Wildlife --- Populations, Animal --- Wildlife demography --- Wildlife populations --- Animal ecology --- Population biology --- Niche (Ecology). --- Allee effect. --- Daphnia. --- Escalator Boxcar Train. --- bioenergentics. --- biomass overcompensation. --- cannibalism. --- cladoceran zooplankton. --- coexistence. --- cohort cycles. --- community structure. --- competition. --- consumer life history. --- consumer population. --- consumer-resource dynamics. --- consumer-resource systems. --- demand-driven systems. --- development. --- discrete reproduction. --- ecological dynamics. --- ecology. --- energetics. --- energy gain. --- foraging. --- interspecific competition. --- maturation. --- metabolic rates. --- metabolism. --- morphology. --- mortality. --- niche overlaps. --- ontogenetic asymmetry. --- ontogenetic development. --- ontogenetic diet shifts. --- ontogenetic niche shifts. --- ontogenetic symmetry. --- overcompensation. --- population dynamics. --- population models. --- population regulation. --- predation. --- predator life history. --- predators. --- prey availability. --- prey life history. --- prey. --- reproduction control. --- reproduction. --- resource competition. --- size dependence. --- size-structured prey ecology. --- stage-structured prey. --- supply-driven systems.