Species Richness

Species Richness PDF Author: Jonathan Adams
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540742786
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a readable, informative and up-to-date account of the patterns and controls on biodiversity. The author describes major trends in species richness, along with uncertainties in current knowledge. The various possible explanations for past and present species patterns are discussed and explained in an even-handed and accessible way. The implications of global climate change and habitat loss are considered, along with current strategies for preserving what we have. This book examines the state of current understanding of species richness patterns and their explanations. As well as the present day world, it deals with diversification and extinction, in the conservation of species richness, and the difficulties of assessing how many species remain to be discovered. The scientifically compelling subject of vegetation-climate interaction is considered in depth. Written in an accessible style, the author offers an up-to-date, rigorous and yet eminently comprehensible overview of the ecology and biogeography of species richness. He departs from the often heavy approach of earlier texts, without sacrificing rigor and depth of information and analysis. Prefacing with the aims of the book, Chapter 1 opens with an explanation of latitudinal gradients, including a description of major features of the striking gradients in species richness, exceptions to the rule, explanations, major theories and field and experimental tests. The following chapter plumbs the depth of time, including the nature of the fossil record, broad timescale diversity patterns, ecosystem changes during mass extinctions and glaciations and their influence on species richness. Chapters 3 and 4 consider hotspots and local scale patterns in species richness while Chapter 5 looks at the limitations and uncertainties on current estimates of richness, the last frontiers of species diversity and the process of identifying new life forms. The last three chapters cover humans and extinctions in history and prehistory, current habitat and global change, including the greenhouse effect, and the race to preserve what we still have, including parks, gene banks and laws.

Species Richness

Species Richness PDF Author: Jonathan Adams
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540742786
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a readable, informative and up-to-date account of the patterns and controls on biodiversity. The author describes major trends in species richness, along with uncertainties in current knowledge. The various possible explanations for past and present species patterns are discussed and explained in an even-handed and accessible way. The implications of global climate change and habitat loss are considered, along with current strategies for preserving what we have. This book examines the state of current understanding of species richness patterns and their explanations. As well as the present day world, it deals with diversification and extinction, in the conservation of species richness, and the difficulties of assessing how many species remain to be discovered. The scientifically compelling subject of vegetation-climate interaction is considered in depth. Written in an accessible style, the author offers an up-to-date, rigorous and yet eminently comprehensible overview of the ecology and biogeography of species richness. He departs from the often heavy approach of earlier texts, without sacrificing rigor and depth of information and analysis. Prefacing with the aims of the book, Chapter 1 opens with an explanation of latitudinal gradients, including a description of major features of the striking gradients in species richness, exceptions to the rule, explanations, major theories and field and experimental tests. The following chapter plumbs the depth of time, including the nature of the fossil record, broad timescale diversity patterns, ecosystem changes during mass extinctions and glaciations and their influence on species richness. Chapters 3 and 4 consider hotspots and local scale patterns in species richness while Chapter 5 looks at the limitations and uncertainties on current estimates of richness, the last frontiers of species diversity and the process of identifying new life forms. The last three chapters cover humans and extinctions in history and prehistory, current habitat and global change, including the greenhouse effect, and the race to preserve what we still have, including parks, gene banks and laws.

Species Abundance Patterns and Community Structure

Species Abundance Patterns and Community Structure PDF Author: M. Tokeshi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biotic communities
Languages : en
Pages : 76

Get Book Here

Book Description


Patterns of Species Abundance and Diversity

Patterns of Species Abundance and Diversity PDF Author: Robert M. May
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Species Diversity in Space and Time

Species Diversity in Space and Time PDF Author: Michael L. Rosenzweig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521496187
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 462

Get Book Here

Book Description
Biodiversity.

Species Abundance Patterns

Species Abundance Patterns PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description


Species Diversity in Ecological Communities

Species Diversity in Ecological Communities PDF Author: Robert E. Ricklefs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biogeography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book Here

Book Description
A pioneering work, Species Diversity in Ecological Communities looks at biodiversity in its broadest geographical and historical contexts. For many decades, ecologists have studied only small areas over short time spans in the belief that diversity is regulated by local ecological interactions. However, to understand fully how communities come to have the diversity they do, and to properly address urgent conservation problems, scientists must consider global patterns of species richness and the historical events that shape both regional and local communities. The authors use new theoretical developments, analyses, and case studies to explore the large-scale mechanisms that generate and maintain diversity. Case studies of various regions and organisms consider how local and regional processes interact to determine patterns of species richness. The contributors emphasize the fact that ecological processes acting quickly on a local scale do not erase the effects of regional and historical events that occur more slowly and less frequently. This book compels scientists to rethink the foundations of community ecology and sets the stage for further research using comparative, experimental, geographical, and historical data.

Measuring Biological Diversity

Measuring Biological Diversity PDF Author: Anne E. Magurran
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118687922
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics. Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimation of species richness and abundance. Explores the concept of ecological diversity, bringing new perspectives to a field beset by contradictory views and advice. Discussion spans issues such as the meaning of community in the context of ecological diversity, scales of diversity and distribution of diversity among taxa Highlights advances in measurement paying particular attention to new techniques such as species richness estimation, application of measures of diversity to conservation and environmental management and addressing sampling issues Includes worked examples of key methods in helping people to understand the techniques and use available computer packages more effectively

From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity

From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity PDF Author: Elena Casetta
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030109917
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Get Book Here

Book Description
This open access book features essays written by philosophers, biologists, ecologists and conservation scientists facing the current biodiversity crisis. Despite increasing communication, accelerating policy and management responses, and notwithstanding improving ecosystem assessment and endangered species knowledge, conserving biodiversity continues to be more a concern than an accomplished task. Why is it so?The overexploitation of natural resources by our species is a frequently recognised factor, while the short-term economic interests of governments and stakeholders typically clash with the burdens that implementing conservation actions imply. But this is not the whole story. This book develops a different perspective on the problem by exploring the conceptual challenges and practical defiance posed by conserving biodiversity, namely: on the one hand, the difficulties in defining what biodiversity is and characterizing that “thing” to which the word ‘biodiversity’ refers to; on the other hand, the reasons why assessing biodiversity and putting in place effective conservation actions is arduous.

Ecoacoustics

Ecoacoustics PDF Author: Almo Farina
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119230691
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Get Book Here

Book Description
The sounds produced by geophonic, biophonic and technophonic sources are relevant to the function of natural and human modified ecosystems. Passive recording is one of the most non-invasive technologies as its use avoids human intrusion during acoustic surveys and facilitates the accumulation of huge amounts of acoustical data. For the first time, this book collates and reviews the science behind ecoaucostics; illustrating the principles, methods and applications of this exciting new field. Topics covered in this comprehensive volume include; the assessment of biodiversity based on sounds emanating from a variety of environments the best technologies and methods necessary to investigate environmental sounds implications for climate change and urban systems the relationship between landscape ecology and ecoacoustics the conservation of soundscapes and the social value of ecoacoustics areas of potential future research. An invaluable resource for scholars, researchers and students, Ecoacoustics: The Ecological Role of Sounds provides an unrivalled set of ideas, tools and references based on the current state of the field.

Speciation and Patterns of Diversity

Speciation and Patterns of Diversity PDF Author: Roger Butlin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521709637
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
The diversity of species of plants and animals is the net result of the origin of new species by the splitting of existing lineages (speciation) and the loss of species through extinction. Why there are more species in some groups of organisms, in some places or at some times depends on the balance of these processes. This book explores the interaction between mechanisms and rates of speciation and these patterns of biological diversity, and is unusual in that it brings together the viewpoints of ecologists interested in the processes that generate patterns of diversity and evolutionary biologists who focus on mechanisms of speciation. It is intended to stimulate dialogue between these groups and so promote a more complete understanding of biological diversity.