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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $219.00

Format:
Paperback
272 pp.
8 pp colour plates and numerous line figures, 189 mm x 246 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198564836

Publication date:
April 2005

Imprint: OUP UK


Aquatic Food Webs

An ecosystem approach

Andrea Belgrano, Ursula M. Scharler, Jennifer Dunne and Robert E. Ulanowicz

This volume provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. Whether they are binary systems or weighted networks, food webs are of particular interest to ecologists in providing a macroscopic view of ecosystems. They describe interactions between species and their environment, and subsequent advances in the understanding of their structure, function, and dynamics are of vital importance to ecosystem management and conservation. Aquatic Food Webs provides a synthesis of the current issues in food web theory and its applications, covering issues of structure, function, scaling, complexity, and stability in the contexts of conservation, fisheries, and climate. Although the focus of this volume is upon aquatic food webs (where many of the recent advances have been made), any ecologist with an interest in food web theory and its applications will find the issues addressed in this book of value and use. This advanced textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.

Readership : An advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community/ecosystem/theoretical ecology, aquatic biology and conservation biology.

Michel Loreau: Foreword
Introduction
1. Structure and Function
1. James J. Elser and Dag O. Hessen: Biosimplicity via stoichiometry: the evolution of food-web structure and processes
2. Carlos J. Melián, Jordi Bascompte, and Pedro Jordano: Spatial structure and dynamics in a marine food web
3. Robert R. Christian, Daniel Baird, Joseph Luczkovich, Jeffrey C. Johnson, Ursula Scharler, and Robert E. Ulanowicz: Role of network analysis in comparative ecosystem ecology of estuaries
4. Dietmar Straile: Food webs in lakes - seasonal dynamics and impact of climate variability
5. Guy Woodward, Ross Thompson, Colin R Townsend, and Alan G Hildrew: Pattern and process in food webs: evidence from running waters
2. Examining food web theories
6. Andrew R. Solow: Some random thoughts on the statistical analysis of food web data
7. James T. Morris, Robert R. Christian, and Robert E. Ulanowicz: Analysis of size and complexity of randomly constructed food webs by information theoretic metrics
8. Simon Jennings: Size-based analyses of aquatic food webs
9. Jason S. Link, William T. Stockhausen, and Elizabeth T. Methratta: Complexity in aquatic food webs: an ecosystem approach
3. Stability and diversity in food webs
10. Jennifer A. Dunne, Ulrich Brose, Richard J. Williams and Neo D. Martinez: Modelling food-web dynamics: complexity-stability implications
11. Michio Kondoh: Is biodiversity maintained by food-web complexity? - The adaptive food-web hypothesis
12. L. Ciannelli, D.Ø. Hjermann, P. Lehodey, G. Ottersen, J.T. Duffy-Anderson, N.C. Stenseth: Climate forcing, food web structure, and community dynamics in pelagic marine ecosystems
13. Enric Sala and George Sugihara: Food web theory provides guidelines for marine conservation
14. Helmut Hillebrand and Jonathan B. Shurin: Biodiversity and aquatic food webs
4. Concluding remarks
15. Robert E. Ulanowicz: Ecological network analysis: an escape from the machine
Mathew Leibold: Afterword
References
Index

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Andrea Belgrano is a Researcher at the National Center for Genome Resources, University of New Mexico. Ursula Scharler is a Fellow of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at the University of Maryland. Jennifer Dunne is an ecologist with interests in computational ecology and ecoinformatics. She is a co-founder and the assistant director of the Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab, a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, and a principal investigator at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.
Robert E. Ulanowicz is Professor of Theoretical Ecology with the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. His current interests include network analysis of trophic exchanges in ecosystems, information theory as applied to ecological systems, the thermodynamics of living systems, causality in living systems, and modelling subtropical wetland ecosystems in Florida and Belize .

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Special Features

  • Synthesizes recent theoretical and empirical advances in food web theory
  • Organized around three major research agendas: ecosystem structure and function, food web theories, and ecosystem diversity and stability
  • Brings together two previously separate schools of food web research - classical food web theory and network analysis - to provide an overview of both qualitative and quantitative food web analyses
  • Food webs are currently a key topic in ecology, and are likely to remain so
  • Contains contributions from some of the leading names in the field