Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological Patterns

Description

In Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological Patterns, Peter Price establishes a completely new vision of the central themes in ecology. For the first time in book form, the study of distribution, abundance, and population size variation in animals is cast in an evolutionary framework. The book argues that evolved characters of organisms such as morphology, behavior, and life history influence strongly their ecological relationships, including the way that populations fluctuate through time and space. The central ideas in the book are supported by data gathered from over 20 years of research, primarily into plant and herbivore interactions, concentrating on insects. The huge diversity of insect herbivores provides the immense comparative power necessary for a strong evolutionary study of ecological principles. The book is intended as essential reading for all researchers and students of ecology, evolutionary biology, and behavior, and for entomologists working in agriculture, horticulture, and forestry.

Peter W. Price is Regents' Professor Emeritus at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, USA. Over the past 40 years Professor Price has contributed over 200 research articles and book chapters to the scientific literature and has been sole author or an editor of 11 books. He has received the Founder's Memorial Award from the Entomological Society of America and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London.

"This book is clearly written, well illustrated, and logically organized...[it] is very readable and presents an excellent and well-supported argument for the inclusion of macroevolutionary data within macroecological analyses. The ideas put forth are certainly worthy of consideration by all researchers and students in evolutionary and ecological biology." Ecoscience "The book is satisfyingly rich in detail, from descriptions of Price's focal system ... and the history of the study of insect population dynamics, to his breadth of coverage within insects." The Quarterly Review of Biology