Ecosystems ultimately our sole life support, are complex and enigmatic entities. Researchers use a number of strategies that vary in both approach and scale in order to understand these systems well enough to predict their behaviour in the face of perturbations. This book, in a sense, is representative of some of the developments that unfold when math and physics meet ecology. Here, some of the world's leading ecologists examine ecosystems from theoretical, experimental, and empirical viewpoints. The book begins by simplifying and synthesizing nature's complex relationships. It then moves on to explore the mapping between food web structure and function and ends with the role of theory in integrating different research areas. From the breadth of systems analyzed to the rigor of approaches taken, this book is a useful resource for students and researchers in ecology that also serves as a fitting tribute to the life and work of Peter Yodzis.

Contains a much needed review of the multi-species functional response as it is used in food web ecology Outlines the utility of experimental studies in examining complex dynamics in food webs Provides many examples of combining theory and real food web data Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
SECTION I.- A Process-Oriented Approach to the Multispecies Functional Response.- Homage to Yodzis and Innes 1992: Scaling up Feeding-Based Population Dynamics to Complex Ecological Networks.- Food Webs, Body Size and the Curse of the Latin Binomial.- An Energetic Framework for Trophic Control.- SECTION II.- Experimental Studies of Food Webs: Causes and Consequences of Trophic Interactions.- Interplay Between Scale, Resolution, Life History and Food Web Properties.- Heteroclinic Cycles in the Rain Forest: Insights from Complex Dynamics.- Emergence in Ecological Systems.- Dynamic Signatures of Real and Model Ecosystems.- SECTION III.- Evolutionary Branching of Single Traits.- Feedback Effects Between the Food Chain and Induced Defense Strategies.- Evolutionary Demography: The Invasion Exponent and the Effective Population Density in Nonlinear Matrix Models.- Of Experimentalists, Empiricists, and Theoreticians.