{"product_id":"food-webs-9780691134185","title":"Food Webs","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArguing that various classical food web theories can be looked at collectively and in a consistent and testable way, this book synthesizes modern and classical perspectives into a general unified theory. It brings together outcomes from population, community, and ecosystem-level approaches under the common currency of energy or material fluxes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a must-read for ecologists interested in ecosystem dynamics.\"--Choice \"This is potentially an indispensable book for ecologists and paleoecologists alike, synthesizing food-web theory and outcomes from population-level up to whole-ecosystem-level approaches. McCann offers clear explanations of the dynamics of food webs using a mathematical approach, and while the book will be of particular use to graduate students, it may also be of substantial use to undergraduate students as an advanced but very thorough introduction to the subject.\"--Jo Hellawell, Priscum \"Food Webs is an imaginative but very concise book in terms of methodology and selection of concepts. It is extremely coherent, though some may think extremely selective in the models and concepts used. But to build a food web theory across different scales of organization, from single populations to real multispecies interaction networks, this selectivity is needed, and the unifying concept of stability makes it fascinating.\"--Jose M. Montoya, Ecology \"[T]his is a very exciting book that communicates theoretical concepts to a broad ecological audience. In addition, the overview over the countless seminal studies by McCann and co-workers make this book unique and a highly recommended read for all ecologists.\"--Ulrich Brose, Basic \u0026amp; Applied Ecology\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreface xi  Part 1: THE PROBLEM AND THE APPROACH      Chapter 1. The Balance of Nature: What Is It and Why Care? 3  1.1 Balancing a Noisy System 3  1.2 Ecosystem Stability and Sustainability 6  1.3 Of Food Webs, Stability, and Function 9  1.4 Ecological Instability and Collapse 10  1.5 A Theory for Food Webs 17      Chapter 2. A Primer for Dynamical Systems 20  2.1 Qualitative Approaches to Complex Problems 20  2.2 Dynamical Systems 22  2.3 Case Study: Hopf Bifurcation in an Aquatic Microcosm 42  2.4 Summary of Key Points 45      Chapter 3. Of Modules, Motifs, and Whole Webs 47  Part 2: FOOD WEB MODULES: FROM POPULATIONS TO SMALL FOOD WEBS      Chapter 4. Excitable and Nonexcitable Population Dynamics 53  4.1 Continuous Resource Dynamics 53  4.2 From Nonexcitable to Excitable Population Dynamics 56  4.3 Stage-Structured Resource Dynamics 61  4.4 Empirical Evidence for Excitable Dynamics 63  4.5 Summary: The Dual Nature of Population Growth Rates 65      Chapter 5. Consumer-Resource Dynamics: Building Consumptive Food Webs 67  5.1 Interaction Strength 67  5.2 Consumer-Resource Interactions: Two Qualitative Responses to Changes in a Parameter 71  5.3 Summary 79  5.4 Further Assumptions about the C-R Model 80  5.5 Some Nonequilibrium Thoughts 83  5.6 C-R Dynamics in Nature 84  5.7 Summary 88      Chapter 6. Lagged Consumer-Resource Dynamics 89  6.1 Discrete Consumer-Resource Interactions 90  6.2 Stage-Structured Consumer-Resource Dynamics 94  6.3 Stage-Structured Interactions and Alternative States 97  6.4 Empirical Results 100  6.5 Summary 101      Chapter 7. Food Chains and Omnivory 103  7.1 A Familiar Modular Example: Food Chains 105  7.2 Omnivory 110  7.3 Stage Structure and Food Chain Stability 116  7.4 Empirical Results 118  7.5 Summary 121      Chapter 8. More Modules 123  8.1 Generalists and Food Web Dynamics 123  8.2 The Diamond and the Intraguild Predator 132  8.3 Empirical Results 137  8.4 Summary 140  Part 3: TOWARD WHOLE SYSTEMS      Chapter 9. Coupling Modules in Space: A Landscape Theory 145  9.1 Variability, Space, and Food Webs 145  9.2 Individual Traits and a Landscape-Scale Module 147  9.3 Mobile Adaptive Consumers 151  9.4 Food Webs in Space 155  9.5 Asymmetric Flux Rates through Food Webs 160  9.6 Dynamical Implications on the Landscape 162  9.7 Empirical Evidence 164  9.8 Summary 169      Chapter 10. Classic Food Web Theory 170  10.1 The Classic Approach 170  10.2 Matrices and Local Stability 172  10.3 Gershgorin Discs for Community Matrices: An Intuitive Approach to Eigenvalues 172  10.4 A Controlled Approach to Food Web Matrices 175  10.5 Some Classic Whole-Matrix Results 178  10.6 Recent Whole Community Approaches 184  10.7 Summary 188      Chapter 11. Adding the Ecosystem 189  11.1 Grazing Food Webs and Whole Ecosystems 189  11.2 The N-R-D Module 192  11.3 Detritus and C-R Interactions 194  11.4 Nonequilibrium Dynamics and Detritus as a Distributor 197  11.5 Discussion 199  11.6 Summary 199      Chapter 12. Food Webs as Complex Adaptive Systems 201  12.1 Searching for Empirical Signatures 201  12.2 Adaptive Behavior, Changing Food Web Topology, and Ecosystem Size 202  12.3 Empirical Results for Canadian Shield Lake Ecosystems 206  12.4 Subsidies, Opportunists, and Homogenization 213  12.5 Humans in the Food Web 215  Bibliography 219  Index 235","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403753988439,"sku":"9780691134185","price":49.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691134185.jpg?v=1730484447","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/food-webs-9780691134185","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}