Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological Patterns by Peter... - 9780521817127

Macroevolutionary Theory on Macroecological PatternsAuthor(s): Peter W. Price\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521817127, 978-0521817127\nSynopsis\nIn 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 twenty years of research, primarily into plant and herbivore interactions, concentrating on insects. The huge diversity of insect herbivores provides the immense comparative power.