Ecological Assembly Rules: Perspectives, Advances, Retreats

Front Cover
Evan Weiher, Paul Keddy
Cambridge University Press, Aug 16, 2001 - Nature - 418 pages
It is over twenty years since Jared Diamond focused attention on the possible existence of assembly rules for communities. Since then there has been a proliferation of studies trying to promote, refute, or test the idea that there are sets of constraints (rules) on community formation and maintenance (assembly). This timely volume brings together carefully selected contributions which examine the question of the existence and nature of assembly rules with some rigor and in some detail, using both theoretical and empirical approaches in a variety of systems. The result is a balanced treatment which encompasses a wide range of topics within ecology including competition and coexistence, conservation and biodiversity, niche theory, and biogeography. As such it provides much to interest a broad audience of ecologists, while also making an important contribution to the study of community ecology in particular.
 

Contents

List of contributors
1
Foin
18
The genesis and development of guild assembly rules
23
PO Box 450 Stn
38
Lewi Stone
45
the method
58
confronting
75
Department of Wildlife Fish Conservation Biology
96
Department of Botany
227
Department of Botany
228
On the nature of the assembly trajectory James A Drake
233
Department of Biology
248
Assembly rules as general constraints on community
251
A speciesbased hierarchical model of island biogeography
272
James H Brown
307
TN 37996
308

Department of Zoology
103
Introduced avifaunas as natural experiments in community
108
CA 95616
123
Department of Biological Sciences
124
Assembly rules in plant communities J Bastow Wilson
130
Fernando Casanoves
148
Tel Aviv University
160
Assembly rules at different scales in plant and bird
165
Impact of language history and choice of system on the study
206
Interaction of physical and biological processes in the assembly
311
University of California
334
Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology
336
Functional implications of traitenvironment linkages
338
Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal
357
When does restoration succeed? Julie L Lockwood
363
From global exploration to community assembly
393
Index
403
Copyright

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About the author (2001)

Evan Weiher is an Assistant Professor in the Biological Sciences Department, University of Winsconsin, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA. Paul Keddy holds the Edward G. Schlieder Endowed Chair for Environmental Studies at Southeastern Louisiana University, Louisiana, USA.

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