Community Ecology

Community Ecology provides a broad, up-to-date coverage of ecological concepts at the community level and is suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and ecological researchers. The field of community ecology has undergone a transformation in recent years, from a discipline largely focused on processes occurring within a local area to a discipline encompassing a much richer domain of study, including the linkages between communities separated in space (metacommunity dynamics), niche and neutral theory, the interplay between ecology and evolution (eco-evolutionary dynamics), and the influence of historical and regional processes in shaping patterns of biodiversity. To fully understand these new developments, however, students continue to need a strong foundation in the study of species interactions, and how these interactions are assembled into community modules and ecological networks. Trait-based assembly rules are presented as another approach to understanding community assembly, especially for real-world communities that may contain hundreds of species. This new edition fulfils the book’s original aims, both as a much-needed up-to-date and accessible introduction to modern community ecology, and in identifying the important questions that are yet to be answered. This research-driven textbook introduces state-of-the-art community ecology to a new generation of students, adopting reasoned and balanced perspectives on as-yet-unresolved issues. Pictures and graphics throughout the text allow students to visualize advanced concepts.