Menno Schilthuizen

The Loom of Life (eBook, PDF)

Unravelling Ecosystems

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

How can thousands of tree species coexist in a patch of tropical rainforest where there seem to be just a handful of niches? Why does biodiversity boom at the equator and plummet at the poles? Questions like these are central to modern ecology, where the gap between the familiar "niche" and the staggering (but sharply decreasing) global biodiversity seems to become ever wider. This book helps students and the general reader to bridge that gap, by tip-toeing from the smallest to the largest ecosystems.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Seitenzahl: 168
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. August 2008
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9783540680581
• Artikelnr.: 37371175

Autorenporträt

The author (born in 1965) is a Dutch biologist and science writer with a doctorate from Leiden University. In 2001, he published Frogs, Flies and Dandelions, an Oxford University Press trade book on speciation, which was favourably reviewed in Nature and in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and translated into French, Dutch and Greek. The author writes news stories and feature articles on ecology and evolution for New Scientist, Natural History, Science, and various national newspapers in Belgium, the Netherlands and Malaysia. From 2000 to 2006, he was an associate professor in the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation in Malaysian Borneo. Since 2007, he has been director of research at the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, the Netherlands. He has published about 55 scientific papers on tropical ecology, systematics and evolutionary biology, mostly involving land snails and insects.

Inhaltsangabe

Life in Little Worlds.- Leaky Buckets.- Hidden Riches.- No Niche Like Home.- Neutral by Nature.- In Splendid Isolation.- Ecology of Wildcards.- The Loom Of Life.- The Age of Atropos.

Rezensionen

From the reviews:

"Evolutionary biologist and science writer Menno Schilthuizen retells the story of the Wilson-Simberloff experiment at some length in The Loom of Life. His book is a readable, anecdotal introduction to the ecology of diversity, addressing basic questions about why there are so many different species and why some species are rare and others common. ... The Loom of Life is useful. ... might read this slender book for a bearing on how to tackle environmental problems." (Emma Marris, Nature, Vol. 455 (30), 2008)

"In this enjoyable book, evolutionary biologist Schilthuizen ... conveys his love of natural ecosystems and species diversity. Schilthuizen covers great spans of time and geography in an effort to explain some epic questions including how ecosystems function, what factors contribute to determining biodiversity, and how theories develop and change over time. ... for those interested in learning about the intricacies of ecosystem ecology, The Loom of Life is well worth reading. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic, professional, and general collections." (D. Goldblum, Choice, Vol. 46 (8), April, 2009)