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"This book is unique in focusing on nonequilibrium aspects of ecology, providing evidence for nonequilibrium and equilibrium in populations (and metapopulations), in extant communities and in ecological systems over evolutionary time, including nonequilibrium due to recent and present mass extinctions. The assumption that competition is of overriding importance is central to equilibrium ecology, and much space is devoted to its discussion. As communities of some taxa appear to be shaped more by competition than others, an attempt is made to find an explanation for these differences."--Jacket

"This sixth edition of Ecology, written for undergraduate students taking their first course in ecology, provides comprehensive yet concise coverage of fundamental ecological principles, with attention to relevant issues including climate change, spread of invasive species, and pollution. The text utilizes a variety of learning tools-such as Case Studies, Connections in Nature, Climate Change Connection vignettes, Ecological Toolkit boxes, and Learning Objectives-to engage students, highlight critical information, and make real-world connections to the source material. The text is complemented by an enhanced ebook and an updated, user-friendly digital suite full of interactive activities, quizzes, videos, and layered figures to reinforce key concepts"

The further scholarship investigates life forms (ecology, evolutionary biology and microbiology) the less those forms can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. The further scholarship delves into texts (deconstruction) the less they too can be said to have a single, independent and lasting identity. This similarity is not simply an analogy. Life forms cannot be said to differ in a rigorous way from texts. On many levels and for many reasons, deconstruction and ecology should talk to one another. It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 395–396)

"Despite their often dangerous and unpredictable nature, landslides provide fascinating templates for studying how soil organisms, plants, and animals respond to such destruction. The emerging field of landslide ecology helps us to understand these responses, aiding slope stabilization and restoration and contributing to progress made in geological approaches to landslide prediction and mitigation. Summarizing the growing body of literature on the ecological consequences of landslides, this book provides a framework for the promotion of ecological tools in predicting, stabilizing, and restoring biodiversity to landslide scars at both local and landscape scales. It explores nutrient cycling; soil development; and how soil organisms disperse, colonize, and interact in what is often an inhospitable environment. Recognizing the role that these processes play in providing solutions to the problem of unstable slopes, the authors present ecological approaches as useful, economical, and resilient supplements to landslide management"--