Bøger i Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution serien

In this book, Eric Charnov uses ideas about symmetry, invariance, and scaling laws to explore aspects of population dynamics and the evolution of male and female life histories. Charnov's work is internationally known and will attract great interest among postgraduate students and researchers in ecology, evolution, behaviour, and many other fields within organismal biology.

What role has natural selection played in shaping the structure and function of the vertebrate brain? This accessible book unravels the myriad adaptive explanations that have built up over decades, providing both a review and a critique of the work that has sought to explain which natural selection pressures have led to changes in brain size.

This work provides a unified theory that addresses the important problem of the origin and maintenance of genetic variation in natural populations. The author uses his background in biomathematics, genetics and evolutionary research to present an overview of the causes of molecular evolution.

The formation of new species ('speciation') creates new biological diversity. This book addresses the role of ecological differences between populations in driving speciation. It reviews this process of 'ecological speciation' from ecological, geographic, and genetic perspectives.

Investigates and sets out the common principles of social evolution operating across all taxa and levels of biological organisation.

This is an integration of empirical data and theory in quantitative ecology and evolution through the use of mathematical models and statistical methods.

Provides readers with the concepts and practical tools required to understand the maximum entropy principle, and apply it to an understanding of ecological patterns. The theory developed predicts realistic forms for all metrics of ecology that describe patterns in the distribution, abundance, and energetics of species.

Part of the "Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution", this book explains how and when to use the comparative method and shows how this approach complements other approaches to problem-solving in evolution such as optimality theory, population genetic models, and experimentation. It provides a discussion of techniques and also worked examples.

Presents an account of the evolutionary ecology of the guppy. This book shows how guppies provided some of the first evidence of sperm competition and sexual selection, and how they inform scientific thought on mating systems and cryptic choice. It is useful to students and researchers in the fields of behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology.

An analysis of the evolutionary implication of symmetry which puts forward the theory that asymmetry is related to genetic stability and fitness, so that symmetric individuals have quantifiable advantages over asymmetric individuals. The book is primarily aimed at students and researchers and is part of the OXFORD SERIES IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION.

Birds show bewildering diversity in their life histories, mating systems and risk of extinction. Why, for example, are fairy-wrens so sexually promiscuous while swans show life long monogamy? This fascinating book is a comprehensive re-appraisal of avian diversity, and is the most extensive application of modern comparative methods yet undertaken.

This study outlines four different categories of co-operation among animals - reciprocal altruism, kinship, group-selected co-operation, and by-product mutualism - and ties them together in a single framework. Studies on co-operation in insects, fish, birds and mammals are then reviewed.

Gives an account of the mating systems of the dunnock or hedge sparrow, Prunella modularis, which include pairs, a male with two females, two males with one female, and several males with several females. This work provides a visual summary of the birds' behaviour, and is useful for students of ecology, evolution, and animal behaviour.

Group living is a widespread phenomenon amongst animals. This book focuses on the unifying concepts regarding group behaviour. It discusses the mechanisms that govern the evolution and maintenance of grouping behaviour throughout the animal kingdom, and the factors that control observed group size and group composition in particular situations.

Examining the mechanism and action of natural selection in evolution, the author offers his own synthesis of modern evolutionary theory, including discussions of the gene as the unit of selection, clade selection and macroevolution, diversity within and among populations, and other central issues.

Population dynamics and animal behaviour are two subjects which have developed almost independently. This book provides a framework for combining these two subjects and shows how to consider a range of conservation issues. It is aimed at students and researchers in animal behaviour, population ecology, and conservation biology.

Presents data on tropical wasps which suggests that kin-selection has been over-emphasized as an evolutionary explanation of sociality. This book discusses the significance of multi-queen colonies and the evolutionary pathways that may have led to observed social patterns.

This study constitutes an empirical text of the theoretical predictions, and should be of special interest to students on behavioural and evolutionary ecology. The main theme is that sexual selection is important, and affects many aspects of animal life such as mating behaviour and parental care.

This is an introduction to a set of powerful and extremely flexible modelling techniques, starting at "square one" and continuing with chosen applications. The text also explains how to construct, test, and use dynamic state variable models in a wide range of contexts in evolutionary ecology.

Why are most animal signals reliable? This is the central problem for evolutionary biologists interested in signals. This work entangles the complex and often confusing terminology that characterises the subject, and then challenges the widely held assumption that there is only one correct explanation for signal reliability.

Provides a synthesis of quantitative information on the ecology of the brown trout, including sea-trout, and comparisons with closely related species. Much of this work is relevant to general problems in quantitative animal ecology as well as to fisheries management.

Synthesises and evaluates recent advances concerning how species and their interactions influence terrestrial ecosystem processes, such as productivity, decomposition, nutrient cycling, and fluxes.

While the study of viral evolution has developed rapidly in the last 30 years, little attention has been directed toward linking the mechanisms of viral evolution to the epidemiological outcomes of these processes. This book intends to fill this gap by considering the patterns and processes of viral evolution at all its spatial and temporal scales.

This novel reassessment of the field presents the central concepts in evolutionary game theory and provides an authoritative and up-to-date account. The focus is on concepts that are important for biologists in their attempts to explain observations. This strong connection between concepts and applications is a recurrent theme throughout the book.

Food webs describe biological communities in terms of feeding interactions. This book integrates the latest work on community dynamics, ecosystems energetics, and stability to dispel categorisation of the field into separate subdiciplines of population, community, and ecosystem ecology.

Highlights the importance of mitonuclear coadaptation to the evolution of complex life and in so doing will help to establish mitonuclear ecology as an important subdiscipline in ecology and evolution.

Presents a synthetic overview of the evolutionary biology of species, incorporating their nature, origins, proliferation, and consequences.

Recent research in biomechanics is increasingly revealing a set of special cases where universal physical laws constrain the trajectories and, more controversially, even the endpoints of the evolutionary process. For the first time this book brings together a broad range of examples from the latest research in evolutionary biomechanics to examine this phenomenon.

Discusses the structure of the geographic ranges of species. This book is concerned with the factors that determine the limits to a species' geographic range, how the sizes of those ranges vary, and patterns in that variation. It also considers the distribution of individuals amongst those sites where a species does occur.