Plants in Changing Environments: Linking Physiological, Population, and Community Ecology

ISBN-13: 9780521391900 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 332 str.

Fakhri A. Bazzaz

Opis

Forces of nature and human intervention lead to innumerable local, regional and sometimes global changes in plant community patterns. Regardless of the causes and the intensity of change, ecosystems are often naturally able to recover most of their attributes through natural succession. In this thoughtful and provocative new book, Fakhri Bazzaz integrates and synthesizes information on how disturbance changes the environment, how species function, coexist, and share or compete for resources in populations and communities, and how species replace each other over successional time. It illustrates how a diverse array of plant species have been used to examine fundamental questions in plant ecology by integrating physiological, population and community ecology. Graduate students and research workers in plant ecology, global change, conservation and restoration will find the perspective and analysis offered by this book an exciting contribution to the development of our understanding of plant successional change.

Recenzje

' … a gem: self-contained in style, reference and content, a first calling point for all my future enquiries about successional processes.' Annals of Botany Company

Spis treści

1. Introduction and background; 2. Plant strategies and successional change: a resource-response perspective; 3. Community composition and trends of dominance and diversity in recovering ecosystems; 4. The environment of successional plants: disentangling causes and consequences; 5. Recruitment in successional habitats: general trends and specific differences; 6. How do plants interact with each other?; 7. Plant/plant interactions and ecosystem recovery; 8. Competition and the evolution of response breadths and niches; 9. Ecological and genetic variation in early successional plants; 10. Coping with a variable environment: habitat selection, response flexibility: tracking, acclimation, and plasticity; 11. Physiological trends of plant in recovering ecosystems; 12. Crossing the scales: can we predict community composition from individual species response?; 13. From fields to forests: forest dynamics and regeneration in a changing environment; 14. Succession and global change: the implications of migration, extinction, and adaptation; References; Index.