This is the first re-appraisal in 50 years of concepts of development made in birds. This book is a case study in evolutionary diversification of life histories. Although birds have a rather uniform body plan and physiology, they exhibit marked variation in development type, parental care, and rate of growth. Altricial birds are fully dependent on their parents for warmth and nutrition and begin posthatching life in a more or less embryonic condition. At the other extreme, such superprecocial species as the megapodes are independent of all parental care from hatching, and the neonate, able to...

A pioneering work, "Species Diversity in Ecological Communities" looks at biodiversity in its broadest geographical and historical contexts. For many decades, ecologists have studied only small areas over short time spans in the belief that diversity is regulated by local ecological interactions. However, to understand fully how communities come to have the diversity they do, and to properly address urgent conservation problems, scientists must consider global patterns of species richness and the historical events that shape both regional and local communities.
The authors use new...