This book is aimed at advanced level undergraduates and offers them an overview of the major issues and developments in community ecology over the past few years. The text assumes throughout some familiarity with general concepts in ecology as might be provided by the majority of first and second year undergraduate courses or more general textbooks. Each section in the book is self-contained and where prior knowledge is assumed, a brief recapitulation is offered of necessary background.

Rory Putman addresses the question of how, in many temporate ecosystems, diverse and species-rich assemblies of ungulates manage to co-exist despite often quite extensive overlap in ecological requirements. Putman explores the potential for competition, competition tolerance and even positive facilitation amongst the members of such guilds of ungulates. As a central worked example, the author employs data resulting from over 20 years of personal research into the ecology and population dynamics of various large herbivores of the New Forest in Southern England. With these, he applies formal...

The New Forest in southern England is an area of mixed vegetation set aside as a Royal Hunting Forest in the eleventh century and since that time subjected to heavy grazing pressure from large herbivores. The entire structure of the Forest and its various communities has been developed under this continued history ofheavy grazing, with the estab- lishment of a series of vegetational systems unique within the whole of Europe. The effects of large herbivores in the structuring of this eco- system in the past, and the pressure of grazing continuing to this day, have in turn a profound influence,...