Evolutionary Ecology simultaneously unifies conceptual and empirical advances in evolutionary ecology and provides a volume that can be used as either a primary textbook or a supplemental reading in an advanced undergraduate or graduate course. The focus of the book is on current concepts in evolutionary ecology, and the empirical study of these concepts. The editors have assembled a group of prominent biologists who have made significant contributions to this field. They both synthesize the current state of knowledge and identity areas for future investigation. Evolutionary...

There are many different types of organisms in the world: they differ in size, physiology, appearance, and life history. The challenge for evolutionary biology is to explain how such diversity arises. The Evolution of Life Histories does this by showing that natural selection is the principal underlying force molding life history variation. The book describes in particular the ways in which variation can be analyzed and predicted. It covers both the genetic and optimization approaches to life history analysis and gives an overview of the general framework of life history theory and the...

The impetus for this book arose out of my previous book, The Evolution of Life Histories (Roff, 1992). In that book I presented a single chapter on quanti tative genetic theory. However, as the book was concerned with the evolution of life histories and traits connected to this, the presence of quantitative genetic variation was an underlying theme throughout. Much of the focus was placed on optimality theory, for it is this approach that has proven to be extremely successful in the analysis of life history variation. But quantitative genetics cannot be ig nored, because there are some...

Life History Evolution represents a synthetic approach to the understanding of the evolution of life history variation using the three types of environment (constant, stochastic, predictable) as the focus under which the theory is developed and tested. First, the author outlines a general framework for the study and analysis of life history variation, bringing together the approaches of quantitative genetic modeling and optimality analysis. Using this framework, he then discusses how life histories evolve in the three different types of environments, each of which presents unique...