Food Webs and Biodiversity: Foundations, Models, Data

Food webs have now been addressed in empirical and theoretical research for more than 50 years. Yet, even elementary foundational issues are still hotly debated. One difficulty is that a multitude of processes need to be taken into account to understand the patterns found empirically in the structure of food webs and communities.

Food Webs and Biodiversity develops a fresh, comprehensive perspective on food webs. Mechanistic explanations for several known macroecological patterns are derived from a few fundamental concepts, which are quantitatively linked to field-observables. An argument is developed that food webs will often be the key to understanding patterns of biodiversity at community level.

Key Features:
• Predicts generic characteristics of ecological communities in invasion-extirpation equilibrium.
• Generalizes the theory of competition to food webs with arbitrary topologies.
• Presents a new, testable quantitative theory for the mechanisms determining species richness in food webs, and other new results.
• Written by an internationally respected expert in the field.

With global warming and other pressures on ecosystems rising, understanding and protecting biodiversity is a cause of international concern. This highly topical book will be of interest to a wide ranging audience, including not only graduate students and practitioners in community and conservation ecology but also the complex-systems research community as well as mathematicians and physicists interested in the theory of networks.