Mammal Community Dynamics

Table of contents

In 1984, a conference called Wildlife 2000: Modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates, was held at Stanford Sierra Camp at Fallen Leaf Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The conference was well-received, and the published volume (Verner, J. , M. L. Morrison, and C. J. Ralph, editors. 1986. Wildlife 2000: modeling habitat relationships of terrestrial vertebrates, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, USA) proved to be a landmark publication that received a book award by The Wildlife Society. Wildlife 2001: populations was a followup conference with emphasis on the other major biological field of wildlife conservation and management, populations. It was held on July 29-31, 1991, at the Oakland Airport Hilton Hotel in Oakland, California, in accordance with our intent that this conference have a much stronger international representation than did Wildlife 2000. The goal of the conference was to bring together an international group of specialists to address the state of the art in wildlife population dynamics, and set the agenda for future research and management on the threshold of the 21st century. The mix of specialists included workers in theoretical, as well as practical, aspects of wildlife conservation and management. Three general sessions covered methods, modelling, and conservation of threatened species.

This volume, first published in 1975, looks at small mammal populations with emphasis being placed on their ecology and energy dynamics. It discusses the most productive research techniques and research objectives. The second part of the book deals with the roles of small mammals in ecosystems.

A summary of much of the experimental work on the spatial ecology of small mammals. This field has entered an exciting stage with such new techniques as GIS and systems modeling becoming available. Leading contributors describe and analyze the most well-known case studies and provide new insights into how landscape patterns and processes have had an impact on small mammals and how small mammals have, in turn, affected landscape structure and composition.

The most comprehensive synthesis of stream fish community research ever produced. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL Ecologists have long struggled to understand community dynamics. In this groundbreaking book, leading fish ecologists William Matthews and Edie Marsh-Matthews apply long-term studies of stream fish communities to several enduring questions. This critical synthesis reaches to the heart of ecological theory, testing concepts against the four decades of data the authors have collected from numerous warm-water stream fish communities in the central and eastern United States. Stream Fish Community Dynamics draws together the work of a single research team to provide fresh analyses of the short- and long-term dynamics of numerous streams, each with multiple sampling sites. Conducting repeated surveys of fish communities at temporal scales from months to decades, the authors' research findings will fascinate anyone searching for a deeper understanding of community ecology. The study sites covered by this book range from small headwater creeks to large prairie rivers in Oklahoma and from Ozark and Ouachita mountain streams in Arkansas to the upland Roanoke River in Virginia. The book includes • A comparison of all global and local communities with respect to community composition at the species and family level, emergent community properties, and the relationship between those emergent properties and the environments of the study sites • Analyses of traits of individual species that are important to their distribution or success in harsh environments • A review of evidence for the importance of interactions—including competition and predation—in community dynamics of stream fishes • An assessment of disturbance effects in fish community dynamics • New analysis of the short- and long-term dynamics of variation in stream fish communities, illustrating the applicability and importance of the "loose equilibrium concept" • New analyses and comparisons of spatiotemporal variation in community dynamics and beta diversity partitioning • An overview of the effects of fish in ecosystems in the central and eastern United States The book ends with a summary chapter that places the authors' findings in broader contexts and describes how the "loose equilibrium concept"—which may be the most appropriate default assumption for dynamics of stream fishes in the changing climate of the future—applies to many kinds of stream fish communities.