About this book
Assembles perspectives from ecologists using a wide range of experimental approaches, ranging from laboratory microcosms to manipulations of entire ecosystems, to assess the strengths, and the limitations of experimentation in answering fundamental ecological questions.
'This book will convince any ecologist that there is much to be gained by adding a mechanistic perspective to the arsenal of tools used to understand nature.' Ecology
Contents
Earl E. Werner, ecological experiments and a research programme in community ecology; Arthur E. Dunham and Steven J. Beaupre, ecological experiments - scale, phonomenology, mechanism, and the illusion of generality; Peter K. Morin, realism, precision, and generality in experimental ecology; James H. Brown, the desert granivory experiments at Portal; Mathew A. Liebold and Alan J. Tessier, experimental compromise and mechanistic approaches to the evolutionary ecology of interacting daphnia species; Mary W. Power, William E. Dietrich and Kathleen O. Sullivan, experimentation, observation, and inference in river and watershed investigations; William J. Resetarits Jr. and John E. Fauth, from cattle tanks to Carolina Bays - the utility of model systems for understanding natural communities; Sally Holbrook and Russell J. Schmitt, have field experiments aided in the understanding of abundance and dynamics of temperature reef fishes?; John H. Lawton, ecological experiments with model systems, the ecotron facility in context; Peter S. Petraitis, how can we compare the importance of ecological processes if we never ask, "compared to what?"; David M. Lodge, Steven C. Blumenshine, and Yvonne Vadeboncoeur, insights and application of large-scale, long-term ecological observations and experiments; Sharon P. Lawler, ecology in a bottle - using microcosms to test theory; Gary A. Polis, David H. Wise, Stephen D. Hurd, Francisco Sanchez-Pi #nero, James D. Wagner, Christopher Todd Jackson, and Joseph D. Barnes, the interplay between natural history and field experimentation; Elizabeth A. Marschall and Bernadette M. Roche, using models to enhance the value of information from observations and experiments; Judith A. Mongold, experimental approaches to studying the population dynamics and evolution of micro-organisms; Barbara L. Peckarsky, the dual role of experiments in complex and dynamic natural systems; Anthony J. Underwood, design, implementation and analysis of ecological and environment experiments - pitfalls in the maintenance of logical structures; J. Timothy Wootton and Catherine A. Pfister, the motivation and context for experiments in ecology; Joseph Bernardo, the logic, value and necessity of grounding experiments in reality - an essential link in the inferential chain block to nature; John E. Fauth, investigating geographic variation in interspecific interactions using common garden experiments; Robert J. Marquis and Christopher J. Whelan, experimental ecology of plant-animal interactions - revelations and limitations; David N. Reznick and Joseph Travis, experimental approaches to the study of evolution.
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