Ecological Communities

by Donald R. Strong Jr. (editor), Daniel Simberloff (Editor), Lawrence G. Abele (Editor)

This work is the first to focus systematically on a much-debated the conceptual issues of community ecology, including the nature of evidence in ecology, the role of experiments, attempts to disprove hypotheses, and the value of negative evidence in the discipline.

Originally published in 1984.

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632 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1984

Reviews

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good set of chapters introducing the variety of mechanisms explaining the structures of ecological communities as they were formulated ~1981, and a response to the Cody and Diamond book memorialising MacArthur. Its tone is largely skeptical of interspecific competition as the primary mechanism structuring communities, and as some of the chapters lay out, often the only one attempted. I've been mostly ignorant about trends in community ecology, and feel this has brought me up to date as of its publication. Cody and Diamond still needs a read, as does MacArthur 1972.

I appreciated Price's chapter, the last in the book, regarding specialists (parasitoids specifically, but the points apply to all) as being overlooked in all of this, and that they are least likely to have communities structured by competition. So much diversity found in specialists. His 1980 Princeton MPB#15 is now on the read-soon list too.