Ecology is capturing the popular imagination like never before, with issues such as climate change, species extinctions, and habitat destruction becoming ever more prominent. At the same time, the science of ecology has advanced dramatically, growing in mathematical and theoretical sophistication. Here, two leading experts present the fundamental quantitative principles of ecology in an accessible yet rigorous way, introducing students to the most basic of all ecological subjects, the structure and dynamics of populations.

John Vandermeer and Deborah Goldberg show that populations are more than simply collections of individuals. Complex variables such as distribution and territory for expanding groups come into play when mathematical models are applied. Vandermeer and Goldberg build these models from the ground up, from first principles, using a broad range of empirical examples, from animals and viruses to plants and humans. They address a host of exciting topics along the way, including age-structured populations, spatially distributed populations, and metapopulations.

This second edition of Population Ecology is fully updated and expanded, with additional exercises in virtually every chapter, making it the most up-to-date and comprehensive textbook of its kind.

• Provides an accessible mathematical foundation for the latest advances in ecology
• Features numerous exercises and examples throughout
• Introduces students to the key literature in the field
• The essential textbook for advanced undergraduates and graduate students
• An online illustration package is available to professors

Vandermeer (U. of Michigan-Ann Arbor) sets out the fundamental natural laws of ecosystems come into play and must be taken into account in the design and operation of an agroecosystem. For some decades, industrial agriculture shills have insisted they could supplant such laws with powerful chemicals, but farmers and gardeners are relearning and integrating them again under such banners as organic, agro-ecology, and sustainable. The difference between an agroecological system and other ecological systems, he says, is the presence of Homo sapiens as the keystone species. Among his topics are constructivism and the evolution of agriculture, the biology of the soil and the emergence of an ecological vision, the problem of pests, biodiversity and imperialism, and toward a sustainable future. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)