The Balance of Nature?: Ecological Issues in the Conservation of Species and Communities [Paperback]

Ecologists, although they acknowledge the problems involved, generally conduct their research on too few species, in too small an area, over too short a period of time. InThe Balance of Nature?,a work sure to stir controversy, the distinguished theoretical ecologist Stuart L. Pimm argues that ecology therefore fails in many ways to address the enormous ecological problems now facing our planet.

Ecologists describing phenomena on larger scales often use terms like stability, balance of nature, and fragility, and Pimm begins by considering the various specific meanings of these terms. He addresses five kinds of ecological stability—stability in the strict sense, resilience, variability, persistence, and resistance—and shows how they provide ways of comparing natural populations and communities as well as theories about them. Each type of stability depends on characteristics of the species studied and also on the structure of the food web in which the species is embedded and the physical features of the environment.

The Balance of Nature?provides theoretical ecology with a rich array of questions—questions that also underpin pressing problems in practical conservation biology. Pimm calls for nothing less than new approaches to ecology and a new alliance between theoretical and empirical studies.

Preface
1. Why The Balance of Nature ?
What Ecology Is About and What Ecologists Study
The Problems of Scaling Up
What Is the Balance of Nature ?
Beginnings: Elton and MacArthur
The Last of the Old Meetings
A Theoretical Basis
Heresies
Are Theoretical and Empirical Studies Incompatible?
How This Book Is Organized
2. Resilience
What Is It and How Do We Measure It?
Resilience and the Life-History Characteristics of Individual Species
Food-Web Effects on Resilience
Ecosystem Effects on Resilience
Summary and Conclusions
Appendix
A Note On Temporal Variabill#­