Adaptive Herbivore Ecology: From Resources to Populations in Variable Environments

by R. Norman Owen-Smith

• ISBN13: 9780521148368
• ISBN10: 0521148367
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-03
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The adaptation of herbivore behaviour to seasonal and locational variations in vegetation quantity and quality is inadequately modelled by conventional methods. Norman Owen-Smith innovatively links the principles of adaptive behaviour to their consequences for population dynamics and community ecology, through the application of a metaphysiological modelling approach. The main focus is on large mammalian herbivores occupying seasonally variable environments such as those characterised by African savannahs, but applications to temperate zone ungulates are also included. Issues of habitat suitability, species coexistence, and population stability or instability are similarly investigated. The modelling approach accommodates various sources of environmental variability, in space and time, in a simple conceptual way and has the potential to be applied to other consumer-resource systems. This text highlights the crucial importance of adaptive consumer responses to environmental variability and is aimed particularly at academic researchers and graduate students in the field of ecology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Acronym and symbol conventions

Conceptual origins: variability in time and space

Consumer-resource models: theory and formulation

Resource abundance: intake response and time frames

Resource distribution: patch scales and depletion

Resource quality: nutritional gain and diet choice

Resource constraints: physiological capacities and costs

Resource allocation: growth, storage and reproduction

Resource production: regeneration and attrition

Resource competition: exploitation and density dependence

Resource-dependent mortality: nutrition, predation and demography

Habitat suitability: resource components and stocking densities

Resource partitioning: competition and coexistence

Population dynamics: resource basis for instability

An adaptive resource ecology: foundation and prospects

References

Index

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