Body Size: The Structure and Function of Aquatic Ecosystems

by Edited by Alan G. Hildrew , David G. Raffaelli , Ronni Edmonds-Brown

• ISBN13: 9780521679671
• ISBN10: 0521679672
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-08-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Ecologists have long struggled to predict features of ecological systems, such as the numbers and diversity of organisms. The wide range of body sizes in ecological communities, from tiny microbes to large animals and plants, is emerging as the key to prediction. Based on the relationship between body size and features such as biological rates, the physics of water and the amount of habitat available, we may be able to understand patterns of abundance and diversity, biogeography, interactions in food webs and the impact of fishing, adding up to a potential 'periodic table' for ecology. Remarkable progress on the unravelling, describing and modelling of aquatic food webs, revealing the fundamental role of body size, makes a book emphasising marine and freshwater ecosystems particularly apt. Here, the importance of body size is examined at a range of scales that will be of interest to professional ecologists, from students to senior researchers.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
The metabolic theory of ecology and the role of body size in marine and freshwater ecosystems	p. 1
Body size and suspension feeding	p. 16
Life histories and body size	p. 33
Relationship between biomass turnover and body size for stream communities	p. 55
Body size in streams: macroinvertebrate community size composition along natural and human-induced environmental gradients	p. 77
Body size and predatory interactions in freshwaters: scaling from individuals to communities	p. 98
Body size and trophic cascades in lakes	p. 118
Body size and scale invariance: multifractals in invertebrate communities	p. 140
Body size and biogeography	p. 167
By wind, wings or water: body size, dispersal and range size in aquatic invertebrates	p. 186
Body size and diversity in marine systems	p. 210
Interplay between individual growth and population feedbacks shapes body-size distributions	p. 225
The consequences of body size in model microbial ecosystems	p. 245
Body size, exploitation and conservation of marine organisms	p. 266
How body size mediates the role of animals in nutrient cycling in aquatic ecosystems	p. 286
Body sizes in food chains of animal predators and parasites	p. 306
Body size in aquatic ecology: important, but not the whole story	p. 326
Index	p. 335
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