Plants in Changing Environments: Linking Physiological, Population, and Community Ecology

by F. A. Bazzaz

• ISBN13: 9780521391900
• ISBN10: 0521391903
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-10-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Forces of nature and human intervention lead to innumerable local, regional and sometimes global changes in plant community patterns. Regardless of the causes and the intensity of change, ecosystems are often naturally able to recover most of their attributes through natural succession. In this thoughtful and provocative new book, Fakhri Bazzaz integrates and synthesizes information on how disturbance changes the environment, how species function, coexist, and share or compete for resources in populations and communities, and how species replace each other over successional time. It illustrates how a diverse array of plant species have been used to examine fundamental questions in plant ecology by integrating physiological, population and community ecology. Graduate students and research workers in plant ecology, global change, conservation and restoration will find the perspective and analysis offered by this book an exciting contribution to the development of our understanding of plant successional change.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction and background	1	(13)
Plant strategies, models, and successional change: a resource-response perspective	14	(24)
Community composition and trends of dominance and diversity in successional ecosystems	38	(23)
The environment of successional plants: disentangling causes and consequences	61	(21)
Recruitment in successional habitats: general trends and specific differences	82	(26)
How do plants interact with each other?	108	(20)
Plant-plant interactions and successional change	128	(19)
Interaction and the evolution of response breadths and niches	147	(26)
Ecological and genetic variation in early-successional plants	173	(18)
Coping with a variable environment: habitat selection and response flexibility	191	(15)
Physiological trends of successional plants	206	(17)
Crossing the scales: can we predict community composition from individual species response?	223	(16)
From fields to forests: forest dynamics and regeneration in a changing environment	239	(25)
Succession and global change: will there be a shift towards more early-successional systems?	264	(16)
References	280	(33)
Index	313