Species Invasions - 9780878938117

In contrast to the wealth of literature dealing with practical questions of mitigating the perceived problems of species invasion, this work is concerned with what the study of species invasions may reveal about fundamental issues in ecology, evolution, and biogeography. Seventeen papers presented by Sax (ecology, evolution, and marine biology; U. of California at Santa Barbara), Stachowicz (evolution and ecology, U. of California at Davis), and Gaines (ecology, evolution, and marine biology; U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) explore what species invasions reveal about biotic interaction, relationships between species diversity and community saturation, plant species effects on ecosystem processes, invasions and loss of island birds and the role of infectious diseases in natural communities in the context of ecology; taxon cycles, genetic bottlenecks in alien plant species, evolutionary mechanisms, and theories of niche conservatism as concerns evolution; and evolutionary trajectories in plant and soil microbial communities, community composition and homogenization, rates of population spread and geographic range expansion, and distribution and abundance of species in the field of biogeography. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)