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The Sixth International Conference on Mediterranean Climate ecosystems was held at Maleme (Crete), Greece, from September 23 to September 27, 1991. This conference had as its theme 'Plant-Animal Interactions in Mediterranean-type Ecosystems'. Most of the papers presented to that meeting have already been published (see Thanos, C.A. ed., 1992, Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Mediterranean Climate Ecosystems, Athens, 389 pp.). These 57 papers were all necessarily short. But the theme of plant-animal interactions was considered by the Organizing Committee to be so important to a fundamental understanding of the ecology of Mediterranean-climate ecosystems and to an enhanced management ·of those systems that various international research scientists were invited to prepare longer contributions on major aspects of the overall theme. The Book that follows represents the result of those invitations. All five regions of Mediterranean climate are represented - Chile, California, southern Australia and the Cape Province of South Africa, as well as the Mediterranean Basin itself.
List of contents
Historical introduction.- 1. Aristotle and Theophrastus on plant-animal interactions.- Community structure.- 2. Species richness of vascular plants and vertebrates in relation to canopy productivity.- 3. Summergreenness, evergreenness and life history variation in Mediterranean Blue Tits.- 4. Community structure and species richness in the Mediterranean-type soil fauna.- 5. Bird diversity within and among Australian heathlands.- 6. Plant community structure in southwestern Australia and aspects of herbivory, seed dispersal and pollination.- Triangular relationships.- 7. Resource webs in Mediterranean-type climates.- 8. Triangular trophic relationships in Mediterranean-climate Western Australia.- Herbivory.- 9. Has intensive grazing by domestic livestock degraded Mediterranean Basin rangelands?.- 10. Resource availability and herbivory in Larrea tridentata.- 11. Effects of insect herbivory on plant architecture.- Pollination.- 12. Pollination syndromes in the Mediterranean: generalizations and peculiarities.- 13. Red flowers and butterfly pollination in the fynbos of South Africa.- Seed dispersal.- 14. Modes of dispersal of seeds in the Cape fynbos.- 15. Why are there so many myrmecochorous species in the Cape fynbos?.- Index of key words.- Author index.- Systematic index.
