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Insect Ecology: An Ecosystem Approach, Fifth Edition provides the most updated and comprehensive knowledge of the diversity of insect responses to environmental changes and their effects on ecosystem properties and services.
Written by an expert in the field, this book addresses ways in which insect morphology, physiology and behavior tailor their adaptation to particular environmental conditions, how those adaptations affect their responses to environmental changes, and how their responses affect ecosystem properties and the ecosystem services on which humans depend for survival. This edition also addresses recent reports of global declines in insect abundance and how these declines could affect human interests.
Insect Ecology: An Ecosystem Approach, Fifth Edition is an important resource for researchers, entomologists, ecologists, pest managers and conservationists who want to understand insect ecology and to manage insects in ways that sustain the delivery of ecosystem services. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students may also find this as a useful resource for entomology and specifically insect ecology courses.
List of contents
1. Overview
SECTION I: Ecology of Individual Insects
2. Responses to Abiotic Conditions
3. Resource Acquisition
4. Resource Allocation
SECTION II: Population Ecology
5. Population Systems
6. Population Dynamics
7. Biogeography
SECTION III: Community Ecology
8. Species Interactions
9. Community Structure
10. Community Dynamics
SECTION IV: Ecosystem Level
11. Ecosystem Structure and Function
12. Herbivory
13. Pollination, Seed Predation and Seed Dispersal
14. Decomposition and Pedogenesis
15. Insects as Regulators of Ecosystem Processes
Section V. Applications and Synthesis
16. Insects and Ecosystem Services
17. Applications to Pest Management and Conservation
18. Synthesis
About the author
Timothy D. Schowalter received his Ph.D. degree in Entomology from the University of Georgia in 1979. He is currently a Professor of Entomology at Louisiana State University, where he also served as the department head until 2015. Previously, he was a professor of entomology at Oregon State University, Corvallis. Dr. Schowalter served as Program Director for Integrative and Theoretical Ecology at the National Science Foundation, where he was involved in developing global change and terrestrial ecosystem research initiatives at the federal level. He also served as a U.S. delegate to international conventions to develop collaboration between U.S. Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites and long-term sites in Hungary and East Asia and the Pacific.
