Species Invasions ─ Insights into Ecology, Evolution, And Biogeography

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 c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Dov F. Sax is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University.

John J. Stachowicz is Professor of Evolution and Ecology and Director of the Center for Population Biology at the University of California, Davis.

Steven D. Gaines is Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology and Director of the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara.