Food Webs: From Connectivity to Energetics

The most recent volume of this series, Advances in Ecological Research, demonstrates a captivating knowledge of recent advances in the analysis of food webs. A food web describes the network of predator-prey interactions within a community. The simplest description of a food web specifies only who eats whom (a connectance web), with no indication of how much or how often. Chapters in this book begin with a discussion of the most detailed connectance webs ever compiled, and advance to incorporate information on the body size and numerical abundance of the species. The results yield new ways of describing food webs and powerful new models for estimating patterns of energy flow in ecosystems. - Provides fresh ways of describing food webs and applies previous observations in a new context - Ranked as the #1 publication in the Institute for Scientific Information in the Ecology section of 2000 - Powerful new theory AND application to some of the best food web data in the world - Many mathematical models for food web structure and function - Integrates previously unconnected perspectives on the description of ecological communities