This book is a short and simple introduction to biodiversity-- how it arose, where it occurs, why it is important and what should be done to maintain it. Although it will be of interest to conservation and environment professionals, the text is written primarily with undergraduate students in mind. 
As a result, it provides a timely overview of serious attempts made to quantify and describe biodiversity in a scientific manner, and also acts as a point of entry into the primary literature. I ncorporated into the text are a number of exercises designed to encourage active learning and promote debate of some of the more controversial issues. <ul> <li>Provides an affordable overview of biodiversity in under 150 pages. 
</li> <li>Learning exercises encourage consideration and debate of some of the more controversial issues. 
</li> <li>Annotated suggestions for further reading. 
</li> <li>Based on a proven and successful course structure. 
</li> <li>Emphasis on clarity and accessibility.</li> </ul>

Biodiversity: An Introduction

Business & Money

Gaston, Kevin

Spicer, John

Economics

Wiley/Blackwell

Ecologists have always believed, at least to a certain extent, that physiological mechanisms serve to underpin ecological patterns. However, their importance has traditionally been at best underestimated and at worst ignored, with physiological variation being dismissed as either an irrelevance or as random noise/error. Spicer and Gaston make a convincing argument that the precise physiology does matter! 
In contrast to previous works which have attempted to integrate ecology and physiology, Physiological Diversity adopts a completely different and more controversial approach in tackling the physiology first before moving on to consider the implications for ecology. This is timely given the recent and considerable interest in the mechanisms underlying ecological patterns. Indeed, many of these mechanisms are physiological. This textbook provides a contemporary summary of physiological diversity as it occurs at different hierarchical levels (individual, population, species etc.), and the implications of such diversity for ecology and, by implication, evolution. It reviews what is known of physiological diversity and in doing so exposes the reader to all the key works in the field. It also portrays many of these studies in a completely new light, thereby serving as an agenda for, and impetus to, the future study of physiological variation. Physiological Diversity will be of relevance to senior undergraduates, postgraduates and professional researchers in the fields of ecology, ecological physiology, ecotoxicology, environmental biology and conservation. The book spans both terrestrial and marine systems.

Physiological Diversity: Ecological Implications

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Since biodiversity began to be used in the late 1980s as a call-to-arms by conservation biologists, it has emerged as a topic of scientific investigation in its own right. By the 1990s, biodiversity has become a key concept in the biological and environmental sciences. Biodiversity: A Biology of Numbers and Difference explores the underlying principles of this new research subject: the measurement of biodiversity, its spatial and temporal patterns, and the ways in which its study can and should inform conservation biology. No one doubts the central importance of biodiversity in ecology, but its scientific basis has required appraisal and clarification. With this book, the study of biodiversity takes an important step forward. 
<ul> <li>A landmark text, defining the status of a new and developing science. 
</li> <li>An authoritative series of reviews from the leading scientists in the field. 
</li> <li>Ideal as a textbook for the many new courses in biodiversity and for courses in ecology and biogeography.</li> </ul>

Biodiversity

wiley

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