Community Ecology, 1

The goal of the workshop on Community Ecology at Davis was specifically to explore the role of scale in developing a theoretical approach to understanding communities. A number of aspects of scale enter into attempts to understand ecological communities. One is organizational scale. Should community ecology proceed by building up from population biology? This question and its ramifications are stressed throughout the book and explored in Ch.1 by S.A. Levin. Notions of scale have long been important in understanding physical systems. In interactions of organisms with their physical environment, questions of scale become paramount, as illustrated in Ch.2 by A. Okubo. Other questions are, for example, how many details, such as genetics or age structure, need to be included in the models of population biology? Moreover, determination of the right scale to use in a given situation is not always easy, yet it is always a first step both in practical and in theoretical work. These questions are considered by A. Hastings and P. Kareiva/M. Anderson. These chapters set the stage for the next four, dealing explicitly with basic questions of why communities have the numbers, densities and species observed. These are explored by P. Chesson, J. Cohen, S. Pimm and P. Yodzis. This book, without providing final answers to questions about scale, provides an up-to-date demonstration of some aspects and consequences of the subject.