The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions (Interspecific Interactions) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)More than twenty years after Beattie's masterpiece (1985) (The Evolutionary Ecology of Ant-Plant Mutualisms (Cambridge Studies in Ecology)), a considerable amount of data has been accumulated on this topic. A new review was then necessary, and this book fill perfectly this gap. Moreover authors developped an original perspective by placing ant-plant interactions in Thompson's conceptual framework, i.e. in a continuum between antagonism and mutualism, opening exciting perspectives Interaction and Coevolution,The Coevolutionary Process, The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution (Interspecific Interactions). As a researcher working on this topic, I found this book very useful.

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Product Description:

Ants are probably the most dominant insect group on Earth, representing ten to fifteen percent of animal biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. Flowering plants, meanwhile, owe their evolutionary success to an array of interspecific interactions-such as pollination, seed dispersal, and herbivory-that have helped to shape their great diversity. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions brings together findings from the scientific literature on the coevolution of ants and plants to provide a better understanding of the unparalleled success of these two remarkable groups, of interspecific interactions in general, and ultimately of terrestrial biological communities.

The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions synthesizes the dynamics of ant-plant interactions, including the sources of variation in their outcomes. Victor Rico-Gray and Paulo S. Oliveira capture both the emerging appreciation of the importance of these interactions within ecosystems and the developing approaches that place studies of these interactions into a broader ecological and evolutionary context. The collaboration of two internationally renowned scientists, The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions will become a standard reference for understanding the complex interactions between these two taxa.