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Preface.. Chapter Summaries.. Acknowledgements.. Introduction.. 1 Evolution and Ecology: a Janus Perspective?.. Evolutionary biology.. Ecology.. The emergence of a science of adaptive strategies.. Summary.. 2 Primary Strategies: the Ideas.. MacArthur's 'blurred vision'.. The mechanism of convergence; trade-offs.. The theory of r- and K-selection.. CSR Theory.. Summary.. 3 Primary Adaptive Strategies in Plants.. The search for adaptive strategies.. Theoretical work.. Measuring variation in plant traits: screening programmes.. Screening of plant growth rates.. The Integrated Screening Programme.. Further trait screening.. The application of CSR theory.. Virtual plant strategies.. Summary.. 4 Primary Adaptive Strategies in Organisms Other Than Plants.. The architecture of the tree of life.. r, K and beyond K.. Empirical evidence for three primary strategies in animals.. The universal three-way trade-off.. Mammalia (mammals.. Aves (avian therapods.. Squamata (snakes and lizards (with notes on other extant reptile clades.. Amphibia (amphibians.. Osteichthyes (bony fishes.. Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fishes.. Insecta (insects.. Aracnida (spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.. Crustacea (crustaceans.. Echinodermata (sea urchins, starfish, crinoids, sea cucumbers.. Mollusca (snails, clams, squids.. Annelida (segmented worms.. Cnidaria (corals, sea anemones, jellyfi sh, hydras, sea pens.. Eumycota (fungi (including notes on lichens.. Archaea.. Proteobacteria.. Firmicutes.. Cyanobacteria.. Viruses.. Extinct groups.. Universal adaptive strategy theory - the evolution of CSR and beyond K theories.. First steps towards a universal methodology.. Summary

5 From Adaptive Strategies to Communities.. Plant communities.. Productive disturbed communities.. Productive undisturbed communities.. Unproductive relatively undisturbed communities.. Plant community composition.. The humped-back model.. Origins.. Formulation.. Independent confirmation and compatibility with new research.. Species-pools, filters and community composition.. Evidence for the action of twin filters.. Additional mechanisms promoting diversity.. Genetic diversity, intraspecific functional diversity and species diversity.. Microbial communities.. The effects of plant strategies on soil microbial communities.. Facilitation in bacterial communities.. Coexistence in marine surface waters.. Novel techniques for investigating microbial adaptive strategies.. Animal communities.. Primary producers delimit animal diversity/productivity relationships.. Twin filters and animal community assembly.. Adaptive radiation and community assembly.. Summary.. 6 From Strategies to Ecosystems.. Back to Bayreuth.. The Darwinian basis of ecosystem assembly.. How do primary adaptive strategies drive ecosystem functioning?.. The plant traits that drive ecosystems.. The propagation of trait influences through food chains.. Complicating factors.. Ecosystem processes.. Dominance and mass ratio effects.. Fluxes and feedbacks between communities.. Top-down control by herbivores.. Top-down control by carnivores.. The key role of eco-evolutionary dynamics.. Summary.. 7 The Path from Evolution to Ecology.. What has been learned?.. What are the implications for conservation and management?.. Research priorities for the next decade.. References.. Organism Index.. Subject Index

In 1837 a young Charles Darwin took his notebook, wrote "I think" and then sketched a rudimentary, stick-like tree. Each branch of Darwin's tree of life told a story of survival and adaptation - adaptation of animals and plants not just to the environment but also to life with other living things. However, more than 150 years since Darwin published his singular idea of natural selection, the science of ecology has yet to account for how contrasting evolutionary outcomes affect the ability of organisms to coexist in communities and to regulate ecosystem functioning. In this book Philip Grime and Simon Pierce explain how evidence from across the world is revealing that, beneath the wealth of apparently limitless and bewildering variation in detailed structure and functioning, the essential biology of all organisms is subject to the same set of basic interacting constraints on life-history and physiology. The inescapable resulting predicament during the evolution of every species is that, according to habitat, each must adopt a predictable compromise with regard to how they use the resources at their disposal in order to survive. The compromise involves the investment of resources in either the effort to acquire more resources, the tolerance of factors that reduce metabolic performance, or reproduction. This three-way trade-off is the irreducible core of the universal adaptive strategy theory which Grime and Pierce use to investigate how two environmental filters selecting, respectively, for convergence and divergence in organism function determine the identity of organisms in communities, and ultimately how different evolutionary strategies affect the functioning of ecosystems. This book reflects an historic phase in which evolutionary processes are finally moving centre stage in the effort to unify ecological theory, and animal, plant and microbial ecology have begun to find a common theoretical framework. Inglés