The Ecology of Plants

Now in full color, this thoroughly revised and updated second edition of The Ecology of Plants incorporates many new illustrations and hundreds of new references. The text covers a range of topics that you might find in a general ecology textbook, but with the focus on the interactions between plants and their environment over a range of scales. Some of the subjects covered are unique to plants, such as photosynthesis and the ecology of plant--soil interactions; other topics, such as resource and mate acquisition, emphasize the distinctive ways plants (in contrast to mobile animals) deal with their environments. The book is unusual in emphasizing the importance of evolutionary and other historical processes for current ecology. Throughout the text, human environmental influences are discussed. While the book is written for an undergraduate college course in plant ecology, the engaging style, thorough coverage of the field, and contemporary perspective make it accessible and useful to others as well, from graduate students in conservation biology to evolutionary biologists and resource managers.

For Instructors

Instructor's Resource CD: This resource includes all the textbook's figures, photographs, and tables, available as JPEGs (high- and low-resolution) and in PowerPoint.

Jessica Gurevitch is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She earned a B.S. in Biological Sciences (Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics) at Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. Research projects currently underway include empirical, experimental and modeling approaches to studying pine demography, and experimental studies of plant invasions in forests.

Samuel M. Scheiner is currently working for the U.S. federal government. Previously he was on the faculties of Arizona State University, Northern Illinois University, and the University of Arizona. He earned his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D., all in Biology, from the University of Chicago. Dr. Scheiner's research has been involved equally with plants and animals, the theoretical and the empirical, including population genetics, physiological ecology, population biology, and macroecology. Currently, his research centers on three issues: phenotypic plasticity, measuring natural selection, and both theoretical and empirical work on large-scale patterns of species diversity.

Gordon A. Fox is Associate Professor of Biology at the University of South Florida. He earned a B.A. in History at the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, where he researched the ecology, genetics, and evolution of annual plants in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. His postdoctoral work at the University of California, Davis concentrated on theoretical population genetics. His current research interests include: population dynamics of plants in a stochastic world; the ecology of populations in fire-prone regions; the ecology and evolution of reproductive timing in plants; and applications of population ecology to conservation of endangered plants.