How species interactAltering the Standard View on Trophic Ecology

Roger Arditi and Lev R. Ginzburg

Roger Arditi is a distinguished professor at AgroParisTech in Paris, France. He works for INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, in the research unit of Ecology and Evolution at University Pierre et Marie Curie. His theoretical and experimental work is focused to basic questions of predation dynamics and applied work addresses agroecological problems.

Lev R. Ginzburg has been a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University since 1977. He has published widely on theoretical and applied ecology, population genetics, and risk analysis. Ginzburg is co-author, with Mark Colyvan, of the popular title Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow, published by Oxford University Press in 2004.

April 2012 • 204 pp.9780199913831 • Hardback • $59.00/$47.50

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Understanding the functioning of ecosystems requires the understanding of the interactions between consumer species and their resources. How do these interactions affect the variations of population abundances? How do population abundances determine the impact of predators on their prey? The view defended in this book is that the “null model” that most ecologists tend to use is inappropriate because it assumes that the amount of prey consumed by each predator is insensitive to the number of conspecifics. The authors argue that the amount of prey available per predator, rather than the absolute abundance of prey, is the basic determinant of the dynamics of predation. This so-called ratio dependence is shown to be a much more reasonable “null model.”

“Roger Arditi and Lev Ginzburg, who have already done much to broaden thinking about the functional response in ecology, present a tightly reasoned argument for the centrality of ratio dependence, by bringing together empirical evidence, mathematics, and the logic of emergent dynamics at time and spatial scales relevant to population change. Their book is essential reading for ecologists concerned with fundamental issues of population interaction.”—Donald L. DeAngelis, University of Miami

“This book is a valuable and timely contribution to ecological theory. The authors provide a personal perspective on the quantitative dimensions of trophic interactions based on empirical studies, detailed mechanistic models of predation, and more general philosophical considerations of symmetry and simplicity in science.”— Robert D. Holt, Arthur R. Marshall, Jr., Chair in Ecology, University of Florida

“A scholarly and insightful monograph expanding the framework for the theory of predator-prey interactions. Integrating theoretical work and empirical analyses, this definitive reference on ratio-dependent models should be read by anyone interested in the dynamics of interacting species.” — Simon A. Levin, Moffett Professor of Biology, Princeton University