Ilkka Hanski, widely acknowledged to be one of the most outstanding population biologists of his generation, reviews our understanding of metapopulation dynamics, examines the relevant empirical studies - including the author's own unique research on the metapopulation biology of the Glanville fritillary butterfly - and includes discussions of practical applications to conservation biology. One of the hottest areas in ecology today, this book is an important, state-of-the-art review of the field, and should have enormous impact.
Contents include: Preface; 1-Prologue; Part 1: Theory; 2 - Preliminaries; 3 - Metapopulations of two local populations; 4 - The Levins model and its variants; 5 - Spatially explicit approaches; 6 - Metapopulation genetics and evolution; 7 - Interacting metapopulations and metacommunities; Part II - Field Studies; 8 - Spatial structure of populations; 9 - Mapping species occurrence on habitat availability; 10 - Metapopulation dynamics and conservation biology; 11 - Metapopulation patterns and processes; 12 - The incidence function model: applications; 13 - Epilogue
Hanski's new book is a basic and very comprehensive textbook essential to anyone who wants to study the ecology of fragmented populations in close detail. It is integrated, didactic, and systematic, carefully maintaining a balance between theory and empirical results. Folia Geobotanica Iikka Hanski is the foremost authority on metapopulations and has co-edited two of the main texts on the subject ... and conservation biologists everywhere would do well to read this book. Biologist