本书综合了近30年来理论生态学领域的重大进步及其在实际问题中的应用。前半部分主要介绍基本生态学原理，例如合作行为的进化机制，单一物种种群动力学及集合种群空间动力学，捕食者一猎物系统，植物种群动力学，种间竞争及物种的共存，生态群落的多样性和稳定性，以及群落模式等。后半部分将理论和实际联系在一起，先后介绍了种群动力学在传染病学、农业生产、捕捞业、物种保护以及应对全球气候变化中的应用。

本书突出了数学、物理学方法在生态学领域的应用，向读者呈现了这一学科中最为基本的问题及其研究方法、研究现状和研究动向。

本书可供具有一定生态学基础的研究生、博士生以及从事相关研究的人员使用。

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目录

致谢

参编者名单

1.绪论

2.合作的进化：合作的五种机制

3.单一物种种群动力学(single-species dynamics)

4.集合种群空间动力学

5.捕食者－猎物间相互作用

6.植物种群动力学

7.种间竞争和物种的共存

8.群落多样性和稳定性

9.群落的模式

10.传染病动力学

11.捕捞业(fisheries)

12.双重绿色革命：生态学和粮食生产

13.保护生物学：未解决的问题及其对政策的影响

14.气候变化和保护生物学

15.尚未解决的问题及其重要性

参考文献

索引

译后记

Robert May is Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. His research, first at Princeton University and since 1988 at Oxford University, has dealt with the ways in which plant and animal populations - either singly or in interacting communities - change over time, especially in response to natural or human-created disturbance. His work on chaos, on how infectious diseases can influence the numerical abundance or geographical distribution of populations (including applications to humans and HIV/AIDS), on estimating species' numbers and rates of extinction, and more generally on conservation biology have been recognized by several major International Prizes (Crafoord, Balzan, Blue Planet). He has been Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government (1995-2000), President of the Royal Society (2000-2005), and in 2001 was one of the first appointees to the UK Upper House by the Independent House of Lords Appointments Commission.

Angela McLean is Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology and Director of the Institute for Emergent Infections of Humans in the James Martin 21st Century School. Her research interests lie in the use of mathematical models to aid our understanding of the evolution and spread of infectious agents. This encompasses modelling of the dynamics of infections and immune responses within individual hosts as well as models of the spread of infections from one host to another.