G.
Evelyn Hutchinson, An Introduction to Population
Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1978).
In
his population ecology textbook, G. Evelyn Hutchinson
surveyed the fundamental literature on how to
study natural selection ecologically. Here he
synthesizes the Slobodkin's work on the "predator
effect," E. G. Leigh's on population fluctuations
and environmental stability, and Lotka and Volterra's
mathematical investigation of cyclical change
in nature.
Asking "How is Living Nature Put Together?"
Hutchinson answers: "Any animal population
must have food, and this food must come either
directly from a population of plants, in a living
or sometimes dead and decomposing form, or from
other organisms that have lived on such plants.'
In language the translates the old concept of
the "cycle of life" into contemporary
population biology, hutchinson wrote that:
"The
interrelations of the various trophic levels,
the autotrophic plants feeding on simple chemical
compounds and sunlight, the primary consumers
or herbivores, the secondary, tertiary, and
higher levels of consumers or carnivores, the
parasites, and the decomposers living on dead
organisms larger that themselves, returning
materials to be used again by autotrophic plants,
form a complicated food web." |