The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, Jun 15, 2005 - Science - 400 pages
Coevolution—reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection—is one of the most important ecological and genetic processes organizing the earth's biodiversity: most plants and animals require coevolved interactions with other species to survive and reproduce. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution analyzes how the biology of species provides the raw material for long-term coevolution, evaluates how local coadaptation forms the basic module of coevolutionary change, and explores how the coevolutionary process reshapes locally coevolving interactions across the earth's constantly changing landscapes.

Picking up where his influential The Coevolutionary Process left off, John N. Thompsonsynthesizes the state of a rapidly developing science that integrates approaches from evolutionary ecology, population genetics, phylogeography, systematics, evolutionary biochemistry and physiology, and molecular biology. Using models, data, and hypotheses to develop a complete conceptual framework, Thompson also draws on examples from a wide range of taxa and environments, illustrating the expanding breadth and depth of research in coevolutionary biology.
 

Contents

Part 2 Specific Hypotheses on the Classes of Coevolutionary Dynamics
173
Major Hypotheses on Coevolution
365
Literature Cited
371

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2005)

John N. Thompson is professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of The Coevolutionary Process, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliographic information