Table Of ContentCoexistence in Ecology
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MONOGRAPHS IN POPULATION BIOLOGY
SIMON A. LEVIN, ROBERT PRINGLE, AND CORINA TARNITA, SERIES EDITORS
A complete series list follows the index.
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Coexistence in Ecology
A MECHANISTIC PERSPECTIVE
M A. M P
ARK C EEK
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McPeek, Mark A., author.
Title: Coexistence in ecology : a mechanistic perspective / Mark A. McPeek.
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] | Series: Monographs in
population biology ; 66 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2021036887 (print) | LCCN 2021036888 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691204871
(paperback) | ISBN 9780691204864 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691229225 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Ecology. | Coexistence of species. | BISAC: SCIENCE / Life Sciences /
Ecology | SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Biology
Classifi cation: LCC QH541 .M3865 2022 (print) | LCC QH541 (ebook) | DDC 577--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036887
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036888
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Editorial: Alison Kalett & Whitney Rauenhorst
Production Editorial: Ali Parrington
Text and Jacket/Cover Design: Carmina Alvarez
Production: Danielle Amatucci
Publicity: Matthew Taylor & Charlotte Coyne
Copyeditor: Jennifer McClain
This book has been composed in Times New Roman
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
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This book is dedicated to the memory of
Jackie Brown
(Jonathan M. Brown)
Scientist. Educator. Friend.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Introduction 3
2. Historical Antecedents 26
3. Building a Two-Trophic-Level Food Web 52
4. Adding a Third (and a Fourth and a Fifth . . .) Trophic Level 120
5. Omnivory in a Food Web 160
6. Mutualists, Symbionts, and Facilitators in a Food Web 193
7. Pathogens in a Food Web 241
8. Temporal Variability 277
9. Spatial Variability on Local and Regional Scales 308
10. Ecologically Equivalent and Neutral Species Embedded in a
Food Web 344
11. MacArthur’s Recasting Revisited 364
12. Philosophical and Practical Implications 382
Literature Cited 405
Index 451
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Acknowledgments
My career so far has spanned a very interesting time in community ecology. I
started graduate school in 1982, which was in the middle of the evaluation of the
centrality of resource competition as the organizing force in community ecology.
Journal pages were fi lled with papers critiquing the validity of various types of
data, reviews summarizing the results of scores of fi eld experiments, and argu-
ments for the validation mechanisms. As a master’s student, I was a very junior
author on a review of fi eld experiments of predation that was a response and
complement to similar analyses of competition (Sih et al. 1985). Following and
participating in these big arguments as a graduate student defi ned my outlook on
science. Forty years on, I hope this book is a useful contribution to rekindling
these arguments, which I feel we sorely need.
Many people infl uenced my views on this subject. My PhD mentors, Earl
Werner and Donald Hall, always preached mechanism. Robert Holt and Mathew
Leibold, in hundreds of conversations, have pushed and inspired me to think
about the issues of species coexistence in greater depth and broader scope. In fact,
the genesis of this book is from a spark of an idea that Bob gave me while talking
in his offi ce in the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas in 1997.
Mathew pushed me harder and challenged my ideas more than anyone I’ve ever
interacted with. My other mentors include Gary Mittelbach, Kay Gross, Susan
Kalisz, Steve Tonsor, Steve Kohler, Andrew Sih, Philip Crowley, Joseph Travis,
and Henry Wilbur. My graduate student colleagues, including Jonathan Brown,
Robert Creed, William Resetarits, David Skelly, Thomas Miller, Oswald Schmitz,
Gary Wellborn, and Josh Van Buskirk, have also been lifelong friends who have
shaped and challenged me to think beyond the bounds I was imposing on myself.
I thank the following colleagues for sharing data and insights about their studies
of diverse communities: Ronald Karlson, Howard Cornell, Judith Bronstein, Chris-
topher Meyer, Jordon Casey, Mark Hay, Tyler Kartzinel, Robert Creed, Mathew
Leibold, Stephen Hubbell, Robert Pringle, Meghan Duffy, and Richard Ostfeld.
György Barabás helped me understand the storage effect and the role of variation
to coexistence at a depth that was impossible for me before our conversations.
I thank Fran James, Donald Strong, Daniel Simberloff, Joseph Travis, Earl
Werner, Peter Grant, and Thomas Schoener for recounting to me their recollec-
tions of a boat ride they took in March 1981 on the Wakulla River in the
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