Books in the Princeton Landmarks in Biology series

Develops a general theory to explain the facts of island biogeography which builds on the first principles of population ecology and genetics to explain how distance and area combine to regulate the balance between immigration and extinction in island populations.

What makes populations stabilize? What makes them fluctuate? Are populations in complex ecosystems more stable than populations in simple ecosystems? This text addresses these questions and introduces non-linear mathematical models and the study of deterministic chaos into ecology.