Maximum entropy and ecology : a theory of abundance, distribution, and energetics / John Harte.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harte, John, 1939- author.

Series:

Oxford series in ecology and evolution.

Oxford series in ecology and evolution

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ecology--Methodology.

Ecology.

Entropy (Information theory).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (274 p.)

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This pioneering graduate textbook provides readers with the concepts and practical tools required to understand the maximum entropy principle, and apply it to an understanding of ecological patterns. Rather than building and combining mechanistic models of ecosystems, the approach is grounded in information theory and the logic of inference. Paralleling the derivation of thermodynamics from the maximum entropy principle, the state variable theory of ecology developed in this bookpredicts realistic forms for all metrics of ecology that describe patterns in the distribution, abundance, and energ

Contents:

""Cover""; ""Contents""; ""Preface""; ""Glossary of symbols""; ""Acronyms and abbreviations""; ""Part I: Foundations""; ""1 The nature of theory""; ""1.1 What is a theory?""; ""1.2 Ecology and physics""; ""1.3 Types of theories""; ""1.4 Why keep theory simple?""; ""1.5 Exercises""; ""2 The logic of inference""; ""2.1 Expanding prior knowledge""; ""2.2 Sought knowledge can often be cast in the form of unknown probability distributions""; ""2.3 Prior knowledge often constrains the sought-after distributions""; ""2.4 We always seek the least-biased distribution""; ""2.5 Exercises""

""Part II: Macroecology""""3 Scaling metrics and macroecology""; ""3.1 Thinking like a macroecologist""; ""3.2 Metrics for the macroecologist""; ""3.3 The meaning of the metrics""; ""3.4 Graphs and patterns""; ""3.5 Why do we care about the metrics?""; ""3.6 Exercises""; ""4 Overview of macroecological models and theories""; ""4.1 Purely statistical models""; ""4.2 Power-law models""; ""4.3 Other theories of the SAD and/or the SAR""; ""4.4 Energy and mass distributions""; ""4.5 Mass-abundance and energy-abundance relationships""; ""4.6 Food web models""

""4.7 A note on confidence intervals for testing model goodness""""4.8 Exercises""; ""Part III: The maximum entropy principle""; ""5 Entropy, information, and the concept of maximum entropy""; ""5.1 Thermodynamic entropy""; ""5.2 Information theory and information entropy""; ""5.3 MaxEnt""; ""6 MaxEntatwork""; ""6.1 What if MaxEnt doesn't work?""; ""6.2 Some examples of constraints and distributions""; ""6.3 Uses of MaxEnt""; ""6.4 Exercises""; ""Part IV: Macroecology and MaxEnt""; ""7 The maximum entropy theory of ecology (METE)""; ""7.1 The entities and the state variables""

""7.2 The structure of METE""""7.3 Solutions: R(n, ε) and the metrics derived from it""; ""7.4 Solutions: Π(n) and the metrics derived from it""; ""7.5 The predicted species-area relationship""; ""7.6 The endemics-area relationship""; ""7.7 The predicted collector's curve""; ""7.8 When should energy-equivalence and the Damuth relationship hold?""; ""7.9 Miscellaneous predictions""; ""7.10 Summary of predictions""; ""7.11 Exercises""; ""8 Testing METE""; ""8.1 A general perspective on theory evaluation""; ""8.2 Datasets""; ""8.3 The species-level spatial abundance distribution""

""8.4 The community-level species-abundance distribution""""8.5 The species-area and endemics-area relationships""; ""8.6 The distribution of metabolic rates""; ""8.7 Patterns in the failures of METE""; ""8.8 Exercises""; ""Part V: A wider perspective""; ""9 Applications to conservation""; ""9.1 Scaling up species' richness""; ""9.2 Inferring abundance from presence-absence data""; ""9.3 Estimating extinction under habitat loss""; ""9.4 Inferring associations between habitat characteristics and species occurrence""; ""9.5 Exercises""; ""10 Connections to other theories""

""10.1 METE and the Hubbell neutral theory""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [244]-252) and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-959342-6

0-19-162167-6

OCLC:

746747115