Despite often violent fluctuations in nature, species extinction is
rare. California red scale, a potentially devastating pest of citrus,
has been suppressed for fifty years in California to extremely low yet
stable densities by its controlling parasitoid. Some larch budmoth
populations undergo extreme cycles; others never cycle. In
Consumer-Resource Dynamics, William Murdoch, Cherie Briggs, and Roger
Nisbet use these and numerous other biological examples to lay the
groundwork for a unifying theory applicable to predator-prey,
parasitoid-host, and other consumer-resource interactions. Throughout,
the focus is on how the properties of real organisms affect population
dynamics.
The core of the book synthesizes and extends the authors' own models
involving insect parasitoids and their hosts, and explores in depth how
consumer species compete for a dynamic resource. The emerging general
consumer-resource theory accounts for how consumers respond to
differences among individuals in the resource population. From here the
authors move to other models of consumer-resource dynamics and
population dynamics in general. Consideration of empirical examples, key
concepts, and a necessary review of simple models is followed by
examination of spatial processes affecting dynamics, and of implications
for biological control of pest organisms. The book establishes the
coherence and broad applicability of consumer-resource theory and
connects it to single-species dynamics. It closes by stressing the
theory's value as a hierarchy of models that allows both generality and
testability in the field.
