We conceived the idea for this book after teaching a graduate seminar on
'Habitat Complexity' at The University of South Florida. Discussions
during the seminar led us to conclude that similar goals were to be
found in studies of the topic that spanned the breadth of ecological
research. Yet, the exact meaning of 'habitat structure', and the way in
which it was measured, seemed to differ widely among subdisciplines. Our
own research, which involves several sorts of ecology, convinced us that
the differences among subdisciplines were indeed real ones, and that
they did inhibit communica- tion. We decided that interchange of ideas
among researchers working in marine ecology, plant-animal interactions,
physiological ecology, and other more-or-less independent fields would
be worthwhile, in that it might lead to useful generalizations about
'habitat structure'. To foster this interchange of ideas. we organized a
symposium to attract researchers working with a wide variety of
organisms living in many habitats, but united in their interest in the
topic of 'habitat structure'. The symposium was held at The University
of South Florida's Chinsegut Hill Conference Center, in May. 1988. We
asked participants to think about 'habitat structure' in new ways; to
synthesize important, but fragmented, information; and. perhaps. to
consider ways of translating ideas across systems. The chapters
contained in this book reflect the participants' attempts to do so. The
book is divided into four parts, by major themes that we have found
useful categorizations.