Evolution in Changing Environments

Download or read book Evolution in Changing Environments written by Richard Levins and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professor Levins, one of the leading explorers in the field of integrated population biology, considers the mutual interpenetration and joint evolution of organism and environment, occurring on several levels at once. Physiological and behavioral adaptations to short-term fluctuations of the environment condition the responses of populations to long-term changes and geographic gradients. These in turn affect the way species divide the environments among themselves in communities, and, therefore, the numbers of species which can coexist. Environment is treated here abstractly as pattern: patchiness, variability, range, etc. Populations are studied in their patterns: local heterogeneity, geographic variability, faunistic diversity, etc.