"A major event in botany." -- The New York Times
.,."will be the definitive work well into the next century." --Library Journal
"Flora of North America moves forward steadily, remorselessly, impressively....The level of detail makes the work accessible to a range of users, and the text is clearly written and set out for the non-specialist." -- Plant Talk
Volume 5 is the third volume of nineteen on dicots to be published in the Flora of North America series. It treats more than 740 species in 74 genera and three families in the following orders of the subclass Caryophyllidae: Caryophyllales (Pink order); Polygonales (Buckwheat order); and Plumbaginales (Leadwort order). Approximately 60% of the species are endemic to North America north of Mexico, and 19% are known as naturalized elements of the flora.
Of the 74 genera treated, 20 are represented in the flora by introduced species, and 13 of the genera have all their species endemic to the region. One of the five largest genera in North America, Eriogonum (Polygonaceae), is represented in the flora area by 225 of its 248 species, with nearly 200 of them endemic. Each of the genera treated in the volume has one or more representative species illustrated with a line drawing. These, in combination with the key and descriptions, will facilitate identification of the group of plants.
For more information about the Flora of North America series, including a complete listing of the genera in Volume 5, visit www.oup.com/us/fnaseries
New lower price! The list price of all volumes in the Flora of North America series have now been reduced to $95 (from $120)

This book provides a comprehensive monograph of the family Humiraceae. It includes information on economic botany, conservation, phylogenetic relationships, taxonomic history, ecology, cytology, anatomy, and phytochemistry, among other topics. This volume is illustrated with line drawings, black and white photographs, and distribution maps. It was written by the world-leading authority on this plant group and contains a total of eight genera, 65 species, and 15 infraspecific taxa, with two new species described. This work is volume 123 in the Flora Neotropica book series (Lawrence M. Kelly, Editor-in-Chief). Flora Neotropica volumes provide taxonomic treatments of plant groups or families growing in the Americas between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

The book summarizes the history of biological control in Latin America and the Caribbean. Few publications provide historical detail and the records are, therefore, fragmented until now. By bringing information together in this book, we offer a more complete picture of important developments in biological control on this continent. There are a wealth of text, tables and references about the history of such projects, and which were successful and which failed. This will help plan future biocontrol projects. An overview is provided of the current situation in biological control for many Latin American and Caribbean countries, revealing an astonishing level of practical biological control applied in the region, making it the largest area under biological control worldwide. The final part describes new developments and speculates about the future of biological control in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Far from being passive elements in the landscape, plants have developed many sophisticated chemical and mechanical means of deterring organisms that seek to prey on them. This volume draws together research from ecology, evolution, agronomy, and plant pathology to produce an ecological genetics perspective on plant resistance in both natural and agricultural systems. By emphasizing the ecological and evolutionary basis of resistance, the book makes an important contribution to the study of how phytophages and plants coevolve.
"Plant Resistance to Herbivores and Pathogens" not only reviews the literature pertaining to plant resistance from a number of traditionally separate fields but also examines significant questions that will drive future research. Among the topics explored are selection for resistance in plants and for virulence in phytophages; methods for studying natural variation in plant resistance; the factors that maintain intraspecific variation in resistance; and the ecological consequences of within-population genetic variation for herbivorous insects and fungal pathogens.
"A comprehensive review of the theory and information on a large, rapidly growing, and important subject."--Douglas J. Futuyma, State University of New York, Stony Brook

The book contains detailed descriptions of the unique desert environment with particular emphasis on vegetation and survival strategies of plants. Nine expeditions through the Southwest of Western Australia over a period of 15 years triggered the interest of the authors to explore also some deserts in the region, which leads to three further excursions into the sandy dunes of the desert. Observations of plant life in the deserts focused not only on identifying plants, but also on gaining some understanding of the aboriginal desert people of centuries past, and their own survival strategies in such extreme conditions. Also part of the Canning Stock Route was followed and explored, but the most rewarding and interesting finds were done criss-crossing the desert away from highways, tracks, and paths. The most remote areas showed species richness and surviving strategies which by far exceeded expectations.

This book focuses on the application of geospatial technologies to study the land use land cover (LULC) dynamics, agricultural water management, water resources assessment and modeling, and studies on natural disasters. LULC dynamics is one of the major research themes for studying global environmental change using remote sensing data. The section on LULC dynamics covers the multi-variate criteria for land use and land cover classification and change assessment in the mountainous regions. Further, LULC change detection of the Tons river basin and LULC dynamics at decadal frequency are studied to derive adaptation and mitigation strategies. Landscape-level forest disturbance modeling, together with conservation implications, is also included. The watershed management approach is necessary for comprehensive management of land and water resources of any region, where studies on multi-criteria analysis for rainwater harvesting planning and its impact on land use land cover transformations in rain-fed areas using geospatial technologies are presented in this book. The book will be useful for academics, water practitioners, scientists, water managers, environmentalists, and administrators, NGOs, researchers, and students who are actively involved in the application of geospatial technologies in LULC studies, agricultural water management and hydrological modelling and natural disasters for addressing the challenges being posed by climate change while addressing issues of food and water securities

This title features the flora of the Vice County of Renfrewshire. It marks the culmination of over 50 years of field recording by local botanists and over 18 years of fieldwork and in-depth search of historical records by the author.

Ecologists traditionally regard time as part of the background against which ecological interactions play out. In this book, Eric Post argues that time should be treated as a resource used by organisms for growth, maintenance, and offspring production. Post uses insights from phenology-the study of the timing of life-cycle events-to present a theoretical framework of time in ecology that casts long-standing observations in the field in an entirely new light. Combining conceptual models with field data, he demonstrates how phenological advances, delays, and stasis, documented in an array of taxa, can all be viewed as adaptive components of an organism's strategic use of time. Post shows how the allocation of time by individual organisms to critical life history stages is not only a response to environmental cues but also an important driver of interactions at the population, species, and community levels. To demonstrate the applications of this exciting new conceptual framework, Time in Ecology uses meta-analyses of previous studies as well as Post's original data on the phenological dynamics of plants, caribou, and muskoxen in Greenland.

Cryptic species are organisms which look identical, but which represent distinct evolutionary lineages. They are an emerging trend in organismal biology across all groups, from flatworms, insects, amphibians, primates, to vascular plants. This book critically evaluates the phenomenon of cryptic species and demonstrates how they can play a valuable role in improving our understanding of evolution, in particular of morphological stasis. It also explores how the recognition of cryptic species is intrinsically linked to the so-called 'species problem', the lack of a unifying species concept in biology, and suggests alternative approaches. Bringing together a range of perspectives from practicing taxonomists, the book presents case studies of cryptic species across a range of animal and plant groups. It will be an invaluable text for all biologists interested in species and their delimitation, definition, and purpose, including undergraduate and graduate students and researchers.

Plant Strategies, Vegetation Processes, and Ecosystem Properties, Second Edition, is a thoroughly updated and comprehensive new edition of the very successful Plant Strategies and Vegetative Processes, which controversially proposed the existence of widely-recurring plant functional types with predictable relationships to vegetation structure and dynamics.
This second edition uses evidence from many parts of the world to re-examine these concepts in the light of the enormous expansion in the literature.
Features include:
* A new section covering all aspects of ecosystem properties
* New chapters on
Assembling of Communities
Rarification and Extinction
Colonisation and Invasion
* Principles and methodologies of a range of international tests including case study examples
* Chapter summaries for a quick reference guide
* Index of species names
Written in a very readable style, this book is an invaluable reference source for researchers in the areas of plant, animal, and community ecology, conservation and land management.
'Written by one of the foremost authorities in the field, summarising over 35 years of research. A book all plant ecologists will want to read.' - Jonathan Silvertown, Department of Biological Sciences, The Open University, UK.
'The coverage is outstanding and comprehensive.' - Simon A. Levin, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton
University, USA

The paleoecological history of the Americas is as complex as the region is broad: stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, the New World features some of the most extraordinary vegetation on the planet. But until now it has lacked a complete natural history. Alan Graham remedies that with "A Natural History of the New World." With plants as his scientific muse, Graham traces the evolution of ecosystems, beginning in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million years ago) and ending in the present, charting their responses to changes in geology and climate. By highlighting plant communities' roles in the environmental history of the Americas, Graham offers an overdue balance to natural histories that focus exclusively on animals. Plants are important in evolution's splendid drama. Not only are they conspicuous and conveniently stationary components of the Earth's ecosystems, but their extensive fossil record allows for a thorough reconstruction of the planet's paleoenvironments. What's more, plants provide oxygen, function as food and fuel, and provide habitat and shelter; in short, theirs is a history that can speak to many other areas of evolution. "A Natural History of the New World "is an ambitious and unprecedented synthesis written by one of the world's leading scholars of botany and geology.

Experimentation is a dominant approach in contemporary ecological research, pervading studies at all levels of biological organization and across diverse taxa and habitats. This book assembles perspectives from ecologists using a wide range of experimental approaches, ranging from laboratory microcosms to manipulations of entire ecosystems, to assess the strengths, and the limitations of experimentation in answering fundamental ecological questions.

Network thinking and network analysis are rapidly expanding features of ecological research. Network analysis of ecological systems include representations and modelling of the interactions in an ecosystem, in which species or factors are joined by pairwise connections. This book provides an overview of ecological network analysis including generating processes, the relationship between structure and dynamic function, and statistics and models for these networks. Starting with a general introduction to the composition of networks and their characteristics, it includes details on such topics as measures of network complexity, applications of spectral graph theory, how best to include indirect species interactions, and multilayer, multiplex and multilevel networks. Graduate students and researchers who want to develop and understand ecological networks in their research will find this volume inspiring and helpful. Detailed guidance to those already working in network ecology but looking for advice is also included.

As human activities in the New World Tropics (Neotropics) increase in intensity and extent, so do the interactions between natural and human-dominated ecosystems. The essays in this book compare the sociocultural and biophysical aspects of managing the resource base in these regions. It describes the potential benefits - and liabilities - of the major food, fuel and fibre production systems, each one examined in terms of its potential impact upon resource preservation and utilization. The book is a departure from traditional treatments of agricultural sustainability or natural resources development in that it addresses the specific systems prevalent in the Neotropics, focusing on the flow between agricultural and natural ecosystems. This book is intended for biological, social, and agricultural scientists concerned with sustainability.

This book discusses soil and recycling management in the Anthropocene era. Nitrogen shortage is one of nature's most important productivity regulators, but since the advent of technical nitrogen fixation (TNF), biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) input has nearly doubled, particularly in grass and arable lands covering over 13 million km2 of the Earth's surface. This book explores how monoculture grass, arable lands and forests are often over fertilized with TNF, animal slurries, sewage sludge, or municipally produced composts, and as a result, flora and fauna that have adapted to a nitrogen shortage in the soil will have to adjust to a surplus; those that are unable to adapt will disappear.

Mycorrhizae are mutualisms between plants and fungi that evolved over 400 million years ago. This symbiotic relationship commenced with land invasion, and as new groups evolved, new organisms developed with varying adaptations to changing conditions. Based on the author's 50 years of knowledge and research, this book characterizes mycorrhizae through the most rapid global environmental changes in human history. It applies that knowledge in many different scenarios, from restoring strip mines in Wyoming and shifting agriculture in the Yucatan, to integrating mutualisms into science policy in California and Washington, D.C. Toggling between ecological theory and natural history of a widespread and long-lived symbiotic relationship, this interdisciplinary volume scales from structure-function and biochemistry to ecosystem dynamics and global change. This remarkable study is of interest to a wide range of students, researchers, and land-use managers.

Plant galls may be produced by a wide variety of organisms, from fungi to parasitic insects, on an equally wide variety of hosts. Their taxonomy is highly complex, as are the life cycles of the organisms associated with them. Yet, common as they are, plant galls are often poorly understood. This book brings together information from the diverse disciplines involved in the study of plant galls: ecology, evolution, molecular biology, physiology, and developmental biology. The work considers the latest issues, covering questions of classification, coevolution, ecology, physiology, and plant genetic engineering. As an up-to-date resource in an area of immense interest and debate, the book will enhance the quality of discussion surrounding these phenomena, across all disciplinary perspectives.

Ecological Restoration and Management of Longleaf Pine Forests is a timely synthesis of the current understanding of the natural dynamics and processes in longleaf pine ecosystems. This book beautifully illustrates how incorporation of basic ecosystem knowledge and an understanding of socioeconomic realities shed new light on established paradigms and their application for restoration and management. Unique for its holistic ecological focus, rather than a more traditional silvicultural approach, the book highlights the importance of multi-faceted actions that robustly integrate forest and wildlife conservation at landscape scales, and merge ecological with socioeconomic objectives for effective conservation of the longleaf pine ecosystem.

This open access book is a compilation of case studies that provide useful knowledge and lessons that derive from on-the-ground activities and contribute to policy recommendations, focusing on the relevance of social-ecological production landscapes and seascapes (SEPLS) to "transformative change." The concept of "transformative change" has been gaining more attention to deal with today's environmental and development problems, whereas both policy and scientific communities have been increasingly calling for transformative change toward sustainable society. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has planned to start the so-called "assessment on transformative change" if approved by the IPBES plenary to be held in 2021. At present, the idea of transformative change, including its scope, methodologies, approaches and strategies, are yet to be clarified. By bringing together all of the different concerns and interests in the land/seascape, SEPLS approaches could provide practical and experience-based insights for understanding and gauging transformative change and identifying determinants of such change. This book explores how SEPLS management relates to the idea of transformative change to further the discussion of sustainable transitions in advancing sustainability science. The introductory chapter is followed by case study chapters offering real-world examples of transformative change as well as a synthesis chapter clarifying the relevance of the case study findings to policy and academic discussions. It will be of interest to scholars, policymakers and professionals in the fields related to sustainable development.

Tropical lichens are not only of interest in themselves but are of importance in the study of the ecosystems of which they are a part. Information on tropical lichens has not hitherto been readily available in book form, and the object of this volume is to synthesize what is known at present and to indicate areas where further research is needed. The material presented here is derived from a meeting held by the Systematics Association at which contributions were presented on the systematic, ecological, and biogeographical aspects of tropical lichens, together with the problems of their conservation. The resulting volume should thus be of value to a wide variety of scientists.

This manual details the techniques involved in the study of plant microbe interactions (PMI). Covering a wide range of basic and advanced techniques associated with research on biological nitrogen fixation, microbe-mediated plant nutrient use efficiency, the biological control of plant diseases and pests such as nematodes, it will appeal to postgraduate students, research scholars and postdoctoral fellows, as well as teachers from various fields, including pathology, entomology and agronomy. It consists of five broad sections featuring different units. Information panels at the beginning of each unit present essential knowledge as well as advances in a particular topic. The manual can also serve as a textbook for undergraduate courses like Techniques for Plant-Microbe Interactions; Biological Control of Plant Diseases; and Nutrient Use Efficiency. Providing basic insights and working protocols from all related disciplines, this unique laboratory manual is a valuable resource for researchers interested in investigating PMI.

This book explains what makes landscapes resilient. Why are some landscapes able to recover quickly from disruptive events or crises, while others are completely thrown off balance for the foreseeable future? The author sets out in search of the influencing factors and conditional structures of landscape resilience and not only evaluates the current state of the art, but also explores landscapes around the globe that could not be more contrasting: from arid agricultural landscapes to boreal forest landscapes, from atolls to saline landscapes, from terraced landscapes to cities. Just as diverse as the landscape types are the factors considered that can put landscapes under stress. However diverse the case studies are in detail, their fascinating mosaic shows at the same time that there are overarching principles that can be used to increase the resilience of landscapes in a targeted way, so that landscapes emerge from crises strengthened rather than weakened. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Landschaftliche Resilienz by Catrin Schmidt, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Phytoplasma III is the last of three books in the series covering all the aspects of phytoplasma-associated diseases. Phytoplasmas are a major limiting factor in the quality and productivity of many ornamental, horticultural and economically important agriculture crops worldwide, and losses due to phytoplasma diseases have disastrous consequences for farming communities. As there is no effective cure for these diseases, management strategies focus-on exclusion, minimizing their spread by insect vectors and propagation materials, and developing host plant resistance. This book provides an update on genomics, effectors and pathogenicity factors toward a better understanding of phytoplasma-host metabolic interactions. It offers a comprehensive overview of biological, serological and molecular characterization of the phytoplasmas, including recently developed approaches in diagnostics, such as transcriptomics studies, which have paved the way for analyzing the gene expression pattern in phytoplasmas on infection and revealed the up-regulation of genes associated with hormonal response, transcription factors, and signaling genes. Although phytoplasmas remain the most poorly characterized pathogens, recent studies have identified virulence factors that induce typical disease symptoms and have characterized the unique reductive evolution of the genome. Reviewing the advances in cultivation in axenic media together with the perspectives for future research to reduce the global incidence of these pathogens and the associated agricultural losses, the book is a valuable resource for plant pathologists, researchers in agriculture and PhD students.

This book provides insights into various aspects of medicinal plant-associated microbes, known to be a unique source of biological active compounds, including their biotechnological uses and their potential in pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. Featuring review papers and original research by leading experts in the field, it discusses medicinal plants and their interactions with the environment; medicinal plants as a source of biologically active compounds; medicinal plant-associated microbes (diversity and metabolites); their pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications as well as their potential applications as plant growth stimulators and biocontrol agents. As such the book offers a valuable, up-to-date overview of the current research on medicinal plants, their ecology, biochemistry and associated biomes.

This is the first scholarly reference work to cover all the major scientific themes and facets of the subject of seeds. It outlines the latest fundamental biological knowledge about seeds, together with the principles of agricultural seed processing, storage and sowing, the food and industrial uses of seeds, and the roles of seeds in history, economies and cultures. With contributions from 110 expert authors worldwide, the editors have created 560 authoritative articles, illustrated with plentiful tables, figures, black-and-white and color photographs, suggested further reading matter and 670 supplementary definitions. The contents are alphabetically arranged and cross-referenced to connect related entries.