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The Inadequate Environment

Nitrogen and the Abundance of Animals

  • Book
  • © 1993

Overview

Authors:
  1. Thomas C. R. White

    1. Dept. of Crop Protection, Waite Agricultural Research Institute, Glen Osmond, Australia

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Table of contents (19 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XIX
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  2. The Inadequate Environment

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 3-4

    3. The Environment of All Organisms Is Inadequate

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 5-21

    4. Plants as Food for Herbivores

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 22-28

  3. Herbivores in an Inadequate Environment

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 29-29
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    2. Insects

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 31-107

    3. Crustaceans

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 108-122

    4. Molluscs

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 123-134

    5. Mammals

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 135-192

    6. Birds

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 193-232

    7. Reptiles

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 233-241

    8. Fish

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 242-250

  4. Survival in an Inadequate Environment

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 251-252
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    2. Strategies to Counter Shortage of Nitrogen

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 253-260

    3. Territorial and Social Behaviours

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 261-290

    4. Cannibalism

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 291-300

  5. Predators in an Inadequate Environment

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 301-301
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    2. Vertebrates

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 304-313

    3. Invertebrates

      • Thomas C. R. White
      Pages 314-330
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Keywords

About this book

Ecology is characterized by a rapidly growing complexity and diversity of facts, aspects, examples, and observations. What is badly needed is the development of common patterns, of rules that, as in other sciences such as physics, can more generally explain the increasing complexity and variability we observe. Tom White, being one of the "seniors" in ecology, makes such an attempt in his book. the pattern he shows and explains with numerous examples from the entire animal kingdom is a universal hunger for nitrogen, a misery that drives the ecology of all organisms. He advocates that the awareness of this fundamental role that the limitation of nitrogen plays in the ecology of all organisms should be as a much part of each ecologis's intellectual equipment as is the awareness of the fact of evolution by means of natural selection. His claim is that not "enery" but "nitrogen" is the most limited "currency" in the animal world for the production and growth of their young.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dept. of Crop Protection, Waite Agricultural Research Institute, Glen Osmond, Australia

    Thomas C. R. White

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Inadequate Environment

  • Book Subtitle: Nitrogen and the Abundance of Animals

  • Authors: Thomas C. R. White

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78299-2

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1993

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-78301-2Published: 16 December 2011

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-78299-2Published: 06 December 2012

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIX, 425

  • Topics: Ecology, Animal Physiology

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