Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology and Evolution

Much of today's scientific advancement comes from the merging of two or more traditional sciences into something new that takes from both of its parents to yield new insights into how the world around us works. Such is the case with Evolutionary Ecology. Ecology is traditionally a science of the great outdoors, dealing with the interactions between organisms and their environment. Evolution is traditionally a science of museum specimens, dealing with how lineages of organisms arise, change and eventually go extinct. While each of these have roots that go back 150 years, only recently has the merger of the two garnered enough information, enough focus to warrant dedicated books. This book is one of the first to cover evolutionary ecology as a separate and distinct field. It is intended to serve as a suitable undergraduate textbook to explain the field to students. At the same time it covers the field in general so that a professional practioner in some specialized area can learn about the overal area, and finally is should have some appeal to the interested non-professional but interested reader.