Anolis Lizards of the Caribbean

The author of this treatise uses the Anolis lizard to demonstrate the concept of ecology models - how ecological context supplies the natural selection that drives evolution and how evolutionary change among species in turn affects their ecological station.

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The Anolis lizards of the Caribbean are a model group from which to study evolutionary ecology: there are more than 150 species dispersed over the islands of the Caribbean, providing innumerable comparisons of physical form and behaviour. Their evolutionary divergence corresponds in geological time with the plate-tectonic origins of the Caribbean.

Based on his empirical work with these lizards, and on the work of others, Jonathan Roughgarden has developed important theoretical models of evolutionary ecology - the study of how an ecological context supplies the natural selection that drives evolution, and of how evolutionary change among species in turn affects their ecological station. These models have been tested in the field. This book synthesizes two decades of notable research, and points to new directions in modelling and field biology.

An associated program disk providing Roughgarden's quantitative models for foraging behaviour, ecological community assembly, and food webs, accompanies the book. This set of 35 files comprising 10 programs is a simulation program which expands upon the information contained in the book.