Review by Choice Review
Notwithstanding the eco-humor, an excellent work addressing the importance of spiders as unique organisms for field experiments designed to evaluate theories of population and community ecology. The first chapter provides a brief overview of spider biology; subsequent chapters contain in-depth presentations of food limitation as it applies to terrestrial carnivores and, more specifically, spiders; competitionist views of spider communities; the competitionist paradigm, including interspecific competition and aggression and their impacts on population dynamics; niche partitioning; factors that contribute to population density, including prey scarcity, abiotic factors, natural enemies, dispersal, and territoriality; impact of spiders on insect populations; spiders as biocontrol agents in agroecosystems; the ecological web and vegetation structure and leaf-litter layer; and complex communities, intraguild predation, and spiders in grazing food chains. The concluding chapter is devoted to models, paradigms, and experimental designs. References are extensive and inclusive through 1992; the writing is clear, evenly presented, and logically organized; the figures are well integrated with the written text (although the line drawings in Chapter 1 do not add to the text). An excellent book for academic libraries supporting programs in agriculture, biology, ecology, and entomology. Advanced undergraduate through faculty. S. L. Smith; Bowling Green State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
