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This work brings together the dimensions of biodiversity and examines both the services it provides and the measures to protect it. Major themes include the evolution of biodiversity, systems for classifying and defining biodiversity, ecological patterns and theories of biodiversity, and an assessment of contemporary patterns and trends in biodiversity

In any discussion of the great challenges facing humanity in addressing global environmental problems, a small number of topics automatically rise to the top: climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the sustainability of the services ecosystems provide us. But no threats to human welfare are more urgent than those posed by infectious diseases; we suffer already the devastating consequences of the emergence of new diseases such as HIV, the reemergence of old ones such as tuberculosis, and simply the increasing toll of endemic diseases such as malaria. Non-human animals play fundamental roles in the spread of many of these diseases – as reservoirs, as vectors, and as cauldrons for the creation of new types. Land-use practices and environmental management both affect the persistence and spread of endemic diseases, such as malaria. Furthermore, as animal populations increase their ranges, due to climate change and human-facilitated alien introductions, the potential for disease spread also increases. These factors, together with the increasing mobility of the human population, conspire to make these environmental problems of great and immediate concern.

I Autecology -- On the phenotypic plasticity of leaf photosynthetic capacity -- A model of optimal thermoregulation during gestation -- Holling's 'hungry mantid' model for the invertebrate functional response considered as a Markov process. Part 0: A survey of the main ideas and results -- The effect of competition on the flowering time of annual plants -- Evolutionarily stable strategies for larval dragonflies -- II Population Biology -- The storage effect in stochastic population models -- The stable size distribution: an example in structured population dynamics -- "Stage-structure" models of uniform larval competition -- Simple models for age dependent predation -- A model of naticid gastropod predator-prey co-evolution -- A theoretical model for the coevolution of a host and its parasite -- III Community and Ecosystem Theory -- Particle size spectra in ecology -- Species-abundance relation and diversity -- A competition model with age structure -- Stability vs. complexity in model competition communities -- Persistence in food webs -- The structure of cycling in the Ythan Estuary -- IV Applications: Fisheries -- Constant yield harvesting of population systems -- Estimating the response of populations to exploitation from catch and effort data -- Bioeconomics and the management of tuna stocks in the eastern tropical Atlantic -- The multispecies fisheries problem: A case study of Georges Bank -- The legacy of Beverton and Holt -- V Applications: Epidemiology -- Eradication strategies for virus infections -- Models for a class of man-environment epidemic diseases -- Mathematical models of vertical transmission of infection -- Integral equations for infections with discrete parasites: Hosts with Lotka birth law -- VI The Dynamics of Movement: Diffusion Models -- Predator-prey dynamics in spatially structured populations: manipulating dispersal in a coccinellid-aphid interaction -- Oceanic turbulent diffusion of abiotic and biotic species -- Taxes in cellular ecology -- Nonlinear diffusion problems in age-structured population dynamics -- A mathematical model of population dynamics involving diffusion and resources -- VII Spatial Pattern and Diffusion Models -- Critical patch size for plankton and patchiness -- Spatial distribution of rapidly dispersing animals in heterogeneous environments -- Spatial distribution of competing species -- Space structures of some migrating populations.