Michel Loreau, professor at McGill University, recently published two books.
In Excellence in Ecology Book 17 Michel Loreau, professor at McGill University, addresses the protection of biodiversity for present and future human generations and for a thriving biosphere. As leader in a variety of organisations and activities devoted to biodiversity, Michel Loreau draws in his book on his experience as Chair of DIVERSITAS and other international initiatives to illuminate the challenges of an integrated biodiversity science. Order the book.
From Populations to Ecosystems proposes an innovative theoretical synthesis that will enable us to advance our fundamental understanding of ecological systems and help us to respond to today’s emerging global ecological crisis.
Michel Loreau begins by explaining how the principles of population dynamics and ecosystem functioning can be merged. He then addresses key issues in the study of biodiversity and ecosystems, such as functional complementarity, food webs, stability and complexity, material cycling, and metacommunities. Loreau describes the most recent theoretical advances that link the properties of individual populations to the aggregate properties of communities, and the properties of functional groups or trophic levels to the functioning of whole ecosystems, placing special emphasis on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Finally, he turns his attention to the controversial issue of the evolution of entire ecosystems and their properties, laying the theoretical foundations for a genuine evolutionary ecosystem ecology.
From Populations to Ecosystems points the way to a much-needed synthesis in ecology, one that offers a fuller understanding of ecosystem processes in the natural world. Order the book.
Michel Loreau is currently Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in theoretical ecology at McGill University.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the Free University of Brussels (ULB, Belgium), he was research assistant and senior research assistant of the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium), assistant lecturer and lecturer at the Free University of Brussels, program manager at the Science Policy Office (Belgium), and professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University (Paris, France).
