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Résumé :
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This book contains a detailed synthesis of our current understanding of the patterns of organisation of bird communities and of the factors such as competition, predation, past history, climate, habitat and dusturbance, that may determine them, drawing from studies from all over the world. It starts by discussing the general approach followed by avian community ecologists : why they ask the questions they do and what philosophical and methodological approaches they have used to answer such questions. Most of the book is devoted to a critical evaluation of what is known about the nature and organisation of bird communities. It is divided into the following chapters : Part I : The foundation of avian community ecology 1 - The development of avian community ecology 2 - Determining pattern and process : the logical structure of community ecology 3 - The importance of metholology Part II : The patterns of avian communities 4 - The assembly of communities 5 - Numbers of species and their abundances 6 - Niche theory and guilds 7 - Ecomorphological patterns of communities 8 - Distributional patterns of species 9 - Habitat distributions of species 10 - Resources and their use 11 - Density compensation and niche shifts 12 - Convergence of species and communities 13 - Bioenergetic approaches to communities 14 - A re-examination of the recent history of avian community ecology
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