Experimental ecology Book

	Contributors
1	Ecological Experiments and a Research Program in Community Ecology	3
2	Ecological Experiments: Scale, Phenomenology, Mechanism, and the Illusion of Generality	27
3	Realism, Precision, and Generality in Experimental Ecology	50
4	The Desert Granivory Experiments at Portal	71
5	Experimental Compromise and Mechanistic Approaches to the Evolutionary Ecology of Interacting Daphnia Species	96
6	Experimentation, Observation, and Inference in River and Watershed Investigations	113
7	From Cattle Tanks to Carolina Bays: The Utility of Model Systems for Understanding Natural Communities	133
8	Have Field Experiments Aided in the Understanding of Abundance and Dynamics of Temperate Reef Fishes?	152
9	Ecological Experiments with Model Systems: The Ecotron Facility in Context	170
10	How Can We Compare the Importance of Ecological Processes If We Never Ask, "Compared to What?"	183
11	Insights and Application of Large-Scale, Long-Term Ecological Observations and Experiments	202
12	Ecology in a Bottle: Using Microcosms to Test Theory	236
13	The Interplay between Natural History and Field Experimentation	254
14	Using Models to Enhance the Value of Information from Observations and Experiments	281
15	Experimental Approaches to Studying the Population Dynamics and Evolution of Microorganisms	298
16	The Dual Role of Experiments in Complex and Dynamic Natural Systems	311
17	Design, Implementation and Analysis of Ecological and Environmental Experiments: Pitfalls in the Maintenance of Logical Structures	325
18	The Motivation for and Context of Experiments in Ecology	350
19	The Logic, Value, and Necessity of Grounding Experiments in Reality: an Essential Link in the Inferential Chain Back to Nature	370
20	Investigating Geographic Variation in Interactions Using Common Garden Experiments	394
21	Revelations and Limitations of the Experimental Approach for the Study of Plant-Animal Interactions	416
22	Experimental Approaches to the Study of Evolution	437
	Index	461