The increasing interest during recent years in vegetation history, long-term climatic changes and the development of biotic communities has resulted in a growth of the literature in this field and has provided an incentive for scientists to use palaeo-ecology concepts to clarify contemporary ecological issues. Quaternary ecology offers the perspective of time, in using "natural experiments of the past" to evaluate the responses of population, communities and ecosystems to climatic and environmental changes on a time scale extending back over the past two million years of the quaternary period. Examples from the palaeo-ecological literature demonstrate how quaternary ecology interfaces with other branches of ecology, including plant demography, ecological genetics, limnology and landscape ecology. The book provides an integrated overview of this interdisciplinary area.
The authors examine the validity of space for time substitution in studies of plant succession, the individualistic nature of species migrations and invasions of pre-existing communities, the disassembly and reassembly of communities following major environmental change and the applications of quaternary ecology to predicting biotic responses to future global climatic change. By examining key ecological issues and controversies that can be approached fruitfully using palaeo-ecological methods, this book is intended to complement rather than replace traditional textbooks in ecology and palaeo-ecology.