This book examines the effects of environmental heterogeneity (patchiness) in populations of plants and animals. In contrast to a once-prevailing view that environmental variation can be averaged-out over a population without losing any of the essential dynamics, the contributors to this volume explore various kinds of patchiness - in space, in time, in climatic conditions, in food and other resources, in exposure to predators and parasites - and find that such
heterogeneities often play a significant role in structuring large populations, especially in lessening the risk of total extinction.