Fresh concepts in the study of seed dispersal are spurring a host of exciting new questions, new answers to old questions, new methods and approaches, and a reinvigoration of the field.Seed Dispersal: Theory and its Application in a Changing World presents both recent advances and reviews of current knowledge demonstrating the vigour and vibrancy of the field. It provides new perspectives and directions at a time when efforts to meet growing environmental challenges threatening natural systems are of utmost importance.

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Seed Dispersal focuses on the mechanics and processes involved in seed dispersal, including its implications in ecology, animal behavior, plant and animal biogeography, speciation, and evolution. The selection first elaborates on the aerial motion of seeds, fruits, spores, and pollen and seed dispersal by water. Discussions focus on seed dispersal by rain, river, and flood, effective seed dispersal by ocean currents compared to other vectors, aerodynamic forces and their effects, and launching and release mechanisms. The text then takes a look at seed dispersal syndromes in Australian Acacia, including inference of dispersal syndromes, seed dispersal syndromes, ecological consequences of seed dispersal, and evolutionary derivation of dispersal syndromes. The publication ponders on seed dispersal by fruit-eating birds and mammals, rodents as seed consumers and dispersers, and seed dispersal in relation to fire. Topics include fire as a dispersal vector, long distance dispersal, granivorous rodents and the fates of seeds, determinants of the fate path, population ecology of seed dispersal, and foraging for fruits. The selection is a valuable reference for researchers interested in the factors involved in seed dispersal.

Conservation Biology for All provides cutting-edge but basic conservation science to a global readership. A series of authoritative chapters have been written by the top names in conservation biology with the principal aim of disseminating cutting-edge conservation knowledge as widely as possible. Important topics such as balancing conversion and human needs, climate change, conservation planning, designing and analyzing conservation research, ecosystem services, endangered species management, extinctions, fire, habitat loss, and invasive species are covered. Numerous textboxes describing additional relevant material or case studies are also included. The global biodiversity crisis is now unstoppable; what can be saved in the developing world will require an educated constituency in both the developing and developed world. Habitat loss is particularly acute in developing countries, which is of special concern because it tends to be these locations where the greatest species diversity and richest centres of endemism are to be found. Sadly, developing world conservation scientists have found it difficult to access an authoritative textbook, which is particularly ironic since it is these countries where the potential benefits of knowledge application are greatest. There is now an urgent need to educate the next generation of scientists in developing countries, so that they are in a better position to protect their natural resources.

Mutualisms between animals and plants, such as pollination, seed dispersal and ant-plant protection, are key ecological processes in many ecosystems throughout the world. Like any other ecological interaction, plant-animal mutualisms occur in a community context. Therefore, one-to-one interactions are very rare in nature and the majority of species, both animals and plants, have more than one partner. Recently, studies on mutualistic interactions at the community level have used the "network approach" in order to simplify complex interactions and to determine both the pattern of interaction and the properties of species in networks. In this dissertation, I use network theory combined with long-term field work, phylogenetic and multivariate analysis, species extinctions simulations and experimental manipulation to identify the pattern of interaction in a seed dispersal network, to assess the contribution of particular animal species to network stability and robustness, and to address the extent to which seed dispersal interactions can structure plant communities. To do so, I studied a hyper-diverse seed dispersal network sampled in the Brazilian Pantanal, which includes interactions among plant species from 28 families and seed dispersers, both native and exotic species, from 25 families and 4 taxonomic groups. This study contributes novel information on seed dispersal at the community level, especially because I examined a diverse and relatively complete seed dispersal network, which may provide insights for other diverse systems, especially in the tropics. Besides generating information on the ecology and evolution of plant-animal interactions, this study also shows that not all seed disperser species are equal at the community level; and body size of dispersers seem to be a useful proxy of relative importance for dispersal services. Since contemporary defaunation differentially affects species depending on body size, this work illustrates how human activities, such as hunting, land use and climate change, affect not only taxa, but also crucial processes in which animals of different body size play different roles. This study emphasizes that conservation science needs to look at the conservation of ecological processes driven by species interactions.