Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects

Edward O. Wilson

Museum of Comparative Zoology, The Agassiz Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

Recipient of the International Ecology Institute (ECI) Prize 1987 in terrestrial ecology

Professor Edward O. Wilson was elected by the ECI Jury chaired by Professor Sir Richard Southwood (University of Oxford, England) for his professional excellence in numerous publications, especially in the fields of population biology, biogeography, sociobiology, biodiversity, and evolutionary biology. Ed Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama (USA) in 1929. From Junior Fellow, he progressed at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), to the Frank B. Baird Professorship of Science, also holding the Curatorship of Entomology in the University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He has received prestigious international awards and is a top figure in current biological and ecological research.

EE Book 2 addresses success and dominance in ecosystems with a mastership acquired over decades of devoted, critical research. Defining 'success' as evolutionary longevity of a clade (a species and its descendants), and 'dominance' as abundance of a clade controlling the appropriation of biomass and energy, Wilson exemplifies his subject by referring to eusocial insects, especially termites and ants, but also bees and wasps.

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Book 2: Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects by Edward O. Wilson. 1990. XXI + 104 pp. ISSN 0932-2205, ISBN 978-3-946729-02-0, ECI Price: €26 + Postage

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