Niche Hierarchy: Structure, Organization, and Assembly in Natural Systems

This book attempts to produce a unifying theoretical synthesis to tie together four hitherto disparate areas of ecology: 1) the topological structure of food webs, 2) ecosystem dynamics, 3) ecosystem/food web assembly, and 4) patterns of species abundance.

George Sugihara is a professor of biological oceanography in the Physical Oceanography Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, where he is currently the inaugural holder of the McQuown Chair in Natural Science.Dr. Sugihara’s research into complex systems and nonlinear forecasting has lead to diverse collaborations across academic disciplines as well as with governmental and industrial partners. Part of his current research at Scripps seeks solutions to environmental problems through a combination of scientific and financial market innovations, two areas that reflect his background as a scientist and Managing Director for Deutsche Bank. Sugihara conducts fundamental research on a variety of natural science areas including ecology, neuroscience, gene expression, atmospheric and climate science, and is currently championing a method for addressing Berkeley’s age-old dilemma of detecting causation (versus correlation) in time-series data.Prior to joining Scripps, Sugihara was concurrently the Wigner Prize Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and associate professor of Mathematics at the University of Tennessee. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, Imperial College London, Kyoto University, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He held the UC San Diego John Dove Isaacs Chair at Scripps Oceanography, and was a visiting fellow at Merton College, Oxford University. He is recipient of several national and international awards, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Mathematical Sciences and its Applications, a National Research Council advisory board that advises government agencies and guides the nation’s mathematics agenda to better serve national needs.Sugihara received an M.S. in biology and a Ph.D. in mathematical biology, both from Princeton University, where he received the Ogden Porter Jabocbus Prize, Princeton’s highest academic award given by the Graduate School.