ABSTRACT
Consideration of the agroecosystem as a collection of interacting populations involves several levels of study. First, we require the conceptual tools necessary to understand and compare how each population goes about surviving and reproducing itself in the environment of the agroecosystem. These tools and their application are the subject of this chapter. Second, we need to look at the genetic basis of crop populations and how the manipulation of this genetic potential by humans has affected crop plants’ adaptability and range of tolerance. We will turn our attention to this topic in Chapter 15. Finally, we need to consider the community and ecosystem-level processes of interacting populations, which will be explored in Chapters 16 through 19.
