View article

Examiners often ask hapless candidates to "compare and contrast". It is a useful technique, and one that the authors have adopted in this chapter to examine communities of organisms that feed on green plants. The chapter is organized as follows: two sections are devoted to herbivorous insects and examine processes that determine how many species co-occur, and how they interact. The next section then looks at mammalian herbivores, comparing and contrasting the organization of mammalian assemblages with insect assemblages. The last section concludes with some speculations and unsolved problems.