Ecoscience 2:304 (1995)

"This is a book of remarkable scope. Although the title suggests that it would be about diversity, Huston's book is actually a massive review of factors and processes that might conceivably impact upon the species that occur in any given area. ...Rather than a monograph on diversity, Huston has produced something more akin to a text of ecology, with diversity as a lietmotif. In fact, it might be interesting to organize an introductory ecology course around exactly that theme, and to use this book as the text.<br><br>There are over 2000 references, about the same number as in the general ecology text by Ricklefs, and more than in that by Begon et al. ... The book also presents and elaborates Huston's 1979 hypothesis that diversity patterns are the result of the combined actions of disturbance and competitive displacement. This hypothesis as presented is intuitively appealling, and the text painstakingly elaborates the argument with numerous examples and draws repeated ties with other areas of ecology. For those who seek to understand the factors thought to influence diversity in this light, the book is a tour de force."

David Currie, University of Ottawa