Hanski, a leading thinker in metapopulation ecology, studies checkerspot butterfly populations in Finland. Ehrlich, one of the leading ecologists and conservation biologist, investigates checkerspot butterfly populations in California. This book reports on and synthsizes the major long-term research of both workers' careers on the population biology of checkerspot butterflies.
Paul Ralph Ehrlich was an American biologist and educator who was the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he was an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies), but he was better known as an ecologist and a demographer, specifically for his warnings about unchecked population growth and limited resources. Ehrlich became a household name after publication of his controversial 1968 book The Population Bomb.