Yuri Ivanovich Chernov is one of the greatest modern experts in ecology and biogeography, Arctic regions in particular, not only in Russia but globally. His main monographs are "Nature Zonation and Terrestrial Animal Life" (1975), "Structure of the Animal Population of the Subarctic" (1978) and "Life of the Tundra" (1980), all in Russian. The latter book was later published in English as "The Living Tundra" (1985) with Cambridge University Press and, together with the second edition, for 20 years became the only truly indispensable manual of tundra science in the world. In the present collection of papers, some of Y. I. Chernov's students or followers attempt to reflect upon a number of the synecological and biogeographical paradigms he advanced. The constituent papers seem to unite their authors' urges towards arriving from facts to a phenomenon, and from phenomena to patterns, this being so characteristic to the way of thinking of Yuri Ivanovich himself. The volume contains review papers on yeast, myxomicetes, soil microfungi, mosses, higher plants, nematodes, oribatid mites, millipedes, spiders, collembolans, ants, beetles, butterflies, and birds. The book is addressed to botanists and zoologists, ecologists, biogeographers and anyone interested in the nature of the polar and adjacent regions.