Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

Statistical method for testing the neutral mutation hypothesis by DNA polymorphism.

Human alteration of Earth is substantial and growing. Between one-third and one-half of the land surface has been transformed by human action; the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased by nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; more atmospheric nitrogen is fixed by humanity than by all natural terrestrial sources combined; more than half of all accessible surface fresh water is put to use by humanity; and about one-quarter of the bird species on Earth have been driven to extinction. By these and other standards, it is clear that we live on a human-dominated planet.

/pdf/human-domination-of-earth-s-ecosystems-5eevmqq987.pdf

Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems

The 11th edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine welcomes Anthony Fauci to its editorial staff, in addition to more than 85 new contributors. While the organization of the book is similar to previous editions, major emphasis has been placed on disorders that affect multiple organ systems. Important advances in genetics, immunology, and oncology are emphasized. Many chapters of the book have been rewritten and describe major advances in internal medicine. Subjects that received only a paragraph or two of attention in previous editions are now covered in entire chapters. Among the chapters that have been extensively revised are the chapters on infections in the compromised host, on skin rashes in infections, on many of the viral infections, including cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus, on sexually transmitted diseases, on diabetes mellitus, on disorders of bone and mineral metabolism, and on lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly. The major revisions in these chapters and many

Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine

Humans are altering the composition of biological communities through a variety of activities that increase rates of species invasions and species extinctions, at all scales, from local to global. These changes in components of the Earth's biodiversity cause concern for ethical and aesthetic reasons, but they also have a strong potential to alter ecosystem properties and the goods and services they provide to humanity. Ecological experiments, observations, and theoretical developments show that ecosystem properties depend greatly on biodiversity in terms of the functional characteristics of organisms present in the ecosystem and the distribution and abundance of those organisms over space and time. Species effects act in concert with the effects of climate, resource availability, and disturbance regimes in influencing ecosystem properties. Human activities can modify all of the above factors; here we focus on modification of these biotic controls. The scientific community has come to a broad consensus on many aspects of the re- lationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, including many points relevant to management of ecosystems. Further progress will require integration of knowledge about biotic and abiotic controls on ecosystem properties, how ecological communities are struc- tured, and the forces driving species extinctions and invasions. To strengthen links to policy and management, we also need to integrate our ecological knowledge with understanding of the social and economic constraints of potential management practices. Understanding this complexity, while taking strong steps to minimize current losses of species, is necessary for responsible management of Earth's ecosystems and the diverse biota they contain.

/pdf/effects-of-biodiversity-on-ecosystem-functioning-a-consensus-13j8vabcus.pdf

Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: a consensus of current knowledge

In this document, the Ecological Society of America proposes the Sustainable Biosphere Initiative (SBI), an initiative that focuses on the necessary role of ecological science in the wise management of Earth's resources and the maintenance of Earth's life support systems. This document is intended as a call to arms for all ecologists, but it will also serve as a means to communicate with individuals in other disciplines with whom ecologists must join forces to address a common predicament. This document focuses primarily on the acquisition of ecological knowledge. It identifies the ecological research programs of highest priority and recommends steps required to pursue research objectives. The document also lays the groundwork for improving the communication and application of ecological knowledge. The SBI proposes three research priorities: global change; biological diversity; and sustainable ecological systems.

The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: An Ecological Research Agenda: A Report from the Ecological Society of America

Sexual selection depends on differential patterns of mate preference and choice. Little attention has been paid, however, to the manner in which individuals acquire information about the quality of potential mates and how this information is used to form mating decisions. Different decision rules for determining mating preferences often lead to different fitness consequences for the actively searching and choosy sex. In this paper, I compare the expected fitness consequences of two alternative decision-making strategies: a best-of-n strategy (whereby searching individuals choose the best mate from a sample of size n) and a strategy based on sequential sampling (whereby the searching individual establishes a critical mate quality and continues searching until encountering a mate at or above this quality). For the same distribution of potential mate qualities, the sequential-search strategy generates higher expected fitness gains than the best-of-n strategy. This is in contrast to earlier conclusions (e.g.,...

Search Theory and Mate Choice. I. Models of Single-Sex Discrimination

Holling's Type II functional-response relationship is presented, and the formulations expressing the underlying organismal interactions which might generate such a relation arc generalized into the Type III response typical of predators showing learning behavior. An equation derived through an analogy with allosteric enzyme kinetics is given which will account for both Type II and Type III responses. The response behavior can be explained by three parameters: maximal feeding rate (F); an affinity constant (G) related to handling times, capture efficiencies, etc.; and the number of encounters (n) a predator must have with a prey item before becoming maximally efficient at utilizing the prey item as a resource. A discussion follows on the biological processes which result in shifts from Type II to Type III functional responses. Most of the learning processes involve changes in predator behavior associated with increasing encounters with prey, thus supporting parameter n as a major determinant in shifting th...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2460064

The kinetics of functional response

Foraging animals confront problems conceptually similar to those facing an economically minded consumer (46, 47), and foraging theory shares a methodology in common with economics. Indeed, the last 20 years have seen wide application of economic models in biology. A growing consensus suggests that ecological and economic theories are ultimately indistinguishable (6, 30). Economic analyses begin with an economic agent that chooses from alternative objects or activities. The analyst extracts a set of measurable attributes from this collection of objects (e.g. energy content, costs, etc) that are combined into a single index. This index has the property that objects whose attributes generate higher values are preferred by the consumer over objects generating lower values. In economics, this index (the 'utility function') is the basic organizing principle (36). Behavioral ecologists use this technique to learn what attributes should be included in an organism's utility function to determine how various attributes should be combined and weighted, and then to predict choices by maximizing the utility function under applicable constraints. The organism's utility function is, therefore, both an object of empirical study and a predictive tool. Economic analysis usually stops here, but evolutionary biologists go farther. They assume that the organisms' preferences are related to evolutionary fitness and that the options

Risk and foraging in stochastic environments

Animals process sensory information according to specific computational rules and, subsequently, form representations of their environments that form the basis for decisions and choices. The specific computational rules used by organisms will often be evolutionarily adaptive by generating higher probabilities of survival, reproduction, and resource acquisition. Experiments with enclosed colonies of bumblebees constrained to foraging on artificial flowers suggest that the bumblebee's cognitive architecture is designed to efficiently exploit floral resources from spatially structured environments given limits on memory and the neuronal processing of information. A non-linear relationship between the biomechanics of nectar extraction and rates of net energetic gain by individual bees may account for sensitivities to both the arithmetic mean and variance in reward distributions in flowers. Heuristic rules that lead to efficient resource exploitation may also lead to subjective misperception of likelihoods. Subjective probability formation may then be viewed as a problem in pattern recognition subject to specific sampling schemes and memory constraints.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/253/5023/980.full.pdf

Leslie A. Real

Papers

The Sustainable Biosphere Initiative: An Ecological Research Agenda: A Report from the Ecological Society of America

Search Theory and Mate Choice. I. Models of Single-Sex Discrimination

The kinetics of functional response

Risk and foraging in stochastic environments

Animal choice behavior and the evolution of cognitive architecture.