Showing papers on "Ecology (disciplines) published in 1982"

Red Deer: Behavior and Ecology of Two Sexes

Abstract: Red Deer: Behavior and Ecology of Two Sexes is the most extensive study yet available of reproduction in wild vertebrate. The authors synthesize data collected over ten years on a population of individually recognizable red deer, usually regarded as conspecific with the American elk. Their results reveal the extent of sex differences in behavior, reproduction, and ecology and make a substantial contribution to our understanding of sexual selection.

Population biology of infectious diseases.

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Introduction to plant population ecology

Abstract: Introduction to plant population biology , Introduction to plant population biology , مرکز فناوری اطلاعات و اطلاع رسانی کشاورزی

The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy

Abstract: ural limitations and insights has been the foundation for all our doubts about the very existence of a coherent constellation that can even be called nature. This idea is the foundation for an antinaturalistic body of epistemological theories. The claim of epistemology to adjudicate the validity of knowledge as a formal and abstract inquiry has always been opposed by the claim of history to treat knowledge as a problem of genesis, not merely of knowing in a formal and abstract sense. From this historical standpoint, mental processes do not live a life of their own. Their seemingly autonomous construction of the world is actually inseparable from the way they are constructed by the world — a world that is richly historical not only in a social sense but in a natural one as well. I do not mean that nature "knows" things that we do not know, but rather that we are the very "knowingness" of nature, the embodiment of nature's evolution into intellect, mind and self-reflexivity.[6] In the abstract world of Cartesian, Lockean, and Kantian epistemology, this proposition is difficult to demonstrate. Renaissance and post-Renaissance epistemology lacks all sense of historicity. If it looks back at all to the history of mind, it does so within a context so overwhelmingly social and from historical levels so far-removed from the biological genesis of mind that it can never make contact with nature. Its very claim to "modernity" has been a systematic unravelling of the interface between nature and mind that Hellenic thought tried to establish. This interface has been replaced by an unbridgeable dualism betweenmentality and the externalworld. InDescartes, dualism occurs between soul and body; in Locke, between the perceiving senses and a perceived world; in Kant, between mind and external reality. Thus, the problem of nature's knowingness has traditionally been seen from the knowing end of a long social history rather than from its beginnings. When this history is instead viewed from its origins, mentality and its

Ecology of Bat Reproduction

Abstract: The ecology of reproduction became firmly established as a discrete area of investigation with the publication of Sadlier’s monograph in 1969, The Ecology of Reproduction in Wild and Domestic Animals. I witnessed the gestation of this book, for Sadlier wrote it in the Wellcome Institute in the London Zoo, where I was working at the time on a doctoral thesis. It stimulated me, as it has stimulated others, to adopt techniques and approaches to the study of wild mammals similar to those long used by students of domestic species.

Environs: Relativistic Elementary Particles for Ecology

Abstract: Corpuscular theories have a favored place in science. The power of physics, chemistry, and biology can be correlated with the extent of particulate conceptions in these subjects. Elementary particles, atoms, molecules, genes, cells, and organisms are all familiar examples of powerful particles. Ecology lacks an elementary particle of its own, with discoverable properties that can clarify the nature of environment and its relationship to life. The purpose of this paper is to suggest such a particle and indicate what is known about it and some directions for learning more. Ecology, the biological science of environment, has not produced a synthesis of environment from its broad technical knowledge of the influence of external parameters on organisms. Before Darwin (1859), environment was considered an organic whole. Everything in it made some contribution and had some meaning with respect to everything else. Darwin subscribed to this view, but his emphasis, and that of his followers, on the evolving organism struggling to survive, suppressed the exploration of holistic aspects of the origin of species that might have been developed. After Darwin, the organism came into great focus, first as a comparative anatomical entity, then later with physiological, cellular, molecular, behavioral, and genetic detail. In contrast, the organism's environment blurred through relative inattention into a fuzzy generality. The result was two distinct things (dualism), organism and environment, supplanting the original unified organismenvironment whole (synergism). So separated from environment, the organism had to adapt back in. Thus, the main activity of existence portrayed in evolutionary ecology literature, for a variety of improbable biological objects from genes (Waddington 1957; Dawkins 1978) to ecosystems (Odum 1969), is the pursuit of \"adaptive strategies.\" An overworked metaphor is the signal of a strained paradigm, and in this case it is clear that environment must become more than a nonspecific selector of traits according to advantages to individuals, or in response to strategies laid down by all sorts of implausible units. The leaving of offspring, Darwin's criterion of success in adaptation, came to be called \"fitness.\" This first principle of evolution has nothing to do with the degree of fit, in Leibniz' (1949) sense of mutual conformity, between many things in a large system of interrelationships. Fitness is a local

On inference in ecology and evolutionary biology: the problem of multiple causes

Abstract: If one investigates a process that has several causes but assumes that it has only one cause, one risks ruling out important causal factors Three mechanisms account for this mistake: either the significance of the single cause under test is masked by noise contributed by the unsuspected and uncontrolled factors, or the process appears only when two or more causes interact, or the process appears when there are present any of a number of sufficient causes which are not mutually exclusive In ecology and evolutionary biology, experiments usually test single factor hypotheses, and many scientists apparently believe that hypotheses incorporating several factors are so much more difficult to test that to do so would not be practical We discuss several areas in ecology and evolutionary biology in which the presupposition of simple causation has apparently impeded progress We also examine a more mature field, the study of atherosclerosis, in which single factor studies did significantly delay progress towards understanding what now appears to be a multifactor process The problem has three solutions: either factorial experiments, dynamic models that make quantitative predictions, response-surface methods, or all three In choosing a definition for 'cause', we make a presupposition that profoundly influences subsequent observations and experimental designs Alternative definitions of causation should be considered as contributing to potential cures for research problems

Environment, Subsistence and System: The Ecology of Small-Scale Social Formations

Abstract: Human ecology is ultimately part of a general theory of society. This is the argument developed here by Roy Ellen, whose exploration of the interplay between social organization and ecology in small-scale subsistence systems has direct bearings both on the investigation of human environmental relations in general and on contemporary social theory. He argues that while ecological study of non-industrial societies cannot be elevated to the status of theory, domain or discipline, it can be represented as a single 'problematic' that historically has acquired some degree of autonomy and which continues to make a significant contribution to a wider anthropology. Dr Ellen introduces his subject matter through an extended and systematic discussion of some major frameworks developed within the last hundred years to examine and explain facets of the relationship between culture, social organization and the environment: determinism, possibilism, cultural ecology, systems theory and ideas derived from modern biology. He follows this with a detailed review and appraisal of important recent research involving the use of ecological models, methods and data. This original and innovative study of the pre-eminently social character of human ecological relations will be of considerable interest to all students and researchers concerned with understanding the nature of the relationship between human beings and their environments.

Arctic arthropods : a review of systematics and ecology with particular reference to the North American fauna

Abstract: from the valuable perspective of a researcher who has spent winters as well as summers in eastern Beringia. Alhugb eastern Siberian data are utilized, emphasis is on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of interior Alaska. While there is some discussion of West’s own work in the Tangle Lakes region of central Alaska, the monograph is not, even incidentally, a site reprt. The ultimate objective is “a contribution toward a comprehmsive Wry on the poopling of Beringia and the New World” @. 163). As such it invites the attention of moat Americanist archaealogists as well as northern specialists. Chapter One is an excellent synthesis of contemporary environments in northcastcrn Siberia and Alaska, one which I suspect will contribute to a number of lectures in the next few years. Chapter Two reconstructs Beringia between 25 OOO and 8OOO B.C. as a unique, now-extinct, cold ry steppe tundra capable of supporting a diverse fauna including many large herbivores. The serious reader will have to integrate this familiar reconstruction with the various views expressed in the recently published Paleoecology of Beringia (Academic Press, 1982), a work unavailable to West. Chapter Three introduces the hem of the book, the Beringians. Although the author appears reluctant to provide a full-face characterization, these are eventually revealed to be terrestrial arctic hunters adapted to the exploitation of large herbivores of the arctic steppe Beringian biome. The hallmark of their technology is sharp-edged parallel-sided flakes (blades, more commonly microblades) struck from specially prepared cores or microcores. Some regional variation is noted in Beringian tool inventories with varying emphasis on retouched flake tools, burins, and large lenticular bifaces which are thought to have functioned as knives. Blsdes and microblacks, while often broken, are seldom shaped or retouched. Absence of obvious stone weapon tips leads to the plausible inference that seldom-preserved tools of antler, bone, and ivory were significant. The Beringians are reasonably viewed as a late Pleistocene eastern extension of a widespread Eurasian Upper Paleolithic technology. A close historical relationship between eastern Siberian and Alaskan final Pleistocene techdogies is indicated. The term “Dyuktai culture” includes most pertinent Siberian assemblages, and the term “ D e d i culture” most (not all) Alaskan Beringian assemblages. More technological diversity is seen in Siberia than in Alaska and a key role is postulated (plausibly but on minimal evidence) for the nowdmwned heartiand of central Beringia. The coming of man to eastern Beringia is seen as late, perhaps not much earlier than 11 000 years ago. Candidates for an earlier human presence in far northwestern North America are dismissed. One major exception is made to the simple formula that northern core and blade technology equals Beringian. Quite reasonably excluded is the Araic Small Tool tradition which appeand on the NndrasandcosstsofarcticAmericPbetween4000and5000yearsago. Core and blade technology is thus basic to the concept of a Beringian tradition. The author presents a rough form cntegorization (misleadingly termed a formal claesification) of cores. As is true of other illustrations in this book, the core drawings are so reduced in size that they almost require study under magnification. Nineteen pages of tables provide a summary of over 165 microblade sites (ca. 137 from eastern Beringia and 28 from western Beringia) known up to 1980 with references, dating, inventory description, and comments. Any specialist can find something to complain about in tabulations of this kind. I merely note that more detailed published dtscriptions than those utilized here are available for sites on the Alaska P e h u l a , Anangula Island, and the southwest Yukon Territory of Canada. Also, some unlikely candiites (for example, Tuktu in Anaktuvuk Pass) are incorporated in the Beringian tradition by mechanical equation of earky microblades with this entity. Tukh~ is later explained @. 226) as a contact phenomenon between relict Beringians and Northern Archaic (West terms them “Boreal Archaic”) users of sidenotched projectile points, but since the Tuktu inventory is dominated by Northern Archaic f m s its inclusion in the Fkringian tradition on the basis of the presence of a microblade industry seems dubious taxonomic procedure. About 30 pages are devoted to a general discussion of the author’s work in the Tangle Lakes. Twenty Beringian tradition sites are known here, but none is described in detail. Those interested in using this material for comparative purposes will be frustrated by failure to provide. site provenience for the majority of the illustrated specimens and confused by the transposition of most text references to Figures 14 and 15, an unfortunate editorial l pse. There are also 15 figures of diagnostic artifact8 fromother Beringian sites. Unfommte.ly, references to Figures 29 and 30 have also been transposed. REVIEWS

Long-Distance Migration of Drosophila

Abstract: A recent paper by Jones et al. (1981) shows that Drosophila pseudoobscura flies released in the open desert can travel long distances. These investigators uggest that such migration can lead to considerable gene flow, and may account for the similarity of allozyme frequencies among populations of this species. It is possible, however, that the vagility of flies released in the desert is not their natural behavior. One would like to know if flies will leave favorable or already-populated areas and traverse those less favorable. We report here two release experiments in Death Valley, California, that demonstrate Drosophila will in fact leave oases and venture into the surrounding desert, and also travel from one oasis to another across many kilometers of desert. These results support the hypothesis that Drosophila migration may be more extensive than previously supposed. Our first experiment was at Travertine Springs in Death Valley (36? 26' N, 116? 49' W), an oasis 4.2 km southeast of Furnace Creek Ranch. (Furnace Creek Ranch is a commercial date grove and tourist complex with year-round irrigation.) The Travertine oasis area (fig. 1) forms an oval about 350 m long by 80 m wide (long axis NE to SW), and consists of a clump of date palms and several small springs. The water from these springs forms a net of rivulets traversing an area of grasses, mesquite (Prosopis), and tamarisk (Tamarix). To the southwest the oasis is bordered by a road, a dry wash about 100 m wide, and cliffs rising abruptly from the far side of the wash. To the northeast the oasis borders on open desert, which is an old alluvial fan. Here the vegetation is mainly saltbush (Atriplex) and creosote (Larrea), and the area is similar to the desert release site described by Jones et al. (1981). The release population consisted of about 30,000 Drosophila collected over 48 h at the Furnace Creek Ranch date grove. The sample consisted of about 20% D. pseudoobscura (\"black flies\"; identity confirmed by karyotyping of a sample) and the rest of roughly equal proportions of D. melanogaster and D. simulans (collectively, \"yellow flies\"): These flies were divided into three approximately equal groups, each of which was marked with a different color of micronized fluorescent dust. The groups were released shortly after sunset at 6:15 p.m., March 31, 1980. One group was released at the northeastern end of the oasis at the major spring outlet, one group at the base of the cliffs 450 m SW of the oasis release site, and the third group in the desert 350 m NE of the oasis release site. Flies were collected the next evening along a 1,600 m trapline extending from the base of the cliffs through the oasis and 1,150 m into the desert. The trapline contained 42 buckets of banana bait, spaced 33 m apart except for irregularities resulting from terrain and a few widely spaced buckets in the desert (fig. 1). Recaptured flies were scored the same evening under ultraviolet light. The results are given in table 1. These data are summarized by dividing the recapture trapline into three areas: the desert east of the oasis (23 baits), the dry