Revisiting Schmitz et al. 1997

In a paper published in Ecology in 1997, Oswald Schmitz, Andrew Beckerman and Kathleen O'Brien experimentally tested the relative importance of direct and indirect effects of predation in causing tropic cascades, Using an old-field system that included herbaceous plants, a herbivorous grasshopper and a spider predator, Schmitz and colleagues showed that indirect effects of predation, …

Revisiting Inouye 1978

In a paper published in Ecology in 1978, David Inouye demonstrated, using removal experiments and careful observation in Gothic, Colorado, that the use of resources by a bumblebee species is affected by the presence of other bumblebee species , a finding that suggested that competitive exclusion occurs in these species. Thirty-nine years after the paper …

Revisiting Schemske & Bradshaw 1999

In a paper published in PNAS in 1999, Douglas Schemske and Toby Bradshaw showed, through field crosses of a bee-pollinated and a hummingbird-pollinated monkeyflower (Mimulus) plant, that genes of large effect on pollinator preference have had a role in floral evolution and premating reproductive isolation of these plants. Seventeen years after the paper was published, …

Revisiting Bshary & Grutter 2006

In a paper published in Nature in 2006, Redouan Bshary and Alexandra Grutter provided experimental evidence for, both, image scoring by clients and increased cooperation by cleaners in the presence of image-scoring clients in a cleaner fish mutualism, suggesting that the mutualism is a case of indirect reciprocity. Ten years after the paper was published, …

Revisiting Coyne and Orr 1989

In a paper published in Evolution in 1989, Jerry Coyne and Allen Orr showed, through a meta-analysis of 119 pairs of closely-related Drosophila species at different stages of speciation, that mating discrimination, and sterility or inviability of hybrids, gradually increase with time since speciation. Coyne and Orr also demonstrated important differences in patterns between allopatric …

Revisiting Bond and Kamil 2002

In a paper published in Nature in 2002, Alan Bond and Alan Kamil showed, with experiments using real jays and digital moths, that frequency-dependent predation led to the evolution of greater crypticity and phenotypic variation. Fourteen years after the paper was published I spoke to Alan Bond about how he got interested in studying effects …

Revisiting Winemiller 1990

In a paper published in Ecological Monographs in 1990, Kirk Winemiller described and compared four aquatic food webs from Costa Rica and Venezuela, and related their properties to properties of the biotic communities and the physical environment. Winemiller's study was one of the first to put food web theory to test using well-sampled empirical food …

Revisiting Johnson 1993

In a paper published in Ecological Applications in 1993, Nancy Collins Johnson showed, experimentally, that fertilization of soil leads to the selection of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi that are inferior mutualists. Johnson found that fertilization, both, alters the species composition of AM fungal communities and that big bluestem plants colonized with AM fungi and other …

Revisiting Wilcove 1985

In a paper published in Ecology in 1985, David Wilcove provided experimental evidence in support of the idea that nest predation could be the cause for the decline of migratory songbirds in small woodlots in North America. Using fresh quail eggs places in artificial nests, Wilcove showed that predation was higher in smaller than in …

Revisiting Whittaker et al. 2001

In a paper published in the Journal of Biogeography in 2001, Robert Whittaker, Katherine Willis and Richard Field attempted to develop a "general, hierarchical theory of species diversity" that overcame what they saw as weaknesses of diversity theory at the time: failures to distinguish different response variables and adequately account for geographical scale. Seventeen years …