Revisiting Daniels et al. 1992

In a paper published in PNAS in 1992, RJ Ranjit Daniels, NV Joshi and Madhav Gadgil reported that bird richness declined with increasing woody plant diversity and vertical stratification in natural evergreen forests in Uttara Kannada district of the Western Ghats, India - a pattern that ran counter to what was generally believed at that …

Revisiting Chapin 2004

In an article published in World Watch magazine in 2004, Mac Chapin critiqued the work and style of functioning of three big conservation NGOS -- World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Conservation International (CI), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) -- , especially in relation to their neglect of indigenous peoples living within their areas of work. Based …

Revisiting Meyer et al. 1990

In a paper published in Nature in 1990, Axel Meyer, Thomas Kocher, Pereti Basasibwaki, and Allan Wilson, using mitochondrial DNA sequences, provided evidence in support of a monophyletic origin of the cichlid diversity in Lake Victoria. Whats more, they found that the genetic variation among these cichlids was less than within the human species suggesting …

Revisiting Packer et al. 1990

In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1990, Craig Packer, David Scheel and Anne Pusey used field data on lions from Serengeti National Park to argue against a dominant idea at the time: grouping patterns are determined only by foraging success. Packer and colleague's observations suggested, instead, that grouping patterns are linked to …

Revisiting Cavender-Bares et al. 2004

In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 2004, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, David Ackerly, David Baum and Fakhri Bazzaz provided an explanation for the maintenance of oak diversity in local communities in North Central Florida. Cavender-Bares and colleagues found that co-occurring oaks are more distantly related that expected by chance, a pattern resulting from convergence …

Revisiting Vermeij 1977

In a paper published in Paleobiology in 1977, Geerat Vermeij examined the Mesozoic reorganisation of shallow water marine communities using gastropod skeletal geometry and other kinds of data. Based on the evidence, Vermeij argued that predation and grazing had grown stronger and become more damaging to skeletons, driving gastropod shell evolution. Forty years after the …

Revisiting Pauly et al. 1998

In a paper published in Science in 1998, Daniel Pauly, Villy Christensen, Johanne Dalsgaard, Rainer Froese and Francisco Torres Jr., using the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO's) global fisheries catch data, showed that the mean trophic level had declined over the period of 1950 to 1994. In other words, fisheries, over this period, was moving …

Revisiting Rainey & Travisano 1998

In a paper published in Nature in 1998, Paul Rainey and Michael Travisano showed that identical populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluroescens diversify morphologically when provided with ecological opportunity, but show no divergence when opportunity is restricted. Further, the morphs follow a predictable sequence of evolution maintained by competition. These results provided support for the …

Revisiting Şekercioğlu et al. 2002

In a paper published in PNAS in 2002, Çağan Şekercioğlu, Paul Ehrlich, Gretchen Daily, Deniz Aygen, David Goehring and Randi Sandi showed. using data from forest fragments in Costa Rica, that the ability to move through the deforested matrix was the best predictor of persistence of understory insectivorous birds in small forest fragments. Bird diets, …

Revisiting Srivastava & Lawton 1998

In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1998, Diane Srivastava and John Lawton, using experiments on tree hole insect communities, tested the "more individuals hypothesis", the idea that more productive support higher species richness because they have a greater number of individuals. Srivastava and Lawton found that more productive tree holes had higher …