Revisiting Johnsingh 1983

In a paper published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society in 1983, AJT Johnsingh reported the findings of his study on large mammalian predators and prey in Bandipur Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. This study formed part of Johnsingh's PhD dissertation on dholes, likely the first PhD in wildlife biology by an Indian biologist. …

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 Ostrom & Nagendra 2006

In a paper published in PNAS in 2006, Elinor Ostrom and Harini Nagendra synthesized the findings of a long-term research program aimed at understanding how institutional factors affect forests managed under different kinds of tenure. Bringing together satellite images, socio-ecological studies in the field, and laboratory experiments of human behaviour, Ostrom and Nagendra showed that …

Revisiting Couzin et al. 2005

In a paper published in Nature in 2005, Iain Couzin, Jens Krause, Nigel Franks and Simon Levin modelled how information can pass between members of groups without signalling, and when members don't know which, if any, of the other members have information. Couzin and colleagues showed that a very small proportion of informed individuals can …

Revisiting Davies & Brooke 1988

In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1988, Nick Davies and Michael Brooke unraveled, using a mix of natural history observation and clever experiments, the nature of the interaction between the brood-parasitic common cuckoo and its host the reed warbler. Their experiments showed that many facets of the cuckoo's behaviour are likely to have …

Revisiting Jiggins et al. 2001

In a paper published in Nature in 2001, Chris Jiggins, Russell Naisbit, Rebecca Coe and James Mallet showed that divergence in mimicry of colour pattern was responsible for the origin of two Heliconia butterfly species. Using experiments, Jiggins and colleagues showed that differences in mimicry pattenrs led to assortative mating of the sister species and …

Revisiting Dingemanse et al. 2002

In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 2002, Niels Dingemanse, Christiaan Both, Piet Drent, Kees van Oers and Arie van Noordwijk showed, using an open field test in the laboratory on wild caught great tits, that, 1. there is consistent individual variation in behaviour, and 2. this behaviour is heritable. Fourteen years after the …

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 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, …