Revisiting old papers in ecology and evolution through interviews with their authors
In a paper in Science in 1977, David Schindler showed, using whole-lake experiments, that natural biological mechanisms can compensate for deficiencies in carbon and nitrogen in lakes affected by eutrophication, but no such mechanisms exist for phosphorous. Based on his findings, Schindler recommended that management of lakes should focus on control of phosphorous levels. Forty … Continue reading Revisiting Schindler 1977
In a paper published in Ecology in 1969, Daniel Simberloff and E.O. Wilson reported the findings of a "defaunation experiment" they conducted on mangrove islands in the Florida Keys, to test the Theory of Island Biogeography proposed by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson. In addition to this paper, Simberloff and Wilson published two other papers … Continue reading Revisiting Simberloff and Wilson 1969
In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 1988, Stuart Pimm, Lee Jones and Jared Diamond explored existing mathematical models and developed theoretical predictions about how risk of extinction would vary between species. Pimm and colleagues then put these predictions to test using a database of annual breeding censuses of birds carried out by … Continue reading Revisiting Pimm et al. 1988
In 1998, in an invited paper in the journal Ecosystems, Simon Levin made a case for the value of viewing ecosystems as complex adaptive systems, in particular to understand the relative roles of the environment and self-organisation in determining system properties. At the end of the paper, Levin proposed six questions that, according to him, … Continue reading Revisiting Levin 1998
In a 2001 paper in Nature, Michel Loreau and Andy Hector described a new method, based on the Price equation, to partition the "selection effect" and the "complementarity effect" of biodiversity on ecosystem function, and demonstrated its use on data from the BIODEPTH experiments (BIODiversity and Ecological Processes in Terrestrial Herbaceous ecosystems: experimental manipulations of … Continue reading Revisiting Loreau and Hector 2001
In 2000, Jonathan Levine published a paper in Science reporting the results of a field experiment that showed that the impact of species diversity on invasive diversity depends on spatial scale. At small scales, the removal of species reduces invasion resistance, but at community-wide scales, the more diverse a community is the more likely it … Continue reading Revisiting Levine 2000
In 1997, Ole Seehausen, Jacques van Alphen and Frans Witte published a paper in Science providing evidence for a novel route through which eutrophication can reduce species diversity. Species of cichlid fish in Lake Victoria are capable of interbreeding, but mate choice based on coloration and subsequent assortative mating keeps species distinct. Seehausen and colleagues found … Continue reading Revisiting Seehausen et al. 1997
