Revisiting Bolnick et al. 2003

In a paper published in The American Naturalist in 2003, Daniel Bolnick, Richard Svanbäck, James A. Fordyce, Louie Yang, Jeremy Davis, Darrin Hulsey and Matthew Forister reviewed studies that examined individual specialization on resource use and quantified how much inter-individual variation contributes to a species' niche width. Based on their review, they discuss the ecological, …

Revisiting Jackson et al. 2001

In a paper published in Science in 2001, Jeremy Jackson, Michael Kirby, Wolfgang Berger, Karen Bjorndal, Louis Botsford, Bruce Bourque, Roger Bradbury, Richard Cooke, Jon Erlandson, James Estes, Terence Hughes, Susan Kidwell, Carina Lange, Hunter Lenihan, John Pandolfi, Charles Peterson, Robert Steneck, Mia Tegner and Robert Warner showed, using paleoecological, archeological and historical data, that …

Revisiting Fahrig and Merriam 1985

In a paper published in Ecology in 1985, Lenore Fahrig and Gray Merriam presented a model for changes in population sizes in a set of interconnected patches, which predicted that populations in isolated patches will grow at a slower rate and are thus morel likely to go extinct than those in connected patches. Fahrig and …

Revisiting Schindler 1977

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 …

Revisiting Simberloff and Wilson 1969

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 …

Revisiting Pimm et al. 1988

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 …

Revisiting Levin 1998

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, …

Revisiting Loreau and Hector 2001

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 …

Revisiting Levine 2000

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 …

Revisiting Seehausen et al. 1997

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 …