Revisiting Karban et al. 2000

In a paper published in Oecologia in 2000, Richard Karban, Ian Baldwin, Kimberly Baxter, Grit Laue and Gary Felton experimentally demonstrated that plants that had not been attacked by herbivores could sense and respond, by upping their defenses, to cues released by neighboring plants that had been attacked. Seventeen years after the paper was published, …

Revisiting Kokko et al. 2002

In a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London London B, Hanna Kokko, Robert Brooks, John McNamara and Alasdair Houston integrated 'Fisherian' and 'good genes' ideas into a general model of female mate choice for indirect benefits. Fourteen years after the paper was published I asked Hanna Kokko how she got interested …

Revisiting Leibold et al. 2004

In a paper published in Ecology Letters in 2004, Mathew Leibold, Marcel Holyoak, Nicolas Mouquet, Priyanga Amarasekare, Jonathan Chase, Martha Hoopes, Robert Holt, Jonathan Shurin, Richard Law, Dave Tilman, Michel Loreau and Andrew Gonzalez reviewed the metacommunity concept in ecology and the four paradigms or approaches that have guided theoretical and empirical work on metacommunities …

Revisiting Gill and Wolf 1975

In a paper published in Ecology in 1975, Frank Gill and Larry Wolf examined the costs and benefits of feeding territoriality in the golden-winged sunbird, a species found commonly in the montane regions of Kenya. Gill and Wolf found that maintaining territories was beneficial when the nectar levels are low but the costs of territory …

Revisiting Hubbell 1997

The Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography, published as a monograph  in 2001, by Stephen Hubbell, is considered one of the most important recent developments in Ecology. What is, probably, less well-known is that the ideas in the book were originally laid out in a paper published in the journal Coral Reefs in 1997. …

Revisiting Werner et al. 1983

In a paper published in Ecology in 1983, Earl Werner, James Gilliam, Donald Hall and Gary Mittelbach, showed experimentally that small bluegill sunfish, which are vulnerable to predation by bass, showed an observable shift in foraging behaviour when bass are present choosing to forage in less-profitable habitats. Thirty-six years after the paper was published I …

Revisiting Heinrich 1976

In a paper published in Ecological Monographs in 1976, Bernd Heinrich demonstrated, through careful observation and experiment on marked individuals, how bumblebees develop specialization in their foraging at the individual level, and examined the costs and benefits of of specialization through comparisons with other bee species. Forty years after the paper was published, I spoke …

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 Legendre 1993

In a paper published in Ecology in 1993, Pierre Legendre highlighted and proposed solutions to the problem of  "spatial autocorrelation" in the statistical analysis of ecological data. The methods proposed by Legendre have had a lasting impact on the analysis of field ecological research. Twenty-five years after the paper was published, I asked Pierre Legendre …

Revisiting Rahbek 1995

In a paper published in Ecography in 1995, Carsten Rahbek critically examined the evidence for what was then believed to be a general pattern: species richness reduces with increasing altitude. Rahbek showed that through a process of "citation inbreeding" evidence from just a few studies had become established as a general pattern of biogeography. Rahbek …