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 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 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 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 …

Revisiting Ritchie et al. 1998

In a paper published in Ecology in 1998, Mark Ritchie, David Tilman and Johannes Knops reported the results of their 7-year long field experiment to examine the effects of herbivores on nitrogen cycling in a nitrogen-limited oak savanna. The results of their study suggested that herbivores, by reducing the abundance of plants with ntirogen-rich tissues, …

Revisiting Silvertown et al. 1993

In a paper published in the Journal of Ecology in 1993, Jonathan Silvertown, Miguel Franco, Irene Pisanty, and Ana Mendoza analysed elasticities of matrix projection models to quantify the contribution of different life cycle components to population increase rates of 45 herbs and 21 woody species. They found that herbs differed significantly from woody plants …

Revisiting Likens et al. 1970

In a study published in Ecological Monographs in 1970, Gene Likens, F. Herbert Bormann, Noye Johnson, Don Fisher and Robert Pierce compared nutrient budgets between a control forested catchment and a catchment that was deforested and regrowth prevented for two years through the application of herbicide. Likens and colleagues demonstrated that this manipulation caused changes …

Revisiting Kessler & Baldwin 2001

In a study published in Science in 2001, Andre Kessler and Ian Baldwin quantified and characterised the volatiles emitted by Nicotiana attenuata when attacked by herbivores and mimicked their release to see if they reduced herbivory by attracting egg predators inhibiting herbivore oviposition. Their results suggested that release of volatiles could reduce presence of herbivores …