Download or read book A Multiscale Study of the Ecological and Evolutionary Response of Spermophilus Armatus to Climate Change written by Kim Bonniwell O'keefe and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Heatstroke written by Anthony D. Barnosky and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2006, one of the hottest years on record, a “pizzly” was discovered near the top of the world. Half polar bear, half grizzly, this never-before-seen animal might be dismissed as a fluke of nature. Anthony Barnosky instead sees it as a harbinger of things to come. In Heatstroke, the renowned paleoecologist shows how global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures. While melting ice may have helped produce the pizzly, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Plants and animals that have followed the same rhythms for millennia are suddenly being confronted with a world they’re unprepared for—and adaptation usually isn’t an option. This is not the first time climate change has dramatically transformed Earth. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last ice age, when mass extinctions swept the planet. The differences now are that climate change is faster and hotter than past changes, and for the first time humanity is driving it. Which means this time we can work to stop it. No one knows exactly what nature will come to look like in this new age of global warming. But Heatstroke gives us a haunting portrait of what we stand to lose and the vitality of what can be saved.
Download or read book Ecological Responses to Paleoclimatic Change written by Jessica lynn Blois and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecological and Evolutionary Responses of a Polymorphic Amphibian Plethodon Cinereus to Climate Change written by Annette Evans and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global climate is changing at an alarming rate and how species will respond to the associated environmental changes remains largely uncertain. The multidimensional selective pressures created by climate change often make it difficult to determine both if and how species are likely to respond. Spatial and temporal changes in environmental conditions, particularly temperature, often have a disproportionate impact on amphibians, which typically require cool, moist conditions to survive. My dissertation research examines how climate change, specifically temperature, influences the ecological and evolutionary responses of a color polymorphic salamander, Plethodon cinereus. This salamander has two main color morphs, striped and unstriped, which vary spatially in their relative abundances and show a variety of physiological, dietary, and behavioral differences. These differences suggest that these color morphs may have different ecological or evolutionary strategies and hence may respond differently to stressors associated with climate change. Through a combination of field observations, controlled lab experiments, and ecological modelling my dissertation extends our knowledge into how temperature impacts the ecology and evolution of P. cinereus. In Chapter 1, I resurveyed P. cinereus populations originally surveyed in the 1970s to determine how climate change has impacted morph proportions. My results suggest climate is important across space, although we observed no significant changes in relative morph proportions in response to climatic changes over time. Chapter 2 expands on this work by determining whether forest cover interacts with climate to buffer salamander populations from recent climate changes. My results show that forests are buffering salamander populations, but also suggests that forest cover alone cannot explain spatial and temporal variations in morph frequencies across New England. In Chapter 3, I tested whether temperature affected the coloration and development of P. cinereus. I found evidence that developmental temperature influences hatchling coloration- either via plasticity or differential mortality. Finally, in Chapter 4 I tested the thermal sensitivity of various physiological traits to determine whether color morphs differed physiologically. All the physiological traits I measured were sensitive to temperature and I found that morphs differed in some, but not all physiological traits.
Download or read book Drafting a Conservation Blueprint written by Craig Groves and published by . This book was released on 2003-05-16 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drafting a Conservation Blueprint lays out for the first time in book form a step-by-step planning process for conserving the biological diversity of entire regions. In an engaging and accessible style, the author explains how to develop a regional conservation plan and offers experience-based guidance that brings together relevant information from the fields of ecology, conservation biology, planning, and policy. Individual chapters outline and discuss the main steps of the planning process, including: • an overview of the planning framework • selecting conservation targets and setting goals • assessing existing conservation areas and filling information gaps • assessing population viability and ecological integrity • selecting and designing a portfolio of conservation areas • assessing threats and setting priorities A concluding section offers advice on turning conservation plans into action, along with specific examples from around the world. The book brings together a wide range of information about conservation planning that is grounded in both a strong scientific foundation and in the realities of implementation.
Download or read book Cheetahs of the Serengeti Plains written by Timothy M. Caro and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-08-15 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cheetahs of the Serengeti Plains is the most comprehensive account of carnivore social behavior to date. Synthesizing more than a decade of research in the wild, this book offers a detailed account of the behavior and ecology of cheetahs. Compared with other large cats, and other mammals, cheetahs have an unusual breeding system; whereas lions live in prides and tigers are solitary, some cheetahs live in groups while others live by themselves. Tim Caro explores group and solitary living among cheetahs and discovers that the causes of social behavior vary dramatically, even within a single species. Why do cheetah cubs stay with their mother for a full year after weaning? Why do adolescents remain in groups? Why do adult males live in permanent associations with each other? Why do adult females live alone? Through observations on the costs and benefits of group living, Caro offers new insight into the complex behavior of this extraordinary species. For example, contrary to common belief about cooperative hunting in large carnivores, he shows that neither adolescents nor adult males benefit from hunting in groups. With many surprising findings, and through comparisons with other cat species, Caro enriches our understanding of the evolution of social behavior and offers new perspectives on conservation efforts to save this charismatic and endangered carnivore.
Download or read book Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America Volume 1 Terrestrial Carnivores Ungulates and Ungulate Like Mammals written by Christine M. Janis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-05-28 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is designed as a source and reference for people interested in the history and fossil record of North American tertiary mammals. Each chapter covers a different family or order, and includes information on anatomical features, systematics, the distribution of the genera and species at different fossil localities, and a discussion of their paleobiology. Many of these groups have never been covered in this fashion before.
Download or read book Global Palaeoclimate of the Late Cenozoic written by V.A. Zubakov and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1990-03-20 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a detailed description of the history and chronology of global climate based on event-signal stratigraphy. The history of global climate is described for the last fifty million years with the description for the last one million years in detail. Climatostratigraphic sequences of twelve key regions are taken as a basis, eight of them situated in the USSR territories. Chronology of climatic events of the Pleistocene, Pliocene and Miocene is developed based on palaeomagnetic and radiometric data. The authors' version of its correlation with oxygene-isotope scales of deep-sea sediments is given. Theoretical problems of climatic stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology are discussed, in particular, the causes of climatic change. The Northern Hemisphere palaeoclimatic reconstructions are made for the Holocene, Eemian and Pliocene temperature optima, considered as possible palaeoanalogues of climate of the 21st Century. The book is intended primarily for a wide circle of scientific workers, palaeoclimatologists and palaeogeographers, but will also interest geologists, biologists, palaeomagnetologists and archaeologists.
Download or read book The Southern Appalachian Assessment written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Masterpiece of Nature written by Graham Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-28 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1982, The Masterpiece of Nature examines sex as representative of the most important challenge to the modern theory of evolution. The book suggests that sex evolved, not as the result of normal Darwinian processes of natural selection, but through competition between populations or species - a hypothesis elsewhere almost universally discredited. The book also discusses the nature of sex and its consequences for the individual and for the population, as well as various other theories of sex. Since the value of these theories is held to reside wholly in their ability to predict the patterns of sexuality observed in nature, the book seeks to provide an extensive review of the circumstances in which sexuality is attenuated or lost throughout the animal kingdom, and these facts are then used to weigh up the merits of the rival theories. This book will be of interest to researchers in the area of genetics, ecology and evolutionary biology.
Download or read book The Terrestrial Eocene Oligocene Transition in North America written by Donald R. Prothero and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-06-13 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the latest information in dating and correlation of the strata of late middle Eocene through early Oligocene age in North America.
Download or read book The Mammals of North America written by Eugene Raymond Hall and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technical information. Illustrations are line drawings mainly anatomical.
Download or read book Megaherbivores written by R. Norman Owen-Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the limitations and advantages conferred by large body size.
Download or read book Ecology of small mammals written by D.M. Stoddart and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From their largely descriptive beginnings about a half century ago, studies on the ecology of small mammals have mushroomed in number, scope, content and complexity. Yet strangely, or perhaps not so strangely if one considers the extent and complexity of ecological interactions, the main problems for which the early workers sought answers still defy complete analysis, and basic hypotheses remain untested if not even untestable. The same holds true for so many branches of animal ecology that it seems to be the complexity of the concepts that frustrates efforts rather than the subject species. Like all branches of science, small mammal ecology has been subject to a series of fashionable approaches, one following another as tech nology penetrates previously impregnable regions. Doubtless the future development of our science will be punctuated by wave upon wave of new endeavour in whole fields that are perhaps even yet unidentified. Answers to the complex questions which ecologists ask do not come easily. Increasingly though, they arise in direct proportion to the efforts expended upon their elucidation. Many studies have achieved such a high level of elegance, in terms of manpower and apparatus, that there is a feeling that questions asked when such resources are unavailable are not worth asking. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many a complex model has failed fully to explain the phenomenon for which it was construc ted because of a lack of basic field data on the species' natural h~story.
Download or read book Deployment Area Selection and Land Withdrawal acquisition DEIS Appendices written by and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paleocommunities written by A. J. Boucot and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-07-13 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fossil communities, chiefly benthic, from Silurian and Devonian rocks are looked at in detail within this book. Discussion of their environmental and evolutionary significance provides a unique ecological view of this intensively studied part of the stratigraphic column. It is hoped that this case-study will illustrate a new trend for palaeontological research and synthesis that could be applied to other time intervals. Forty contributions from all parts of the world discuss and exemplify the general principles of this massive compilation and provide descriptions of many of the shelly mid-Silurian and early Devonian benthic communities in encyclopaedic form. Biostratigraphers and palaeontologists, as well as evolutionists and ecologists, concerned with fossil communities and their evolution will find this volume of interest. This book forms the final report of IGCP Project 53.
Download or read book Distributed Language written by Stephen J. Cowley and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume presents language as fully integrated with human existence. On this view, language is not essentially 'symbolic', not represented inside minds or brains, and most certainly not determined by micro-social rules and norms. Rather, language is part of our ecology. It emerges when bodies co-ordinate vocal and visible gesture to integrate events with different histories. Enacting feeling, expression and wordings, language permeates the collective, individual and affective life of living beings. It is a profoundly distributed, multi-centric activity that binds people together as they go about their lives. Distributed Language pursues this perspective both theoretically and in relation to empirical work. Empirically, it reports studies on the anticipatory dynamics of reading, its socio-cognitive consequences, Shakespearean theatre, what images evoke (in brain and word), and solving insight problems. Theoretically, the volume challenges linguistic autonomy from overlapping theoretical positions. First, it is argued that language exploits a species specific form of semiotic cognition. Second, it is suggested that the central function of language lies in realizing values that derive from our ecosystemic existence. Third, this is ascribed to how cultural and biological symbols co-regulate the dynamics that shape human activity. Fourth, it is argued that language, far from being organism-centred, gives us an extended ecology in which our co-ordination is saturated by values and norms that are derived from our sociocultural environment. The contributions to this volume expand on those originally published in Pragmatics & Cognition 17:3 (2009).
