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...
Conservation
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Revisiting Hector et al. 1999
In a paper published in Science in 1999, Andrew Hector and a team of collaborators reported the results of an experiment, replicated in eight European field sites, that showed that loss of plant species diversity leads to reduced above-ground plant biomass. Seventeen years after the paper was...
Revisiting Estes et al. 1998
In 1998, James Estes, Tim Tinker, Terrie Williams and Dan Doak published a paper in Science providing evidence to suggest that killer whales were behind the sudden declines in sea otter populations in western Alaska in the 1990s. Estes and colleagues also showed in this paper that the otter...