In a paper published in Nature in 2001, Marten Scheffer, Steve Carpenter, Jonathan Foley, Carl Folke and Brian Walker reviewed the evidence for large-scale shifts between alternate stable states in different ecosystems, the patterns that emerge from such shifts, and its implications for the...
Ecology
Revisiting Strong 1992
In a paper published in Ecology in 1992, Donald Strong reviewed the empirical literature on "actual" and "potential" trophic cascades, based on which he argued why trophic cascades are likely to be restricted to simple, low-diversity food webs. Twenty-six years after the paper was published, I...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...