Tag Archives: ecology

Current Biology: The Anthropocene Special Issue

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CITATION:
Current Biology. 2019  Vol. 29, No. 19: R942–R1054.
ABSTRACT:
This special issue of Current Biology includes a collection of Features, Reviews, Primers, Essays and Quick guides on a wide range of topics surrounding various detrimental impacts of human activity on the biosphere.

For most biologists, inhabiting the Anthropocene also means working in it. There are very few topics in the life sciences that are not confronted with Continue reading →

Why Say “Weed” in the Anthropocene?

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fertiledisturbance

White clover growing in the lawn outside the New York Hall of Science, where the author and Environmental Performance Agency collaborators held the workshop “Plant Talk, Human Talk: An EPA Training for the Beginning of the World” (image by the Environmental Performance Agency)

In my post last week, I used a recent study on the urban evolution of white clover and its coverage in the popular press to start thinking about how traits described as “weedy” relate to Continue reading →

“Contrasting the effects of natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow on urban evolution in white clover (Trifolium repens)”

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CITATION:
Marc T. J. Johnson, Cindy M. Prashad, Mélanie Lavoignat, Hargurdeep S. Saini. 2018.  Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, vol. 285, no. 1883, published on-line July 25, 2018: pp. 8-33.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Urbanization is a global phenomenon with profound effects on the ecology and evolution of organisms. We examined the relative roles of natural selection, genetic drift and gene flow in influencing the evolution of white clover (Trifolium repens), which thrives in urban and rural areas. Continue reading →

Pathogens and the Anthropocene: Germs, Genes, Geography, Part 2

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[This is the continuation of the post from last week.]

To speak of an “Anthropocene for pathogens” is to imagine the ways that human transformation of the environment has shaped the ecology and evolution of infectious microbes. In other words, it is to imagine Continue reading →

Pathogens and the Anthropocene: Germs, Genes, Geography, Part 1

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The smallpox virus

We welcome our colleague Kyle Harper to the blog; his bio is on the OU contributors page. His book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, is now available from Princeton University Press. Continue reading →

Urban Ecology

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As we get started with our series on the urban Anthropocene, I’d like to approach the topic as a biologist, and think of cities as places filled with various kinds of life.
Continue reading →

“Climate, Environment and Early Human Innovation: Stable Isotope and Faunal Proxy Evidence from Archaeological Sites (98-59ka) in the Southern Cape, South Africa”

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CITATION:

Roberts, P., C. S. Henshilwood, K. L. van Niekerk, P. Keene, A. Gledhill, J. Reynard, S. Badenhorst and J. Lee-Thorp. 2016 PLoS One 11(7):e0157408.

ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, and in particular its Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic traditions, represents a period of dramatic subsistence, cultural, and technological innovation by Continue reading →

“How humans drive speciation as well as extinction”

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CITATION:
Bull, J.W. and Maron, M. 2016. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283: 20160600.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
A central topic for conservation science is evaluating how human activities influence global species diversity. Humanity exacerbates extinction rates. But by what mechanisms does humanity drive the emergence of new species? Continue reading →

Video of Ellis Talk and Panel Discussion

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THIS POST CONCLUDES OUR ANTHROPOCENE BIOSPHERE PROJECT–A SERIES ON ERLE ELLIS’ ‘ECOLOGY IN AN ANTHROPOGENIC BIOSPHERE‘ (ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS, 85/3 (2015))

Continue reading →

“Fifteen forms of biodiversity trend in the Anthropocene”

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CITATION:
Brian J. McGill, et al. 2015. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 104-113.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Humans are transforming the biosphere in unprecedented ways, raising the important question of how these impacts are changing biodiversity. Here we argue that our understanding of biodiversity trends in the Anthropocene, and our ability to protect the natural world, is impeded by Continue reading →

Memes as a dimension of the human niche

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT—SEE THIS DESCRIPTION OF OUR SUBMISSION.
 

Though human beings can be understood biologically, as one species among others, we have one particularly prominent, even defining, feature: Continue reading →

“Concluding Remarks” on Animal Ecology and Demography

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THIS POST IS PART OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ANTHROPOCENE PROJECT—SEE THIS DESCRIPTION OF OUR SUBMISSION.
CITATION:
Hutchinson, G.E. 1957. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22 (2): 415–427.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
This paper reflects on a symposium that covered a wide range of topics; in it “a rather detailed analysis of one particular problem is given, partly because the question, namely, the nature of the ecological niche and the validity of the principle of niche specificity has raised and continues to raise difficulties, Continue reading →

“The Anthropocene concept in ecology and conservation”

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CITATION:
Corlett, R.T. 2015. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 30, pp. 36 – 41.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
The term ‘Anthropocene’ was first used in the year 2000 to refer to the current time period in which human impacts are at least as important as natural processes. It is currently being considered as a potential geological epoch, following on from the Holocene. While most environmental scientists accept Continue reading →

“What is ecological engineering?”

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CITATION:
Mitsch, W.J. 2012. Ecological Engineering, Vol. 45, pp. 5-12.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Ecological engineering, defined as the design of sustainable ecosystems that integrate human society with its natural environment for the benefit of both, has developed over the last 30 years, and rapidly over the last 10 years. Its goals include Continue reading →

Novel ecosystems

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Currently a very interesting and rather important debate is happening within the discipline of ecology. Scientific debates are usually not very public, not because anybody has anything to hide, but because they tend to be rather technical and difficult to follow. The debate over Continue reading →

Are we the walrus?

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This post was supposed to be about the People’s Climate March.  As I sat down to draft it, however, a headline about a different climate-related gathering caught my eye: tens of thousands of Pacific walruses have again Continue reading →

Biology in a changing world

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Our world is undergoing a massive change, induced by humans. There is no debate about this among scientists. There is debate, however, about the consequences of this change.

Like many other organisms we actively alter our environment and become ecosystem engineers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer). A classical example for this process is Continue reading →