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The Rise of Ecology
Natural History
Medicine
Pollution
Exploration
Economics
Ecology
Demography
Romans (AD 230) had rudimentary life
expectancy tables for selling annuities to
defer burial expenses. Average lifeexpectancy was 20-30 yrs.
Thomas Malthus - population growth
Essay on the Principle of Population (1789)
Thomas Malthus (1766 - 1834)
economist and demographer
population growth - An Essay on the
Principle of Population (1798)
“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical
ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A
slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity
of the first power in comparison of the second.”
“This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the
difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must
necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.”
major impetus for the concept of “Struggle for Existence”
two principle hungers that nature has instilled in man: that for
food and that for sex
The Rise of Ecology
Natural History
Medicine
Pollution
Exploration
Economics
Scientific Influences
Ecology
Beginning in the 18th century a
transformation of Natural History from a
static disciple to one emphasizing the
importance of spatial (environmental) and
temporal change on organisms
Scientific Influences on Natural History
Natural History
Systematics
Major conceptual change regarding
the “fixity of species”
Carl Linnaeus
Georges-Louis Le Clerc de Buffon
Erasmus Darwin
Jean Baptiste Lamarck
Ecology
Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
system of bionomial nomenclature
initially believed that the species were
unchangeable
observed plant hybridization – produced forms
which looked like new species
suggested that some -- perhaps most -- species in a genus might
have arisen after the creation of the world, through hybridization
theorized that plant species might be altered through the process
of acclimatization
Linnaeus and Noah
Linnaeus proposed in 1744 that
the animals were preserved on
Mt. Ararat during the Flood,
rather than in the Ark, and that
they dispersed from there to all
regions of the globe.
This might be the first centersof-origin concept.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
French naturalist, mathematician, biologist,
cosmologist and author. Buffon's views influenced
the next two generations of naturalists, including
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.
Major work: Histoire Naturelle (1749-1778: in
36 volumes, 8 additional volumes published after
his death)
Buffon's Law - widely considered the first principle
of Biogeography
species must have both "improved" and
"degenerated" (evolved) after dispersing away
from a center of creation
climate change must have facilitated the worldwide spread of species from
their center of origin
Buffon’s Law
That climatologically similar, but geographically separate
regions of the world has distinct biotic assemblages.
Suggested "centre of origin" for earth’s biota was in the far
north when climates were more benign, biotas changed and
diversified as they colonized southward into present day
North America and Eurasia.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)
Charles Darwin's grandfather
respected physician, a well known poet,
philosopher, botanist, and naturalist
one of the first formal theories on evolution
Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796)
life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living
filament"
sexual selection - "The final course of this contest among males
seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal should
propogate the species which should thus be improved"
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/Edarwin.html
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
"Do we not therefore perceive that by the action
of the laws of organization . . . nature has in
favorable times, places, and climates multiplied
her first germs of animality, given place to
developments of their organizations, . . . and
increased and diversified their organs? Then. . .
aided by much time and by a slow but constant
diversity of circumstances, she has gradually
brought about in this respect the state of things
which we now observe. How grand is this
consideration, and especially how remote is it
from all that is generally thought on this
subject!“
Text of a lecture given by Lamarck at the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle,
Paris, May 1803
Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844)
"Can the organization of vertebrated animals
be referred to one uniform type?"
yes, he saw all vertebrates as modifications of
a single archetype
Homologous structures
Vestigial organs and embryonic transformations might serve no
functional purpose, but they indicated the common derivation of
an animal from its archetype
"The external world is all-powerful in alteration of the form of organized
bodies.. . these [modifications] are inherited, and they influence all the rest of
the organization of the animal, because if these modifications lead to injurious
effects, the animals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a
somewhat different form, a form changed so as to be adapted to the new
environment."
Influence du monde ambiant pour modifier les formes animales (1833)
Scientific Influences on Natural History
Natural History
Systematics
Biogeography
Major conceptual change regarding
the distributions of species,
especially with respect to the role of
the environment
Ecology
Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798)
sailed with Cook
world biotic regions
floristic zonation with latitude
regional flora linked to environment
latitudinal diversity gradient – heat
higher species diversity in tropics
species diversity correlated with island size
depauperate islands
Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743-1815)
distributions of mammals can not be sufficiently explained by
climate - explained by the history of earth
land bridges theory to explain why continents and islands
share the same fauna
considered the father of historical biogeography
Major Work: Specimen Zoologiae Geographicae
Quadrupedum
Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812)
one of the first phytogeographers
major synthesizer of plant geography
mentor to Alexander von Humboldt
many sites of origin
plant distribution patterns changed over time
new plant species could arise and that many previously existing
ones had gone extinct
plant assemblages respond to climate
Augustin Pyramus De Candolle (1778-1841)
one of the first important plant geographers
associated plant distribution with soil
conditions
one of the first to attempt to quantify diversity
distinguish the concepts of habitat
(geographic range) and station (habitat)
considered questions of scale in phytogeography
Island species richness = f (size & age, isolation, disturbance)
Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789-1852)
first comprehensive textbook on plant
geography – 1822
role of environmental factors on plant
distribution - temperature
August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach (1814-1879)
coined the term "Geobotanik" (geobotany)
relation of climate to floral assemblages
described more than 50 major vegetation
formations worldwide in modern physiognomic
terms
first global overview of vegetation with a
vegetation map
concept of integrated communities of organisms
Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911)
friend of Darwin
sailed with Ross - Antarctica
phytogeography
land bridges – vicariance biogeography
island biogeography
species richness = f (habitat richness)
The Rhododendrons of
Sikkim-Himalaya
Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger (1803 - 1863)
influence of climatic conditions on the geographical differences among
species
pioneer in the study of bird conservation, especially as related to the law
Gloger’s Rule -within a species of endotherms, more heavily pigmented
forms tend to be found in more humid environments
Carl Georg Lucas Christian Bergmann (1814 – 1865)
heat balance and body size with animals
Bergmann’s Rule - among mammals and birds, individuals of a particular
species in colder areas tend to have greater body mass than individuals in
warmer areas
Scientific Influences on Natural History
Natural History
Systematics
Biogeography
Evolutionary Biology
Major conceptual changes regarding
the age of the Earth, mechanisms of
inheritance and evolutionary change
(Natural Selection), and the role of
the environment in species evolution.
Ecology
AGE OF THE EARTH
Date of creation
3926 BCE - October 26
4004 BCE - October 23
3641 BCE - February 10
John Lightfoot in 1644
James Ussher in 1658
Mayans
Age calculations
96,670 yrs
George-Louis Leclerc in 1778
experiments with iron spheres
observed rates of sedimentation and proposed
(posthumously) estimates as long as 3 billion yrs
24 – 400 million yrs William Thomson in 1862
Lord Kelvin
rates of cooling of a molten Earth
James Hutton (1726 - 1797)
father of modern geology
Theory of Uniformitarianism
processes occurring in the present were
the same processes that had operated
in the past, and would be the processes
that operate in the future
Devonian Old Red Sandstone
Ordovician shale
Hutton's Unconformity, Siccar Point, Scotland
"...if an organised body is not in the situation and
circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and
propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety
among the individuals of that species, we must be
assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart
most from the best adapted constitution, will be the
most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those
organised bodies, which most approach to the best
constitution for the present circumstances, will be best
adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and
multiplying the individuals of their race." – Investigation
of the Principles of Knowledge, Volume 2
Charles Lyell (1797 - 1875)
Uniformitarianism – “the present is the key to
the past”
extinction + creation episodes
climate, sea level, terrain are mutable - but not
species
divided geological time according to proportion of recent to
extinct species of shells - Pleistocene, Older Pliocene, Miocene
and Eocene
Major Work: Principles of Geology (1833)
rock cycle
giraffe's neck example
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884)
father of genetics
inheritance of traits in pea plants
Experiments on Plant Hybridization (1866)
work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries and
Carl Correns in 1900
R. A. Fisher (1918) analyzed Mendel’s results
and found them to be implausibly close to the
exact ratio of 3 to 1
Anton Joseph Kerner von Marilaun (1831-1898)
work was well known to both Charles Darwin
and Alfred Russel Wallace
transplant gardens in Tyrolean Alps (300 species)
- distinguished heritable from environmentallyaffected factors
plant succession
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Voyage of the Beagle (1831 - 1836)
Natural Selection
Variation in Large Flightless Birds
Ostrich
Greater Rhea
Lesser Rhea
Charles Darwin
Galápagos Mockingbirds
Closely related Mockingbirds on different
islands had inhabited different niches.
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
independently proposed a theory of natural
selection
“On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely
from the Original Type.”
father of modern biogeography
one of the earliest voices in the scientific
community to raise concerns over the
environmental impact of human activity
Wallace in Singapore in 1862
Wallace's Line - Malay Archipelago (1854 - 1862)
125,660 specimens, 1000 new species
“In this archipelago there are two distinct faunas… yet there is nothing on the
map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits.”
Wallace’s Faunal Regions
- The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876)
Scientific Influences on Natural History
Natural History
Systematics
Biogeography
Evolutionary Biology
Physiology
Major conceptual changes regarding
the role of the environment on the form
and function of organisms
Ecology
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873)
father of the fertilizer industry
discovery of nitrogen as an essential plant
nutrient
Law of the Minimum
a plant's development is limited by the one essential mineral
that is in the shortest relative supply
Limiting Factors
Carl Gottfried Semper (1832-1893)
comparative anatomy and physiology
animal physiological ecology
physiological approaches to explain particulars of
distribution, adaptation, and morphology
Major work: Animal Life as Affected by the Natural
Conditions of Existence (1881)
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (1856 - 1901)
first to describe chloroplasts
starch is a source of stored energy for plants
father of synecology – vegetation types
tropical rain forest
physiological ecology - temperature and
moisture and morphological adaptations
Major Work: Pflanzengeographie auf
Physiologischer Grundlage (1898)
Die epiphytische Vegetation Amerikas (1888)
Joel Asaph Allen (1838-1921)
one of America's leading naturalists during the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
detailed data on character traits variation –
geographic variation
early concept of life zones
one of the first leaders of the American conservationist
movement - bison
physical environment, especially climate, was the most important
force promoting evolutionary change - neo-Lamarckian
bird migration patterns are related to climate shifts initiated by
the glacial epochs
Allen’s Rule
From the northern arctic hare (L. arcticus) through the more southerly desert
jackrabbit (L. alleni), members of the genus Lepus show progressively longer
extremities (legs & ears) and leaner bodies.
The Rise of “Self-Conscious” Ecology
1866 Ernst Haeckel – “oekologie”
Morphology of Organisms
1893 John Scott Burdon-Sanderson
British Association for the
Advancement of Science
ecology was a branch of biology
coequal with morphology and
physiology
Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming (1841 – 1924)
first textbook on plant ecology
Plantesamfund (1895)
father of plant ecology – first ecology course
morphological and anatomical adaptations to
various environments
divided plants into four “life-forms”: hydrophytes,
mesophytes, xerophytes, and halophytes
ecological plant geography
1897 chair of ecological botany established at
Uppsala University
1902 funding from the Carnegie Institution
1905 Frederic Clements - ecology text
Research Methods in Ecology
1913 Journal of Ecology
1913 Charles Christopher Adams
Guide to the Study of Animal Ecology
1916 Ecological Society of America
1920 Ecology
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