This chapter details the geography and ecology of the Mesozoic period. It explains that the Mesozoic period was a time of major diversification and radiation, leading to large-scale changes in flora and fauna by the end of the era. In Mesozoic oceans, neoselachians diversified, while the total diversity of tetrapods changed relatively slowly. Meanwhile, lissamphibians evolved and the two major lineages of amniotes diversified into Synapsida and Sauropsida. The chapter highlights how the era's history of extinction events opened the way for a new faunal balance in the Cenozoic period. Most Mesozoic extinction events resulted from intense episodes of volcanic activity accompanying collisions and splitting of continents as Pangaea formed and later ruptured.
Chapter
Geography and Ecology of the Mesozoic
Chapter
Sounding the Deep
This chapter introduces the principles of marine biology which reflect the functional biology and ecology of marine life. While marine biology is a diverse subject, its main elements are composed of functional biology, ecology, and biodiversity. Marine biology began with simple observations of the distribution and variety of marine life before it evolved into a science involving ecology and hypothesis testing. The chapter explains how marine biologists use the scientific method or systematic reasoning, observation, and experiment to frame and test hypotheses. It considers the concept of neuston, plankton, nekton, and benthos to define the life habits of marine organisms.
Chapter
Ecological Impact Assessment
This chapter explains ecological management in line with enhancement, mitigation, and compensation strategies to maintain ecology. It first discusses Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), wherein an evaluation is conducted with regard to the impacts of proposed human development. The chapter then looks at the EIA value of habitat, species, site, individual organism, and ecosystem. It clarifies that Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA) and EIA can be either granted, withheld, or denied. Moreover, the chapter expounds on the likely impacts of development, which always includes construction and operational states. However, it lists the impact of development alongside its possible solutions, such as mitigation and compensation. The chapter includes an interview with applied ecologist Lorna Roberts.
Chapter
Island Biogeography
This chapter focuses on island biogeography. It shows how islands have always had a great influence on ecology, evolution, and biogeography. For mainland systems, the diversity of insular biotas is often simply characterized by their species richness, which refers to the number of species of a particular taxon. The chapter then looks at the patterns and causal explanations for differences in species richness among islands. It also details the ecological and evolutionary assembly of insular biotas, noting that the depauperate and disharmonic evolutionary arena of remote islands establishes ecological naiveté, one of the most perilous characteristics of insular plants and animals.
Chapter
From the Foundations to the Frontiers
This chapter reviews the foundations and frontiers of biogeography. It explains that the long and distinguished history of biogeography is tightly interwoven with that of ecology and evolutionary biology. Knowledge of the patterns seen in the geography of nature and causal explanations of the processes responsible for them accumulated and matured into what we know as the science of biogeography. The chapter highlights that some of the most effective strategies for conserving the Earth's biological diversity will continue to rely on insights from biogeographers. It mentions how the expanding store of information and arsenal of analytical tools proved to be invaluable for reconstructing the Earth's geological and environmental dynamics and the biotas' evolutionary histories.
Chapter
The Science of Plant Ecology
This chapter considers ecology from the perspective of terrestrial plants. It emphasizes that plant ecology is both a subset of the discipline of ecology and a mirror for the entire field. The biological science of ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms and their environments, the interactions of organisms with one another, and the patterns and causes of the abundance and distribution of organisms in nature. The chapter then focuses on the nature of science and the scientific method. It examines how ecologists have come to their current knowledge and understanding of organisms and systems in nature. Towards the end, the chapter looks at scientific knowledge, scientific research, and observational studies. It reviews the importance of experiment, theory, measurement, analysis, and analysis to research.
Chapter
Sociality
This chapter looks at the sociality of animals. It highlights the benefits of
group living like foraging success, reduced movement costs, safety from
predators, and potential for individual specialization. However, the costs
of sociality are increased competition for resources, aggressive
interactions, and higher transmissibility of diseases. The chapter also
tackles how sociality can evolve through ecology, phylogeny, and the fitness
advantages of close associations exceeding the costs such as resources and
foods. Dominance hierarchies, moreover, could lessen the social costs of
aggression in line with living in groups. Numerous social groups with
dominant hierarchies could also reduce their cost of living with others.
Additionally, hormones could regulate social behavior.
Chapter
Geography and Ecology of the Cenozoic
This chapter explores the geography and ecology of the Cenozoic era. It cites how changes in continental positions have affected Earth's climates and the ability of vertebrates to disperse between its regions. By the late Mesozoic era, continental separation and epicontinental seas had isolated populations of terrestrial tetrapods and freshwater vertebrates, which limited possibilities for their migration between continents. While the best-known Cenozoic extinction took place at the end of the Pleistocene era, and this mainly affected only larger land animals. The chapter also considers debates on whether Pleistocene extinctions were mainly caused by climate changes or the spread of humans across the globe.
Chapter
Ecological and Evolutionary Principles of Marine Biology
This chapter focuses on the ecological and evolutionary principles of marine biology. It starts with the definition of ecology, which is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment and the effects of these interactions on the distribution and abundance of organisms. The ecological hierarchy consists of the individual, population or species, community, ecosystem, and biosphere. Meanwhile, community ecology helps determine the distributions of how species alter their habitat to allow others to live there. The chapter considers direct interactions among species in an ecosystem, such as competition and predation. It mentions how natural selection can result in changes in traits that vary in function of genetic polymorphism and plasticity.
Chapter
Fundamental Concepts
Ecology, Evolution, Species, and Speciation
This chapter expounds on the correlation between the concepts of ecology, evolution, species, and speciation. It explores how ecologists examine current relationships between species and the environment in which they live. The field of eco-evolutionary dynamics examines the interactions between the evolutionary change of individuals and ecological processes at population, community, and ecosystem levels. The chapter cites how living systems can be divided into levels of ecological complexity from the gene to the biosphere. It explains that evolutionary fitness, on the other hand, is the genetic contribution of one individual to the next generation relative to the other members of the population.
Chapter
Conservation, Ecology, and Science
This chapter discusses the relationship between conservation, ecology, and science. The big problem facing human beings, and all other organisms on the planet, is that the ecological footprint of humans—the area of biologically productive land needed per person per year to sustain their lifestyles—exceeds the ability of the Earth to support it. This environmental crisis will drive many species to extinction. The extent to which these extinctions matter depends on what the species actually do in ecosystems. The chapter then looks at the importance of biodiversity. Apart from dealing with living evolving organisms that are individually different, there are other important aspects of ecology (and hence conservation) as a science. Some of these are: that it involves the hierarchical structure of nature; that it involves huge changes of scale; and that there are many different kinds of explanations for the same thing.
Chapter
Interactions Among Species
This chapter evaluates interactions among species. Most species interactions in ecology are between insects and plants. Selection for defence against herbivores has led plants to evolve toxins, while selection for the ability to use a toxic diet has led herbivores to evolve counter-measures, such as P450 detoxification enzymes. This coevolutionary process is a major source of evolutionary change. Meanwhile, top predators can have disproportionate effects (a 'trophic cascade') on the species below them in the food web of their community. The eradication of wolves by humans in Yellowstone National Park had the unintended consequence of preventing tree regeneration. The chapter also looks at indirect interactions via intermediate species. Conservation needs to pay attention to the variety of ways in which such indirect interactions work.
Chapter
The Web of Life
This chapter discusses the study of ecology and its relevance for humans. It
begins by considering ecological connections in nature. Ecology is the
scientific study of how organisms affect—and are affected
by—other organisms and their environment. Ecologists study
interactions in nature across many levels of biological organization.
However, ecological studies usually emphasize one or more of the following
levels: individuals, populations, communities, ecosystems, landscapes, or
the entire biosphere. The chapter then looks at how ecologists evaluate
competing hypotheses about natural systems with observations, experiments,
and models. In an ecological experiment, an investigator alters one or more
features of the environment and observes the effect of that change on
natural processes.
Book
Neil Ingram, Sylvia Hixson Andrews, and Jane Still
Evolution provides an introduction to evolution. It traces the history of the emergence of life, by contextualizing the development of evolutionary thought and discussing the implications of evolutionary processes on modern-day genomics, biochemistry, and ecology. The text explores topics that are familiar and also introduces new ideas. Chapters include an introduction to evolution, the birth and death of species, and an examination of the evidence. The latter half of the book looks at the evolution of a theory, human evolution, and the human story so far.
Chapter
Evolution and Ecology
This chapter assesses what evolution is and how it affects ecological
interactions, as well as how ecological processes influence
evolutionary change. In the most general sense, biological evolution
is change in organisms over time. Evolution includes the relatively
small fluctuations that occur continually within populations, as
when the genetic makeup of a population changes from one year to the
next. The chapter focuses first on genetic changes (allele frequency
change) and then on how organisms accumulate differences from their
ancestors (descent with modification). By favouring individuals that
have advantageous alleles over individuals that have other alleles,
natural selection can cause adaptive evolution. The chapter then
considers how long-term patterns of evolution are shaped by
large-scale processes such as speciation, mass extinction, and
adaptive radiation. It also looks at the joint effects of ecology
and evolution.
Chapter
Sociality
This chapter looks at the sociality of animals. It highlights the benefits of group living like foraging success, reduced movement costs, safety from predators, and potential for individual specialization. However, the costs of sociality are increased competition for resources, aggressive interactions, and higher transmissibility of diseases. The chapter also tackles how sociality can evolve through ecology, phylogeny, and the fitness advantages of close associations exceeding the costs such as resources and foods. Dominance hierarchies, moreover, could lessen the social costs of aggression in line with living in groups. Numerous social groups with dominant hierarchies could also reduce their cost of living with others. Additionally, hormones could regulate social behavior.
Book
Francis Gilbert and Hilary Gilbert
Conservation starts off by looking at conservation, ecology, and science and describing how they relate to each other. It then examines populations and how they may change in relationship to movement and the size of suitable habitat available, covering also processes that lead to extinction. Other topics include interactions among different species and the processes through which ecological communities are created. Ecosystems are treated next with a look at their relationship to human wellbeing. Finally, the text examines different human attitudes towards nature, including those of indigenous people, and different conservation strategies.
Chapter
Local Abundance, Diversity, and Rarity
This chapter addresses a series of questions that raise fundamental issues in ecology and also have major implications for applied ecology and conservation. It seeks to answer questions like: what determines the relative abundances of the individuals in a community ever since ecology was a scientific discipline? What determines how many species can coexist in a community? The chapter aims to understand how species interact, and whether that has anything to do with their abundances. It also examines why some species are rare, others common, and still others invasive, in order to understand the fundamental properties of ecological communities, and for practical reasons. The chapter focuses mainly on the abundances of the individuals in a species as well as the number of species at the scale of communities. It concludes by examining interaction between local and regional processes from a local perspective.
