The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History

Book Description

Plants have transformed our planet over the last 470 million years as they invaded the land and diversified into the astonishing variety we know today. But their influence has reached even further: they have profoundly moulded the Earth's climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being 'silent witnesses to the passage of time', plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment throughout history as much as that environment has shaped them. In iThe Emerald Planet/i, David Beerling puts plants centre stage, revealing the crucial role they have played in driving global changes in the environment, in recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and in helping us to predict its future. His account draws together evidence from fossil plants, from experiments with their living counterparts, and from computer models of the 'Earth System', to illuminate the history of our planet and its biodiversity. This new approach reveals how plummeting carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to the evolution of the leaf; how forests once grew on Antarctica, how plants played a starring role in allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the Carboniferous; and strengthens fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from Victorian times onwards whose discoveries provided the crucial background to these and the other puzzles. This new understanding of our planet's past sheds a sobering light on our own climate-changing activities, and offers clues to what our climatic and ecological futures might look like. There could be no more important time to take a close look at plants, and to understand the history of the world through the stories they tell.

Customer Reviews:

a good idea.......2007-10-06

It is a very good idea of David Beerling to start each chapter of 'The Emerald Planet' with a short and clear summary. It is immediately clear what the author is arguing in the chapter and what it is about. By browsing through the book and reading all the chapter summaries, one gets an excellent idea what the author is arguing. This is a very good service for the reader who does not have an unlimited amount of time and wants to access if the current book is the right one to invest time in. Above that, it is such a pleasant feature. Compare this book with Oliver Morton 'Eating the Sun' which is a similar subject, but lacks that kind of clarity, then I prefer to invest my time in David Beerling.

Arranging carts and horses.......2007-07-30

For many years, as fossil plants emerged from the rocks, it was believed that these records reflected changes in climate. Plants, it was assumed, had to adapt to variations in weather and other conditions. According to Beerling, plant life was instead the major prompter of climate change. The balance of atmospheric gases was determined by the micro-organisms floating in the seas. The ability to absorb carbon dioxide, coupled with the use of sunlight to convert that into nutrients gives plants the power to shift gas quantities. During the early days, plants exhaled oxygen. It was poison to most organisms, but those capable of using it began the drive leading to today's life. In this useful survey of all the forces forming today's world, Beerling traces how plants "changed Earth's history". Following his thesis requires the reader's close attention, since the organisation of the material is necessarily loose - not fixed chronology nor subject. The many topics to cover cannot be neatly niched.

To the author, the biggest mystery lies in the long delay between plants colonising the land and the formation of the first leaves. Leaf structure reflects how the plant is using energy. That, in turn, becomes a signal of how the atmosphere is composed at any given time. This knowledge was assembled over many years through the work of many researchers. Beerling traces the building of data resources and how the information was interpreted. Images of leaves and stems, analysis of the rock chemistry, field observations and laboratory experiments all contributed to the picture of plant evolution. Numerous surprises emerged, sometimes leading scholars to doubt the data and even their methodology. Looking at the life of plants down the ages is, as he puts it, looking "Through a glass darkly". Pervading his presentation is what the implications are for what is occurring in today's atmosphere - on which our life and those of our children, depends.

Beerling deems investigations into ancient atmospheres a form of "breathalyser", such as the police apply to suspected impaired drivers. In this case, however, it's not alcohol fumes that are measured, but carbon dioxide. Other gases are also sought, but they don't often leave sufficient clues. The information must be derived indirectly. Again, it's the plant's leaves that are used as the pointers to how ancient atmospheres fluctuated. Underlying the variations is the mighty force of plate tectonics. The shifting of land masses and changes in surface configuration leads plants to shift their survival strategies. Acting far more rapidly than creeping continents, the ability of plants to accelerate or impair rock weathering shifts the presence of gas quantities. Carbon dioxide quantities have varied markedly, leading to most of the world's history being warm times. Only recently - in geologic terms - has the planet experienced a cool era, which led to the "ice age" that scoured the Northern Hemisphere with massive glaciers.

As with so much in science, the revelation that plants drive climate instead of passively responding to it has produced at least as many questions as answers. There are anomalous circumstances that must be unravelled. The knowledge gained has led to the formation of "Earth system analysis" techniques using various forms of computer modelling. Many details, however, remain to be worked out. Atmostpheric studies are particularly impaired by lack of knowledge of cloud formation and distribution. Carbon itself, both as a greenhouse gas and as a component of plant growth, remains enigmatic. Beerling traces the selectivity of plants in choosing which carbon isotope will be utilised. That choice has impact on which plants will become dominant in a given area, which also has implications for the animal life living from them. There are no simple nor ready answers to what plants have meant in tracing life's development. Yet, as he emphasises frequently, these are questions that must be addressed further, and that, soon. Understanding our atmosphere is essential to our future. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Traces of Time: The Beauty of Change in NatureAn Exploratorium Book

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Nature has so much to teach us
Traces of Time are all about us!

Traces of Time: The Beauty of Change in NatureAn Exploratorium Book
Pat Murphy , and Paul Doherty
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0811828573

Book Description

Nature tells stories that unfold over time, and the evidence is all around us—in the shape of a rugged coastline, in the growth of a tree's rings, in the beautiful banded strata of an ice cave. The latest book from The Exploratorium, San Francisco's acclaimed hands-on science museum, combines William Neill's award-winning photography with accessible scientific observation to illuminate an ever-changing world. Examining nature in segments of time ranging from a fraction of a second to millions of years, from the bloom of a plant to the carving of a canyon, Traces of Time reveals how to measure the forces of nature and the ways they affect our planet. A powerful portrait of the natural beauty of our world, this gorgeous blending of art, science, and photography offers a new perspective to anyone who has ever gazed at the world in wonder.

Customer Reviews:

Nature has so much to teach us.......2003-02-19

Two very good friends of mine bought me this book last November and I can't get tired of it at all!

The book is systematically grouped into categories such as Desert landscapes, ancient landscapes etc which necessarily makes it an easy read for a light reader or those who love pictures.

Most of the pictures depict natural features in the U.S.A. and some from Canada and islands in the Indian Ocean. Even though many, such as the Delicate Arch, are very well-photographed, the lively colors seem to want you to pay attention to the pictures again. For example, Delicate Arch was taken with a backdrop of a brewing thunderstorm. Due to the presence of other comparable features behind or near the main focus, one will be kept intrigued, truly appreciating the sheer size of each of the features and marveling at the wonderful hand of God.

The captions are informative, and I would say, rather detailed - so much so they can pass for simple Geographic text. Some even add a sense of humor, describing huge corestones on the Bowling Balls Beach to have "roll[ed] over to join its companion".

My only complaint is that there are too few photos. There should be more on Grand Canyon, and other beautiful features not covered such as Big Horn Canyon, Gates of the Mountains, Yosemite Falls, Crater Lake, Shoshone in Wyoming and Niagara Falls, whose histories can be equally alluring.

Traces of Time are all about us!.......2000-11-12

The Earth has many lessons to teach us. These lessons are written on the ground at your feet, on the mountains across the river from my house, in the rocks of a riverbed, in the trees all around us. Once you learn to read them, you'll see them everywhere.

This inspired collaboration between Photographer William Neill and the Staff of San Francisco's acclaimed science museum, the Exploratorium, Traces of Time, beautifully illustrates the effects of time on our natural surroundings.

The Exploratorium was the one place in the Bay Area where I could take my chickadees for an entire day & know we would all be learning things that were both strange & curious about everyday objects & events. It is the only hands-on museum where you never hear a discouraging word & are invited to play. There are now over 650 exhibits which people can investigate with impunity.

This is a gloriously illustrated, thoughtfully written introduction to how the passing of time can be seen in the moment - rushing rivers captured in the camera's lens & over the eons - geology explained.

Book Description

The population genetics and speciation of fungi is a rapidly developing field, heavily dependent upon the use of molecular markers. No basic text exists which describes the methods employed or the findings obtained from such investigations. This book is intended to provide such an account. It describes the methodologies employed and, for the benefit of the non-mycological reader, a brief introduction to basic fungal biology. Recent findings relating to processes in fungal populations - mutation, migration, recombination, heterokaryosis, hybridization, polyploidy, and the operation of selective forces are combined with traditional fungal biology. Finally the taxonomic problems raised by fungal species are discussed, together with the processes of speciation.

Panbiogeography: Tracking the History of Life (Oxford Biogeography Series)

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Panbiogeography: Not a recipe for Biogeography
Panbiogeography: contribution or confusion?
Panbiogeography: confusion or contribution?
Panbiogeography revisited: tracing old tracks

Panbiogeography: Tracking the History of Life (Oxford Biogeography Series)
Robin C. Craw , and John R. Grehan
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Biogeography is a diverse subject, traditionally focusing on the distribution of plants and animals at different taxonomic levels, past and present. Modern biogeography also puts emphasis on the ecological character of the world vegetation types, and on the evolving relationship between humans and their environment. Panbiogeography describes a new synthesis of sciences of plant and animal distribution. The book emphasizes that the geographical patterns of animal and plant distribution contribute directly to the understanding and interpretation of evolutionary history. Geographic location is reintroduced as a critical element of both biogeography and evolutionary biology. The authors present chapters exploring the roles of geology, ecology, evolution in panbiogeographic theory, and introduce new methods, modes of classification, and ways of measuring biodiversity.

Customer Reviews:

Panbiogeography: Not a recipe for Biogeography.......2000-01-04

Books: Biogeography

Panbiogeography : Tracking the History of Life (Oxford Biogeography Series No 11) by John R. Grehan, Michael J. Heads, Robin C. Craw

Long after the Middle Ages a certain Equivalence of knighthood and a Doctor's degree was generally Acknowledged...For the history of Civilization the perennial dream of a Sublime life has the value of a very Important reality.

Huizinga, J. - The Waning of the Middle Ages, 1924 - quoted on the front page of Space, Time, Form: The Biological Synthesis, by Leon Croizat, 1962.

Like righteous knights, the authors of Panbiogeography are on a quest to save the discipline of panbiogeography: to bring it out from relative obscurity into the modern world of biogeography. Christened by Leon Croizat in the 1958, panbiogeography uses the geographic distribution of all biota, from plants to insects to vertebrates, to create hypotheses for historical biogeographic patterns. By a system of "tracks", "nodes", "main massings", and "baselines", Croizat and his followers mapped disjunct distributions and used correlations to define historical ranges. Largely due to his abject rejection of dispersal as a mechanism for vicariant patterns of biota, Croizat's theories were discounted as extreme (Cox, 1999). The main tool of panbiogeographers is the "track", a line drawn on a map that links localities of a taxa. The "track" represents a hypothesis of previous geographic connection. Although Panbiogeography is full of many examples of tracks drawn on maps, some issues are left unclear. For instance, what taxonomic level should tracks connect? The taxa selected in this book appear arbitrary; they use both taxa with similar generic and familiar relations in order to draw tracks. Furthermore, how discrete is the geographic region described by the points at the end of a track? The scale of tracks vary from continental to discrete local scales. On the other hand, the authors illustrate that the track may function well as a heuristic device, simply drawing a line on a map may represent the possible relationship between biota between two geographic areas. Grehan and Craw, as proponents of this concept appear to believe that these tracks and especially those tracks of many taxa over-layed, called "generalized tracts", represent vicariant events, rather than simply dispersal of individuals and subsequent speciation. Although this issue was contentious in the 1970's (Dipersalists vs. Vicariants), this book fails to bridge the gap between these two views. Instead, while claiming to recognize the importance of both forces, it simply reiterates the vicariant viewpoint.

Grehan and Craw attempt to revitalize the discipline of panbiogeography by incorporating cladistical analysis. The book is full of case studies of suggestive corroboration of phylogenetic systematics with previous hypotheses postulated by Croizat and earlier vicariant biogeographers. Although these examples span various phyla, they generally emphasize morphological systematics. In order to support the claims of vicariant biogeographic patterns, the book would benefit from additional examples of recent molecular systematic findings.

Throughout the book, many examples of faunal and floral disjunctions are correlated with geological (i.e. tectonic) patterns. It is postulated that geological events have caused vicariant distributions. Although compelling in the sense that this represents a mechanism for the patterns of disjunct biota, inferring that this is the only mechanism is nonsensical. Dispersal may function as an equally important factor in distribution. Even so, the emphasis on locality, on where an animal is found, is one of the main strengths of this book: on some level, systematics should take geography in to account in order to determine phylogeny.

Panbiogeography is written purportedly to assist in the understanding of this discipline. Even so, the language is opaque and appears purposefully inaccessible. Furthermore, the authors could improve understanding by clearly defining and illustrating the concepts and methodology in the beginning of the book; it is in the 5th chapter that the authors approach the methodology of this approach.

True to the very nature of panbiogeography, Panbiogeography gives examples of disjunct distributions for varied species from cotton, to starlings, to weevils. While this a data appears to be well researched, the conclusions drawn are not evident. Conclusions are made from correlations. While hypotheses are clearly stated, they are not tested, only corroborated. Comparative evidence alone is insufficient to evaluate a hypothesis. While this style often broaches upon a rant, these case studies are not uninteresting. Demonstrating that dissimilar fauna and flora have similar vicariant distributions, is inherently interesting. Unfortunately, it is difficult to disentangle any bias from selection of fauna and flora.

Finally, while Grehan and Craw imply that they encourage others to use panbiogeography, they have not made this easy. The greatest disappointment in this book is that the authors do not explicitly present their methodology. The maps, adorned with crossing lines and circled regions, appear arbitrary constructions instead of the well-honed result of careful and discerning research. One is left with the impression that one needs faith in order to use this method - much like the mythic knights of the middle ages on a religious quest to obtain the holy grail.

Cox,B. 1998. From generalized tracks to ocean basins - how useful is Panbiogeography? J. Biogeog., 25:813-828.

Panbiogeography: contribution or confusion?.......1999-12-14

Do you know a genius when you see one? Of course: geniuses are disheveled, eccentric men who shun the world while quietly hatching ideas of global consequence, or so most of us believe. Hence the reverence for the scraggly, hoary image of Einstein, even though it was the younger, attractive man who sat in the patent office and hashed out relativity. Consider Leon Croizat, polyglot recluse biogeographer, who spent most of his life in self-imposed academic exile in Venezuela, turning piles of often erroneous distribution maps into frightful tomes with titles like Space, Time, Form: The Biological Synthesis (1). Croizat was one of a handful of scientists in the 1970's who helped to turn the tide in biogeography, away from anecdotal natural history, to quantitative and reproducible methods (2). However, for the past two decades, most biogeographers have been content to give him that much credit and have not looked much further into his work. The authors of Panbiogeography do go further, and make a case for the revival of Croizat's peculiar methods. Croizat's major innovation was to compare the distributions of a variety of species, regardless of their individual ages or dispersal abilities. He connected species occurrences on a map with lines that he called tracks, and then overlaid the tracks from multiple species. When enough overlaid tracks lined up, Croizat called the resulting pattern a generalized track, and deduced from it information about the ancient distribution of the biota that is now seen in fragments. When Croizat found fragments to be separated widely geographically, he placed a "baseline" in the intervening space, which identified a major event in Earth history that caused the disjunction of the groups. If, for example, large areas of diversity (called "main massings") of a particular organism are found in Western Africa and South America, we can place a baseline in the South Atlantic, and conclude that it was that ocean that split the groups. Grehan et. al use Croizat's methodology to examine a number of problems in biogeography, and they choose some intriguing case studies. For example, they perform an in-depth treatment of the current and ancient biota of Africa, showing that many current communities spread across the globe are actually the remains of an ancient unified community that was altered by changing climate and geology. The effect of the shifting environment is nicely visualized with tracks drawn between the far-ranging communities. However, the authors consistently fail to let us in on the specific methods that they use to create their maps and tracks. Why are some tracks laid one way and not another? At times it seems that all points of occurrence should be connected with so-called "minimum spanning trees," while, at other times, tracks seem to be drawn solely in accord with a hypothesis of vicariance. Mysterious references are made to graph theory, but the use of sophisticated mathematics is never made clear. A lack of explicit methodology gets to the heart of the book's main flaw. The authors claim that panbiogeography is a rigorous and quantifiable approach to understanding the distributions of organisms, yet we are never shown that panbiogeography, as a research program, is able to produce a testable hypotheses. One of the main features of this new science is the baseline, which identifies an important, vicariant geographical feature. That feature is identified a priori as important, so we then have a baseline and some evidence of distribution on either side of the baseline. Should we then test the validity of that baseline assumption? Should we look at individual occurrences to see if they support the baseline? If so, the authors of Panbiogeography give us no clue as to how that would be done. A lack of rigor in explaining their methodology might be more forgivable if the authors came to some conclusions that we might imagine were unique products of panbiogeography. They claim that the use of baselines should force us to reorganize our view of the world's biogeographic realms into a map of ocean basins, since those basins represent the most significant geographic events in the history of speciation on Earth. They also use tracks and baselines to make a case for the Western United States being the product of a myriad of tectonic rafts that smashed into the west coast, possibly introducing new organisms with each raft. The west coast idea is not new, and the ocean basin idea could have been conceived using a knowledge of Earth's history, with no tracks or baselines in sight. One reason that Croizats' work was revolutionary was that it was independent of natural history, and all the ambiguities that it can contain. A knowledge of peculiar species biology is not needed to draw tracks. For better or worse, natural history no longer dominates the biological sciences, so it is hard to imagine that Grehan et al. see their primary contribution to their field as being one of precision. However, it is equally hard to imagine exactly what they might suppose their greatest contribution to be. If they have something in mind, they do not make it obvious in Panbiogeography.

References 1. Croizat, L. 1894. Space, Time, Form: The Biological Synthesis. Caracas, Venezuela. 2. Brown, J. H. & Lomolino, M. V. 1998. Biogeography. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Panbiogeography: confusion or contribution?.......1999-12-14

References 1. Croizat, L. 1894. Space, Time, Form: The Biological Synthesis. Caracas, Venezuela. 2. Brown, J. H. & Lomolino, M. V. 1998. Biogeography. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc.

Panbiogeography revisited: tracing old tracks.......1999-12-12

As in most fields in the natural sciences, prevailing approaches and the dominant paradigms in the field of biogeography have shifted radically, and back again, in the century or more of its existence. Judging by the material presented in recent biogeography textbooks, for example, Cox and Moore's (1993) Biogeography, An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach, and Brown and Lomolino's (1998) Biogeography, biogeographers generally recognize the value and strengths of using several different approaches to forming biogeographical hypotheses and evaluating them. The panbiogeography approach, although never widely accepted as a primary approach, is always addressed and given fair credence. Craw, Grehan and Heads, in their new book Panbiogeography: Tracking the History of Life (1999), uniquely attempt to postulate the panbiogeographical approach as the only real "correct" approach to biographical analysis, and in doing so, take a stand that is contrary to biogeography's pattern heretofore. Panbiogeography was originally proposed by Croizat in the 1950s as a method that emphasizes the primacy of spatial analysis of the distribution of taxa, in preference to historical or systematic hypotheses or understanding of taxonomic relationships. Due in part to the timing of Croizat's treatises which came out prior to the proposal and general acceptance of plate tectonic theory, the approach generated great controversy among biogeographers. Essentially Croizat was proposing a method that could generate hypotheses that no known mechanism could explain. The approach fell further out of favor after plate tectonics was accepted because of Croizat's singular unwillingness to accept it as a viable mechanism. Panbiogeography takes the following basic approach. Using databases containing distributions of taxa, panbiogeographers identify tracks (lines that connect related taxa), nodes (points of intersection of tracks), generalized tracks (locations where many tracks overlap spatially), and baselines (locations where tracks cross major geological or geomorphic features, usually oceans). Using these devices as heuristics, hypotheses are then generated regarding the historical, phylogenetic, ecological or other relationships among the taxa examined. Cox and Moore criticize the approach by saying that the technique stops there and does not go back and incorporate known taxonomic history, geology, or other information that is not exclusively spatial. However, it is not clear that this was the initial intent of the approach. Craw et al. do not propose an essentially different definition for panbiogeography, and their basic premise is perhaps useful and insightful. However, they have chosen to take a rather defensive position in presumed anticipation of an attack against the approach based on historic biases. For this reason, readers are forced to wade through a rather dense display of repetitively overstated points in order to glean the useful messages in the book. The authors explain the concepts initiated by Croizat, those described above, with sufficient detail to allow the uninitiated to attempt the approach. They provide a number of detailed case examples to which they apply these methods that result in a large number of images and graphical representations of the kinds of heuristic devices the methods may produce. In addition, they rightfully point out some weaknesses in the extensive dependency of some biogeographical approaches on other unproven data compilations, such as geomorphological, systematic, and historical hypotheses, in that using these hypotheses as "data" necessarily compound any error in data analysis. The fundamental message of their treatise is that spatial data alone are sufficient, and can be used operationally, to generate biogeographical hypotheses separate from any other kind of pattern analysis. Furthermore, the generation of biogeographical hypotheses by this method can then inform other pattern analysis approaches, such as phylogenetics, in an unbiased and uncircular fashion. These notions are valuable statements to be made about approaches to biogeography. This reviewer feels that these points could have been made in a short article, without the attempts that seem to have been made to discredit other biogeographical approaches. In including extensive statement of how this approach improves on other methods, the authors often seem to contradict themselves and generally state that the methods of panbiogeography can achieve what it is not clear that it can. For example, the authors initially name what they describe as the three main schools of biogeographical thought: faunal regions or centers of origin, vicariance and cladistics, and island biogeography. However, they never revisit these categories per se. They proceed to explicitly compare only dispersalist and vicariance approaches to biogeography. Further, the description of dispersalist hypotheses concludes with a rather heavy handed dismissal of the mechanism altogether. They propose that panbiogeography can resolve the "vicariance/dispersalist dilemma" with a proper understanding of what they term "mobilist" and "immobilist" phases, which seem to amount to the proposal that dispersal is never a significant mechanism in biogeography but that it all comes down to vicariance. In a later chapter, they explain the details of using a cladistic approach to understand vicariance in biogeographical distributions, which is a method that is well accepted and not novel in biogeography today. The claim that this approach is a subset of panbiogeography, and one of many unbiased advantages of the school of thought in general. However, they fail to offer other examples of approaches. Similarly, authors emphasize that the panbiogeographical approach is a hypotheses testing approach, which is unique among biogeographical approaches. This point is labored in many chapters under many headings, and yet they fail to offer an operational approach to testing a single hypothesis generated by the methods they describe. Overall, the thesis of this book is potentially useful to biographers in general. Additionally, many of the details of the panbiographical method are explained in such a way that new users may derive some utility from them. But overall, the excessive verbiage, defensive tone, and contradictory statements make the book less than "required reading" for biogeographers.

Concepts Of Symbiogenesis: HIST. & CRITICAL STUDY OF RESEARCH OF RUSSIAN BOTANISTS (Bio-Origins Series)

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Concepts Of Symbiogenesis: HIST. & CRITICAL STUDY OF RESEARCH OF RUSSIAN BOTANISTS (Bio-Origins Series)
KHAKHINA
Manufacturer: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300048165

Animals and Plants (Prehistoric Zoobooks)

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Animals and Plants (Prehistoric Zoobooks)
John Bonnett Wexo
Manufacturer: Creative Co (Sd)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

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ASIN: 0886823897

Cladistic Biogeography: Interpreting Patterns of Plant and Animal Distributions (Oxford Biogeography Series)

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Cladistic Biogeography / Why the Controversy?
The Peculiar Science of Cladistic Biogeography

Cladistic Biogeography: Interpreting Patterns of Plant and Animal Distributions (Oxford Biogeography Series)
Christopher J. Humphries , and Lynne R. Parenti
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0198548184

Book Description

The distribution and classification of life on earth has long been of interest to biological theorists, as well as to travellers and explorers. Cladistic biogeography is the study of the historical and evolutionary relationships between species, based on their particular distribution patterns across the earth. Analysis of the distributions of species in different areas of the world can tell us how those species and areas are related, what regions or larger groups of areas exist, and what their origins might be. The first edition of Cladistic Biogeography was published in 1986. It was a concise exposition of the history, methods, applications of, and prospects for cladistic biogeography. Well reviewed, and widely used in teaching, Cladistic Biogeography is still in demand, despite having been out of print for some time. This new edition draws on a wide range of examples, both plant and animal, from marine, terrestrial, and freshwater habitats. It has been updated throughout, with the chapters being rewritten and expanded to incorporate the latest research findings and theoretical and methodological advances in this dynamic field.

Customer Reviews:

Cladistic Biogeography / Why the Controversy?.......2000-08-04

In "Cladistic Biogeography," Christopher J. Humphries and Lynne R. Parenti offer a detailed but easily digestible analysis of the significance that geographic distributions of species have with respect to the history of those species and the geography that they inhabit. Despite the seeming harmlessness of the subject, the book touches upon very controversial notions. Anyone even skimming it may feel overcome by an avalanche of evidence that modern geological theories need some revising in order to account for a plethora of biogeographical facts.

The main thesis of cladistic biogeography is perhaps best described with an example. Imagine that several different species (involving plants, fish, insects, and animals) are restricted to two particular areas in South America that are separated by the Andes mountains. According to cladistic biogeography (or at least according to Parenti's and Humphries' view of it), the most reasonable conclusion is that these trans-Andes species are older than the Andes--and that the formation of the Andes separated them. This seems a more rational explanation for the pattern than the idea that each species evolved on one side of the Andes chain--and then each species managed to cross the Andes via various hypothetical, species-dependent methods of dispersal.

In general, the fundamental theory of cladistic biogeography can be stated as follows: If many different species are restricted to the same geologically separated areas (divided, for example, by oceans or mountains) then a single, general cause (e.g., a geological event) is a more preferable explanation for this pattern than a series of unfalsifiable theories of dispersal across the geological divide, with each dispersal theory designed for each organism. Despite the seeming obviousness of this argument, many geologists, ecologists, and other scientists are extremely critical of such biogeographical analyses because it often conflicts with current geological theories.

Perhaps, this explains the somewhat reaching criticism of Amazon-customer critic, Matthew L. Forister, who not only panned the book, "Cladistic Biogeography" but the entire science itself. (Forister also wrote a negative review of "Panbiogeography : Tracking the History of Life--Oxford Biogeography Series No 11" by Grehan, Heads, and Craw.) In his review of the Parenti and Humphries book, Forister dismisses cladistic biogeography because of its insufficiency when applied to the geographic distribution of his cousins throughout the United States. According to Forister, this would lead cladistic biogeographers to conclude that the extended Forister family "were split by the uplift of the Rockies and further rifted by the opening of the Grand Canyon." Obviously, Parenti and Humphries do not extend their arguments to families of humans who have access to modern transportation. And so Forister's criticism overlooks the elemental fact that the plants, worms, frogs, snakes, trees, fresh-water fish and other organisms that are the real subject of "Cladistic Biogeography" have a difficult time booking flights across mountains and are notoriously bad drivers.

As Parenti and Humphries point out, this is not the first time that biogeographical evidence conflicted with contemporary geological theory. In the early part of the 20th century, much of the evidence that Alfred Wegener used to support the theory of continental drift was biogeographical. Trans-Atlantic biogeographical patterns (as well as certain geological factors) suggested to Wegener that South America was at one time attached to Africa, while North America was connected to Europe. Geologists and others maintained that continents were always fixed and explained these patterns via various dispersal hypotheses for all of the species found on both sides of the Atlantic. These dispersal hypotheses involved cross-ocean land bridges, long-distance island hopping schemes, hitching rides on flotsam, etc. Wegener's hypothesis has now become the conventional view. So, in this instance at least, the seminal principle of cladistic biogeography was validated while all the seemingly fantastic methods of dispersal across the Atlantic have been rejected.

Interestingly, a more significant biogeographical pattern can be found across the Pacific. Cladistic biogeography suggests that some sort of general geological explanation for the distributions, like a past Asian/American and Australian/South-American juxtaposition, is required. Today this view is largely ignored by people who are not biogeographers--and, once again, popular explanations of the trans-Pacific patterns encompass a group of independent dispersal hypotheses that include cross-ocean land bridges, long-distance island hopping schemes, the hitching of rides on flotsam, etc.

"Cladistic Biogeography" is a great step forward in trying to make sense of all the biogeographic data available to us today. It is an effort toward the development of rational, general principles for analyzing the geographic distribution of species, which hopefully will help geologists, ecologists, and biologists avoid the same mistakes that their counterparts made in the not-too-distant past regarding the very same subject.

--Dennis McCarthy

The Peculiar Science of Cladistic Biogeography.......2000-03-04

Scattered throughout the western United States, I have a handful of cousins: one in Oregon, two in Wyoming, and two in Arizona (along with an aunt and uncle in the latter state). Including myself as a resident of California, this is a distribution of Foristers, and from it could be made an area cladogram, which would look like a four-branched tree, with one state perched at the top of each branch. I happen to know that the Foristers have been in Wyoming the longest, for only slightly less time in Arizona, and only recently in California and Oregon. Therefore, I would arrange the area cladogram with Wyoming in an ancestral position, then Arizona, and finally Oregon and California bunched together as sister groups. Countless area cladograms could be made by inquiring into the family histories of other people-if at all possible, we might also construct some cladograms for the family dog and the starling that frequents the windowsill, just to be broad-minded.

Then (and this is the raison d'être of the book in question), a collection of these area cladograms could be compared, and a kind of compromise cladogram would be derived which represented the common features of all the family histories. To do this right, some math and computer programs could be used, as described by the authors of Cladistic Biogeography; for now, however, let us focus on the consequences of our cladograming, and not be distracted by the glamor of the process. So what can we say about our compromise tree? For a moment suppose the best of all worlds: a clear pattern arises, with various people, dogs, and starlings showing ancestral groups in Wyoming and Arizona, and sister groups in various other western states. With a little common sense, we might say that our Homo sapiens reflect a history of westward movement and that the dogs and house sparrows moved from Wyoming to the other states with the humans (we probably had to throw out a couple of native American cladograms that would have confused the obvious "signal"). But wait! Parenti and Humphries tell us that dispersal is not an explanation for biogeographical patterns. Since any species can disperse according to its own unknowable caprice, we had better assume that the distributions of all organisms are crafted by the same processes. In our case, humans and dogs and starlings might have been widespread across the west in large populations that were split by the uplift of the Rockies and further rifted by the opening of the Grand Canyon.

The case is not closed, however. According to Cladistic Biogeography, geology can only "illuminate" the patterns derived from area cladograms, but can never test them. Without confirmation from other sciences, we can only gain confidence in out pattern by throwing in more and more cladograms from diverse groups-the more agreement we find, the more assuredly we may speak of the history of the "biotas" of Wyoming, Arizona, and the other western states. Within this seemingly scientific iteration lies the fatal flaw of cladistic biogeography as presented by Parenti and Humphries. I described an oversimplification of the process of arriving at a compromise cladogram. In the analyses done in Cladistic Biogeography, all possible combinations of areas are considered for each organism, a process which can produce hundreds of trees. However, if one of the organisms in question, through a peculiarity of its history, presents only one possible cladogram, that organism will dictate the entire analysis. The possible trees for each organism are then searched for patterns that do not disagree with that one peculiar cladogram. How do we know that one organism it not a fluke, some kind of historical freak unrelated to all other members of the "biota"? We do not know any such thing. In fact, Parenti and Humphries forbid us from knowing any specific natural history, for, they say, such biological questions as age of arrival or dispersal ability are precisely what area cladograms are designed to test!

Book Description

-- Nature

A reevaluation of the history of biological systematics that discusses the formative years of the so-called natural system of classification in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shows how classifications came to be treated as conventions; systematic practice was not linked to clearly articulated theory; there was general confusion over the "shape" of nature; botany, elements of natural history, and systematics were conflated; and systematics took a position near the bottom of the hierarchy of sciences.

The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology

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The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology

Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674272250

Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution (Cambridge Science Classics)

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Wonderful overview

Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution (Cambridge Science Classics)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Herbal Remedies | Alternative Medicine | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0521338794

Book Description

Herbals deal primarily with medicinal and culinary herbs, their real and supposed properties and virtues, and in origin they go back at least to the Ancient Greeks. During the 16th and 17th centuries they developed into attractively illustrated printed books, the forerunners of modern botanical and pharmaceutical textbooks. Agnes Arber's Herbals (first published in 1912, much revised in 1938) stands as the major survey of the period 1470 to 1670 when botany evolved into a scientific discipline separate from herbalism, a development reflected in contemporary herbals. Every work on herbals since 1912 has been indebted to Arber's classic.

The present volume in the Cambridge Science Classics series, while retaining her main text unaltered, supplements this with two of her later writings on herbals, provides a biographical introduction, greatly extends the bibliography and has annotations modifying the original text through later enquiry.

This added material will make this re-issue invaluable to librarians, historians of science, book-lovers and all with an interest in the early development of botany, pharmacy and book production, even if they already possess the long-unobtainable 1938 edition.

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Wonderful overview.......2001-04-11

Arber offers a great summary of the varied herbals littering the early modern period and prior. One of the few academic works available on this subject.

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