TY - BLOG TI - AOU Thursday: Hope for Solving Bird Collisions AU - Cooper, C.B. T2 - Round Robin DA - 2009/8/14/ PY - 2009/8/14/ UR - https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/aou-thursday-hope-for-solving-bird-collisions/ ER - TY - CONF TI - Studying the impacts of urbanization using novel behavioral and evolutionary approaches AU - Katti, Madhusudan T2 - 94th ESA Annual Meeting C2 - 2009/// CY - Albuquerque, New Mexico DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/8/2/ ER - TY - SOUND TI - Misconceptions about Climate Change and the Importance of Public Science Literacy AU - Cooper, C.B. DA - 2009/10// PY - 2009/10// ER - TY - JOUR TI - Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird AU - Cooper, Caren B. AU - Voss, M. A. AU - Zivkovic, Bora T2 - The Condor AB - Proximately, clutch size is determined by the termination of the sequential pattern of egg formation and laying. Egg laying is difficult to study, and documentation of detailed patterns is scarce. We used archived video recordings of the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis) to contrast the times of day of laying with variability in egg-laying intervals. Ultimate eggs were laid over a significantly longer interval than previous eggs. The extended interval over which the ultimate egg is laid could be a symptom of physiological constraints in the formation of the ultimate egg, extra resources provided to compensate the ultimate egg, and/or a late egg may become the ultimate egg because being late prevents further ovulation. DA - 2009/11// PY - 2009/11// DO - 10.1525/cond.2009.090061 VL - 111 IS - 4 SP - 752-755 J2 - Condor LA - en OP - SN - 0010-5422 1938-5129 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/cond.2009.090061 DB - Crossref KW - clutch size KW - Eastern Bluebird KW - egg formation KW - egg-laying interval KW - ovulation KW - photoperiod KW - Sialia sialis ER - TY - JOUR TI - Extinction debt or habitat change? – Ongoing losses of woodland birds in north-eastern New South Wales, Australia AU - Ford, Hugh A. AU - Walters, Jeffrey R. AU - Cooper, Caren B. AU - Debus, Stephen J.S. AU - Doerr, Veronica A.J. T2 - Biological Conservation AB - The loss, fragmentation and degradation of native vegetation are major causes of loss of biodiversity globally. Extinction debt is the term used to describe the ongoing loss of species from fragmented landscapes long after the original loss and fragmentation of habitat. However, losses may also result from habitat changes that are unrelated to fragmentation, which reduce breeding success and recruitment. Many woodland birds have declined in fragmented landscapes in Australia, probably due to loss of small, isolated populations, though the ecological processes are poorly understood. We record the progressive regional loss of two ground-foraging, woodland birds, the Brown Treecreeper Climacteris picumnus and Hooded Robin Melanodryas cucullata, in northern New South Wales, over 30 years. This has happened despite most habitat loss occurring over 100 years ago, suggesting the payment of an extinction debt. Our observations suggest that several ecological processes, caused by habitat loss, fragmentation or degradation, and operating over different time scales, have led to both species’ declines. Female Brown Treecreepers disperse poorly among vegetation remnants, leaving only males in isolated populations, which then go extinct. In contrast, Hooded Robins suffer high nest predation in fragmented landscapes, producing too few recruits to replace adult mortality. Foraging by both species may also be affected by regrowth of ground vegetation and shrubs. We found little support for a major role played by drought, climate change or aggressive Noisy Miners Manorina melanocephala. We propose that both extinction debt in the classical sense and ongoing habitat change frequently contribute to species’ decline in modified landscapes. Management to arrest and reverse such declines needs to consider these multiple causes of decline. For instance, reconnecting isolated populations may be inadequate alone, and activities such as appropriate grazing, fires and the addition of woody debris may also be required. DA - 2009/12// PY - 2009/12// DO - 10.1016/j.biocon.2009.08.022 VL - 142 IS - 12 SP - 3182-3190 J2 - Biological Conservation LA - en OP - SN - 0006-3207 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2009.08.022 DB - Crossref KW - Habitat fragmentation KW - Brown Treecreeper Hooded Robin KW - Eucalypt woodland KW - Habitat change KW - Dispersal ER - TY - JOUR TI - When science goes public: From technical arguments to appeals to authority AU - Goodwin, Jean AU - Honeycutt, Lee T2 - Studies in Communication Sciences DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 9 IS - 2 SP - 125–136 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy AU - Bonney, Rick AU - Cooper, Caren B. AU - Dickinson, Janis AU - Kelling, Steve AU - Phillips, Tina AU - Rosenberg, Kenneth V. AU - Shirk, Jennifer T2 - BioScience AB - Citizen science enlists the public in collecting large quantities of data across an array of habitats and locations over long spans of time. Citizen science projects have been remarkably successful in advancing scientific knowledge, and contributions from citizen scientists now provide a vast quantity of data about species occurrence and distribution around the world. Most citizen science projects also strive to help participants learn about the organisms they are observing and to experience the process by which scientific investigations are conducted. Developing and implementing public data-collection projects that yield both scientific and educational outcomes requires significant effort. This article describes the model for building and operating citizen science projects that has evolved at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology over the past two decades. We hope that our model will inform the fields of biodiversity monitoring, biological research, and science education while providing a window into the cultur... DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// DO - 10.1525/bio.2009.59.11.9 VL - 59 IS - 11 SP - 977-984 KW - citizen science KW - public participation in research KW - public scientific literacy ER - TY - CHAP TI - Actually Existing Rules for Closing Arguments AU - Goodwin, Jean T2 - Pondering on Problems of Argumentation AB - Our interest in argumentation is provoked at least in part by the apparent paradox it presents. People are arguing because they disagree, sometimes deeply. But despite their disagreement, their transaction is orderly – at least, somewhat orderly. Furthermore, this orderliness apparently has a normative element; it establishes grounds for participants to critique each other’s conduct as good and bad. How is this normative orderliness achieved, even in the face of disagreement? – That must be a central question for any theory, especially one that aims to deepen our understanding of the normative pragmatics of arguing (Goodwin, 2002, 2007; Jacobs, 1999; van Eemeren, 1994). PY - 2009/// DO - 10.1007/978-1-4020-9165-0_20 SP - 287-298 OP - PB - Springer Netherlands SN - 9781402091643 9781402091650 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9165-0_20 DB - Crossref ER - TY - JOUR TI - This land : Dune buggies AU - Dunn, R.R. T2 - Natural History DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 118 IS - 7 SP - 38-39 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-70349765769&partnerID=MN8TOARS ER - TY - JOUR TI - A head in the clouds: Do the microorganisms that circulate in the atmosphere get there by chance-or by contrivance? AU - Dunn, R.R. T2 - Natural History DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 118 IS - 6 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-68949092219&partnerID=MN8TOARS ER - TY - BOOK TI - Coextinction: Anecdotes, models, and speculation AU - Dunn, R.R. AB - Abstract Nearly all conservation and extinction research focuses on vertebrates and plants, but most organisms on earth are poorly studied or undescribed invertebrates, the majority of which are parasites or commensals. However, very little remains known about invertebrate coextinctions following the extinction of host species. The limited empirical evidence for recent host-affiliate coextinctions and extinction chains is critically reviewed, but provides little insight into the frequency or broader significance of this process. Models which attempt to estimate the frequency with which coextinctions occur at a global scale suggest that these events should be at least as common as host extinctions, with similar rates predicted for total numbers of prehistoric coextinctions across the Holocene. We can reconcile these two observations if the vast majority of coextinctions are unobserved, or alternately if parasites and mutualists are actually much less host-specific or are much more able to switch hosts than is currently assumed. DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// DO - 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199535095.003.0008 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-78650877351&partnerID=MN8TOARS ER - TY - JOUR TI - Residential irrigation as a driver of urban bird communities AU - Katti, M. AU - Schleder, B. AU - Katti, M. AU - Wallace, S. AB - The demand for fresh water has largely outpaced supply both globally and locally with current water management policies unable to meet the needs of urban, agricultural, and industrial activities. Irrigation is one of the many anthropogenic uses of water and is arguably the most important maintenance factor in a landscape. This is particularly true in an arid climate, such as the Central Valley of California. Urban residents' decisions about the design and maintenance of their landscapes affect bird species richness. Published research indicates that these decisions are also affected by the residents' socioeconomic status. However, the driver of this relationship remains unknown. This paper uses data from the Fresno Bird Count, a citizen science organization, to test the hypothesis that neighborhood socioeconomic status influences residential irrigation regimes, which influences plant cover, in turn influencing bird diversity and abundance. A random sampling grid containing 460 points are used as locations for five minute point counts for the Fresno Bird Count ("fresnobirds.org":http://fresnobirds.org/). Socioeconomic data has been obtained from the U.S. Census and irrigation regimes from the city of Fresno. Aerial imagery and ground sampling on point count locations are used for characterizing habitat. Preliminary analysis of the first year of data (2008) supports this hypothesis and reveals a north/south gradient of bird diversity paralleling the socioeconomic gradient of Fresno. This paper will present results from a more comprehensive analysis of data including the spring 2009 bird census. Policies in the U.S. regarding the distribution and cost of water are changing in response to increased water demands, and the city of Fresno is about to undergo such a change. In 2013 a policy of metered water is scheduled to begin, which is predicted to increase water conservation by residents due to an increase in it overall cost. In addition to examining coupled socio-ecological drivers of urban diversity, this study will be the first part of a Before After Control Impact experiment taking advantage of the planned implementation of metering the cost of water use. The results can help guide the city in improving its management of urban habitat and biodiversity. DA - 2009/8/17/ PY - 2009/8/17/ DO - 10.1038/npre.2009.3617 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Indigenous ecological knowledge as social capital: How citizen science can help us replenish the bank AU - Kar Gupta, K. AU - Kar Gupta, K. AU - Katti, M. AB - In our increasingly urban world, indigenous knowledge of local ecology is declining rapidly, because survival in industrialized urban environments does not depend on knowing the details of local flora, fauna, or phenologies. While traditional ecological knowledge has been documented since 1980s, this is has been largely descriptive, e.g., ethnobotany of sacred groves, cultivation practices, or use of medicinal plants. Until recently, conservation biologists and managers of protected areas have followed western models of conservation that exclude local people and often abandon local ecological knowledge. However, many scientific studies of local ecosystems would not have been possible without the knowledge-base of indigenous people helping researchers. Yet, careful scientific analysis of such knowledge systems is scarce, except in some commercial applications such as forestry or fisheries. Further, even in rare instances when park managers have recruited knowledgeable locals as partners in PA management, the bureaucracy ended up dissipating ecological knowledge rather than sustaining it. The challenge therefore is to understand the epistemology of ecological knowledge, especially the costs and benefits to local people, to help create novel management regimes which provide new incentives for sustaining such knowledge even as traditional dependencies on natural resources are transformed for long-term sustainability of biodiversity. This paper reviews the literature on indigenous ecological knowledge in South Asia, to establish a baseline for systematic epistemological analyses. Examples include the Bihari bird-trappers assisting the Bombay Natural History Society's bird-ringing projects, Irulas helping snake research at Madras Crocodile Bank, Kanis supporting a variety of research projects, including our own, in Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve over the past two decades, and the modern day settlers in Andaman Islands who have turned from over-harvesting and poaching to sustainable cultivation of Edible-nest Swiftlets. We argue that indigenous knowledge is useful not only for monitoring ecosystems or determining use of natural resources, but more importantly for generating fundamental scientific insights, and adding to the knowledge part of our collective social capital. Even as indigenous knowledge is being lost, volunteer-based Citizen Science projects are recruiting amateur naturalists, especially in urban areas, to monitor and study local biodiversity. Such approaches need to be extended into genuinely participatory research programs where indigenous people are engaged in generating and sustaining ecological knowledge, from traditional and modern scientific perspectives, to become well-informed stewards of the socio-ecological systems we inhabit from local to global scales. This is a crucial step towards slowing the loss of biodiversity by reversing our collective loss of knowledge of biodiversity. DA - 2009/8/14/ PY - 2009/8/14/ DO - 10.1038/npre.2009.3601 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Indigenous ecological knowledge as social capital: How citizen science can help us replenish the bank AU - Kar Gupta, K. AU - Katti, M. AB - Abstract *Background/Question/Methods* In our increasingly urban world, indigenous knowledge of local ecology is declining rapidly, because survival in industrialized urban environments does not depend on knowing the details of local flora, fauna, or phenologies. While traditional ecological knowledge has been documented since 1980s, this is has been largely descriptive, e.g., ethnobotany of sacred groves, cultivation practices, or use of medicinal plants. Until recently, conservation biologists and managers of protected areas have followed western models of conservation that exclude local people and often abandon local ecological knowledge. However, many scientific studies of local ecosystems would not have been possible without the knowledge-base of indigenous people helping researchers. Yet, careful scientific analysis of such knowledge systems is scarce, except in some commercial applications such as forestry or fisheries. Further, even in rare instances when park managers have recruited knowledgeable locals as partners in PA management, the bureaucracy ended up dissipating ecological knowledge rather than sustaining it. The challenge therefore is to understand the epistemology of ecological knowledge, especially the costs and benefits to local people, to help create novel management regimes which provide new incentives for sustaining such knowledge even as traditional dependencies on natural resources are transformed for long-term sustainability of biodiversity. *Results/Conclusions* This paper reviews the literature on indigenous ecological knowledge in South Asia, to establish a baseline for systematic epistemological analyses. Examples include the Bihari bird-trappers assisting the Bombay Natural History Society's bird-ringing projects, Irulas helping snake research at Madras Crocodile Bank, Kanis supporting a variety of research projects, including our own, in Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve over the past two decades, and the modern day settlers in Andaman Islands who have turned from over-harvesting and poaching to sustainable cultivation of Edible-nest Swiftlets. We argue that indigenous knowledge is useful not only for monitoring ecosystems or determining use of natural resources, but more importantly for generating fundamental scientific insights, and adding to the knowledge part of our collective social capital. Even as indigenous knowledge is being lost, volunteer-based Citizen Science projects are recruiting amateur naturalists, especially in urban areas, to monitor and study local biodiversity. Such approaches need to be extended into genuinely participatory research programs where indigenous people are engaged in generating and sustaining ecological knowledge, from traditional and modern scientific perspectives, to become well-informed stewards of the socio-ecological systems we inhabit from local to global scales. This is a crucial step towards slowing the loss of biodiversity by reversing our collective loss of knowledge of biodiversity. DA - 2009/8/14/ PY - 2009/8/14/ DO - 10.1038/npre.2009.3601.1 ER - TY - BOOK TI - Every living thing: Man's obsessive quest to catalog life, from nanobacteria to new monkeys AU - Dunn, R. R. AU - Wilson, E. O. DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// PB - New York: Collins SN - 9780061430305 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Ants Sow the Seeds of Global Diversification in Flowering Plants AU - Lengyel, Szabolcs AU - Gove, Aaron D. AU - Latimer, Andrew M. AU - Majer, Jonathan D. AU - Dunn, Robert R. T2 - PLOS ONE AB - The extraordinary diversification of angiosperm plants in the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods has produced an estimated 250,000-300,000 living angiosperm species and has fundamentally altered terrestrial ecosystems. Interactions with animals as pollinators or seed dispersers have long been suspected as drivers of angiosperm diversification, yet empirical examples remain sparse or inconclusive. Seed dispersal by ants (myrmecochory) may drive diversification as it can reduce extinction by providing selective advantages to plants and can increase speciation by enhancing geographical isolation by extremely limited dispersal distances.Using the most comprehensive sister-group comparison to date, we tested the hypothesis that myrmecochory leads to higher diversification rates in angiosperm plants. As predicted, diversification rates were substantially higher in ant-dispersed plants than in their non-myrmecochorous relatives. Data from 101 angiosperm lineages in 241 genera from all continents except Antarctica revealed that ant-dispersed lineages contained on average more than twice as many species as did their non-myrmecochorous sister groups. Contrasts in species diversity between sister groups demonstrated that diversification rates did not depend on seed dispersal mode in the sister group and were higher in myrmecochorous lineages in most biogeographic regions.Myrmecochory, which has evolved independently at least 100 times in angiosperms and is estimated to be present in at least 77 families and 11 000 species, is a key evolutionary innovation and a globally important driver of plant diversity. Myrmecochory provides the best example to date for a consistent effect of any mutualism on large-scale diversification. DA - 2009/5/13/ PY - 2009/5/13/ DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0005480 VL - 4 IS - 5 SP - SN - 1932-6203 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-66049109836&partnerID=MN8TOARS ER - TY - JOUR TI - The sixth mass coextinction: are most endangered species parasites and mutualists? AU - Dunn, Robert R. AU - Harris, Nyeema C. AU - Colwell, Robert K. AU - Koh, Lian Pin AU - Sodhi, Navjot S. T2 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AB - The effects of species declines and extinction on biotic interactions remain poorly understood. The loss of a species is expected to result in the loss of other species that depend on it (coextinction), leading to cascading effects across trophic levels. Such effects are likely to be most severe in mutualistic and parasitic interactions. Indeed, models suggest that coextinction may be the most common form of biodiversity loss. Paradoxically, few historical or contemporary coextinction events have actually been recorded. We review the current knowledge of coextinction by: (i) considering plausible explanations for the discrepancy between predicted and observed coextinction rates; (ii) exploring the potential consequences of coextinctions; (iii) discussing the interactions and synergies between coextinction and other drivers of species loss, particularly climate change; and (iv) suggesting the way forward for understanding the phenomenon of coextinction, which may well be the most insidious threat to global biodiversity. DA - 2009/9/7/ PY - 2009/9/7/ DO - 10.1098/rspb.2009.0413 VL - 276 IS - 1670 SP - 3037-3045 SN - 1471-2954 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-68849094696&partnerID=MN8TOARS KW - mass extinction KW - coextinction KW - chains of extinction KW - secondary extinctions KW - climate change KW - emerging diseases ER - TY - JOUR TI - Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art AU - Zagacki, Kenneth S. AU - Gallagher, Victoria J. T2 - QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH AB - The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates “spaces of attention” wherein visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative possibilities of such existence. Such rhetorical enactments create innovative opportunities for individuals to attend to the human/nature interface. These rhetorical enactments also create and contain tensions that come to the fore when they are employed as authentic mediations of nature, when they function as tropes to promote development of natural space, and/or when they are translated into discursive environmental argument. DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// DO - 10.1080/00335630902842087 VL - 95 IS - 2 SP - 171-191 SN - 1479-5779 KW - Material Rhetoric KW - Spaces of Attention KW - Multi-Modal Experience KW - Environmental Sculpture KW - Landscape Design ER - TY - JOUR TI - A head in the clouds AU - Dunn, R. R. T2 - Natural History Magazine DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 118 IS - 6 SP - 16- ER - TY - JOUR TI - Dune buggies AU - Dunn, R. R. T2 - Natural History Magazine DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 118 IS - 7 SP - 38-39 ER - TY - JOUR TI - Patterns and causes of species richness: a general simulation model for macroecology AU - Gotelli, Nicholas J. AU - Anderson, Marti J. AU - Arita, Hector T. AU - Chao, Anne AU - Colwell, Robert K. AU - Connolly, Sean R. AU - Currie, David J. AU - Dunn, Robert R. AU - Graves, Gary R. AU - Green, Jessica L. AU - Grytnes, John-Arvid AU - Jiang, Yi-Huei AU - Jetz, Walter AU - Lyons, S. Kathleen AU - McCain, Christy M. AU - Magurran, Anne E. AU - Rahbek, Carsten AU - Rangel, Thiago F. L. V. B. AU - Soberon, Jorge AU - Webb, Campbell O. AU - Willig, Michael R. T2 - ECOLOGY LETTERS AB - Understanding the causes of spatial variation in species richness is a major research focus of biogeography and macroecology. Gridded environmental data and species richness maps have been used in increasingly sophisticated curve-fitting analyses, but these methods have not brought us much closer to a mechanistic understanding of the patterns. During the past two decades, macroecologists have successfully addressed technical problems posed by spatial autocorrelation, intercorrelation of predictor variables and non-linearity. However, curve-fitting approaches are problematic because most theoretical models in macroecology do not make quantitative predictions, and they do not incorporate interactions among multiple forces. As an alternative, we propose a mechanistic modelling approach. We describe computer simulation models of the stochastic origin, spread, and extinction of species' geographical ranges in an environmentally heterogeneous, gridded domain and describe progress to date regarding their implementation. The output from such a general simulation model (GSM) would, at a minimum, consist of the simulated distribution of species ranges on a map, yielding the predicted number of species in each grid cell of the domain. In contrast to curve-fitting analysis, simulation modelling explicitly incorporates the processes believed to be affecting the geographical ranges of species and generates a number of quantitative predictions that can be compared to empirical patterns. We describe three of the 'control knobs' for a GSM that specify simple rules for dispersal, evolutionary origins and environmental gradients. Binary combinations of different knob settings correspond to eight distinct simulation models, five of which are already represented in the literature of macroecology. The output from such a GSM will include the predicted species richness per grid cell, the range size frequency distribution, the simulated phylogeny and simulated geographical ranges of the component species, all of which can be compared to empirical patterns. Challenges to the development of the GSM include the measurement of goodness of fit (GOF) between observed data and model predictions, as well as the estimation, optimization and interpretation of the model parameters. The simulation approach offers new insights into the origin and maintenance of species richness patterns, and may provide a common framework for investigating the effects of contemporary climate, evolutionary history and geometric constraints on global biodiversity gradients. With further development, the GSM has the potential to provide a conceptual bridge between macroecology and historical biogeography. DA - 2009/9// PY - 2009/9// DO - 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01353.x VL - 12 IS - 9 SP - 873-886 SN - 1461-0248 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-68849132448&partnerID=MN8TOARS KW - Biogeography KW - geographical range KW - macroecology KW - mechanistic simulation modelling KW - mid-domain effect KW - species richness ER - TY - JOUR TI - Dispersal traits linked to range size through range location, not dispersal ability, in Western Australian angiosperms AU - Gove, Aaron D. AU - Fitzpatrick, Matthew C. AU - Majer, Jonathan D. AU - Dunn, Robert R. T2 - GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY AB - ABSTRACT Aim We examine the relative importance of seed dispersal mode in determining the range size and range placement in 524 species from six focal plant families (Agavaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Malvacaeae, Sapindaceae, Proteaceae and Fabaceae ( Acacia )). Location Western Australia. Methods Taxa were categorized by dispersal mode and life‐form and their distributions modelled using maxent . Geographical range size was compared amongst dispersal mode, life‐form and biome using phylogenetically independent contrasts. Geographical range placement was considered in a similar manner. Results Range size did not vary with dispersal mode (ant versus wind and vertebrate dispersal) or life‐form, and instead varied primarily as a function of the biogeographical region in which a species was found. Range placement, however, did vary among dispersal modes, with the consequence that diversity of wind‐ and ant‐dispersed plants increased with latitude while the diversity of vertebrate‐dispersed plants was more evenly distributed. Main conclusions For the taxa studied, range sizes were a function of the biogeographical region in which species were found. Although differences in range size may exist among species differing in dispersal modes, they are likely to be far smaller than differences among species from different biogeographical regions. The trait most likely to affect species geographical range size, and hence rarity and risks associated with other threats, may simply be the geographical region in which that species has evolved. DA - 2009/9// PY - 2009/9// DO - 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2009.00470.x VL - 18 IS - 5 SP - 596-606 SN - 1466-8238 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-68549121074&partnerID=MN8TOARS KW - Angiosperm diversity KW - biogeography KW - dispersal KW - latitude KW - myrmecochory KW - Western Australia ER - TY - JOUR TI - Temperature-mediated coexistence in temperate forest ant communities AU - Lessard, J. -P. AU - Dunn, R. R. AU - Sanders, N. J. T2 - INSECTES SOCIAUX DA - 2009/7// PY - 2009/7// DO - 10.1007/s00040-009-0006-4 VL - 56 IS - 2 SP - 149-156 SN - 1420-9098 UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-70349491088&partnerID=MN8TOARS KW - Coexistence KW - Dominance KW - Temperature KW - Tradeoff KW - Formicidae KW - Coweeta LTER ER - TY - JOUR TI - Climatic drivers of hemispheric asymmetry in global patterns of ant species richness AU - Dunn, Robert R. AU - Agosti, Donat AU - Andersen, Alan N. AU - Arnan, Xavier AU - Bruhl, Carsten A. AU - Cerda, Xim AU - Ellison, Aaron M. AU - Fisher, Brian L. AU - Fitzpatrick, Matthew C. AU - Gibb, Heloise AU - Gotelli, Nicholas J. AU - Gove, Aaron D. AU - Guenard, Benoit AU - Janda, Milan AU - Kaspari, Michael AU - Laurent, Edward J. AU - Lessard, Jean-Philippe AU - Longino, John T. AU - Majer, Jonathan D. AU - Menke, Sean B. AU - McGlynn, Terrence P. AU - Parr, Catherine L. AU - Philpott, Stacy M. AU - Pfeiffer, Martin AU - Retana, Javier AU - Suarez, Andrew V. AU - Vasconcelos, Heraldo L. AU - Weiser, Michael D. AU - Sanders, Nathan J. T2 - ECOLOGY LETTERS AB - Although many taxa show a latitudinal gradient in richness, the relationship between latitude and species richness is often asymmetrical between the northern and southern hemispheres. Here we examine the latitudinal pattern of species richness across 1003 local ant assemblages. We find latitudinal asymmetry, with southern hemisphere sites being more diverse than northern hemisphere sites. Most of this asymmetry could be explained statistically by differences in contemporary climate. Local ant species richness was positively associated with temperature, but negatively (although weakly) associated with temperature range and precipitation. After contemporary climate was accounted for, a modest difference in diversity between hemispheres persisted, suggesting that factors other than contemporary climate contributed to the hemispherical asymmetry. The most parsimonious explanation for this remaining asymmetry is that greater climate change since the Eocene in the northern than in the southern hemisphere has led to more extinctions in the northern hemisphere with consequent effects on local ant species richness. DA - 2009/4// PY - 2009/4// DO - 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01291.x VL - 12 IS - 4 SP - 324-333 SN - 1461-023X UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-62249209482&partnerID=MN8TOARS KW - Biodiversity KW - climate change KW - Eocene KW - Formicidae KW - latitudinal gradient ER - TY - JOUR TI - Could an ant colony read this book? AU - Dunn, R. R. T2 - Natural History Magazine DA - 2009/// PY - 2009/// VL - 118 IS - 1 SP - 30- ER -