Natural HistoryThe Rise of Ecology

Ecology

MedicinePollutionExplorationEconomics

Romans (AD 230) had rudimentary life expectancy tables for selling annuities to defer burial expenses. Average life-expectancy was 20-30 yrs.

Demography

Thomas Malthus - population growth Essay on the Principle of Population (1789)

two principle hungers that nature has instilled in man: that forfood and that for sex

Thomas Malthus (1766 - 1834)economist and demographerpopulation growth - An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)“Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.”

“This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind.”

major impetus for the concept of “Struggle for Existence”

Natural HistoryThe Rise of Ecology

Ecology

MedicinePollutionExplorationEconomicsScientific InfluencesBeginning in the 18th century a transformation of Natural History from a static disciple to one emphasizing the importance of spatial (environmental) and temporal change on organisms

Natural HistoryScientific Influences on Natural History

Ecology

Systematics

Carl Linnaeus

Georges-Louis Le Clerc de Buffon

Major conceptual change regarding the “fixity of species”

Jean Baptiste Lamarck

Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire

Erasmus Darwin

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)system of bionomial nomenclature

initially believed that the species were unchangeable

observed plant hybridization – produced forms which looked like new species

suggested that some -- perhaps most -- species in a genus might have arisen after the creation of the world, through hybridization

theorized that plant species might be altered through the process of acclimatization

This might be the first centers-of-origin concept.

Linnaeus and NoahLinnaeus proposed in 1744 that the animals were preserved on Mt. Ararat during the Flood, rather than in the Ark, and that they dispersed from there to all regions of the globe.

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)French naturalist, mathematician, biologist, cosmologist and author. Buffon's views influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.

Major work: Histoire Naturelle (1749-1778: in 36 volumes, 8 additional volumes published after his death)

Buffon's Law - widely considered the first principle of Biogeography

species must have both "improved" and "degenerated" (evolved) after dispersing away from a center of creation

climate change must have facilitated the worldwide spread of species from their center of origin

Buffon’s Law

That climatologically similar, but geographically separate regions of the world has distinct biotic assemblages. Suggested "centre of origin" for earth’s biota was in the far north when climates were more benign, biotas changed and diversified as they colonized southward into present day North America and Eurasia.

Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)Charles Darwin's grandfatherrespected physician, a well known poet, philosopher, botanist, and naturalist

one of the first formal theories on evolutionZoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796)

life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament"

sexual selection - "The final course of this contest among males seems to be, that the strongest and most active animal should propogate the species which should thus be improved"

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/Edarwin.html

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)"Do we not therefore perceive that by the action of the laws of organization . . . nature has in favorable times, places, and climates multiplied her first germs of animality, given place to developments of their organizations, . . . and increased and diversified their organs? Then. . . aided by much time and by a slow but constant diversity of circumstances, she has gradually brought about in this respect the state of things which we now observe. How grand is this consideration, and especially how remote is it from all that is generally thought on this subject!“

Text of a lecture given by Lamarck at the Musée National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, May 1803

"The external world is all-powerful in alteration of the form of organized bodies.. . these [modifications] are inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organization of the animal, because if these modifications lead to injurious effects, the animals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a somewhat different form, a form changed so as to be adapted to the new environment."

Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844)

yes, he saw all vertebrates as modifications of a single archetype

"Can the organization of vertebrated animals be referred to one uniform type?"

Vestigial organs and embryonic transformations might serve no functional purpose, but they indicated the common derivation of an animal from its archetype

Influence du monde ambiant pour modifier les formes animales (1833)

Homologous structures

Natural HistoryScientific Influences on Natural History

Ecology

SystematicsBiogeography

Major conceptual change regarding the distributions of species, especially with respect to the role of the environment

Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798)

depauperate islands

sailed with Cook

world biotic regions

floristic zonation with latitude

regional flora linked to environment

latitudinal diversity gradient – heat

higher species diversity in tropics

species diversity correlated with island size

distributions of mammals can not be sufficiently explained by climate - explained by the history of earth

land bridges theory to explain why continents and islands share the same fauna

considered the father of historical biogeography

Major Work: Specimen Zoologiae GeographicaeQuadrupedum

Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmerman (1743-1815)

Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765-1812)one of the first phytogeographers

major synthesizer of plant geography

mentor to Alexander von Humboldt

many sites of origin

plant distribution patterns changed over time

new plant species could arise and that many previously existing ones had gone extinct

plant assemblages respond to climate

Augustin Pyramus De Candolle (1778-1841)

one of the first important plant geographers

associated plant distribution with soil conditions

one of the first to attempt to quantify diversity

distinguish the concepts of habitat (geographic range) and station (habitat)

considered questions of scale in phytogeography

Island species richness = f (size & age, isolation, disturbance)

Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789-1852)

first comprehensive textbook on plant geography – 1822

role of environmental factors on plant distribution - temperature

August Heinrich Rudolf Grisebach (1814-1879)

concept of integrated communities of organisms

coined the term "Geobotanik" (geobotany)

relation of climate to floral assemblages

described more than 50 major vegetation formations worldwide in modern physiognomic terms

first global overview of vegetation with a vegetation map

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911)

species richness = f (habitat richness)

friend of Darwin

sailed with Ross - Antarctica

phytogeography

land bridges – vicariance biogeography

island biogeography

The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya

Carl Georg Lucas Christian Bergmann (1814 – 1865)

heat balance and body size with animals

Bergmann’s Rule - among mammals and birds, individuals of a particular species in colder areas tend to have greater body mass than individuals in warmer areas

Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger (1803 - 1863)

influence of climatic conditions on the geographical differences among species

pioneer in the study of bird conservation, especially as related to the law

Gloger’s Rule -within a species of endotherms, more heavily pigmented forms tend to be found in more humid environments

Natural HistoryScientific Influences on Natural History

Ecology

SystematicsBiogeography

Major conceptual changes regarding the age of the Earth, mechanisms of inheritance and evolutionary change (Natural Selection), and the role of the environment in species evolution.

Evolutionary Biology

AGE OF THE EARTH

3641 BCE - February 10 Mayans4004 BCE - October 23 James Ussher in 1658

Date of creation3926 BCE - October 26 John Lightfoot in 1644

96,670 yrs George-Louis Leclerc in 1778Age calculations

experiments with iron spheresobserved rates of sedimentation and proposed (posthumously) estimates as long as 3 billion yrs

24 – 400 million yrs William Thomson in 1862

rates of cooling of a molten EarthLord Kelvin

James Hutton (1726 - 1797)father of modern geology

Theory of Uniformitarianism

processes occurring in the present were the same processes that had operated in the past, and would be the processes that operate in the future

Hutton's Unconformity, Siccar Point, Scotland

Devonian Old Red Sandstone

Ordovician shale

"...if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race." – Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, Volume 2

Charles Lyell (1797 - 1875)Uniformitarianism – “the present is the key to

the past”extinction + creation episodes

climate, sea level, terrain are mutable - but not species

divided geological time according to proportion of recent to extinct species of shells - Pleistocene, Older Pliocene, Miocene and Eocene

rock cycle

Major Work: Principles of Geology (1833)

giraffe's neck example

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884)

inheritance of traits in pea plants

Experiments on Plant Hybridization (1866)

work was rediscovered by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns in 1900

R. A. Fisher (1918) analyzed Mendel’s results and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1

father of genetics

Anton Joseph Kerner von Marilaun (1831-1898)

work was well known to both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace

transplant gardens in Tyrolean Alps (300 species) - distinguished heritable from environmentally-affected factors

plant succession

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)Voyage of the Beagle (1831 - 1836)

Natural Selection

Ostrich Greater Rhea Lesser Rhea

Variation in Large Flightless Birds

Charles Darwin Galápagos Mockingbirds

Closely related Mockingbirds on different islands had inhabited different niches.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

“In this archipelago there are two distinct faunas… yet there is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits.”

Wallace in Singapore in 1862

independently proposed a theory of natural selection

““On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type.from the Original Type.””

father of modern biogeography

one of the earliest voices in the scientific community to raise concerns over the environmental impact of human activity

Wallace's Line - Malay Archipelago (1854 - 1862)125,660 specimens, 1000 new species

Wallace’s Faunal Regions - The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876)

Natural HistoryScientific Influences on Natural History

Ecology

SystematicsBiogeography

Major conceptual changes regarding the role of the environment on the form and function of organisms

Evolutionary BiologyPhysiology

Justus von Liebig (1803-1873)

discovery of nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient

father of the fertilizer industry

Law of the Minimum

a plant's development is limited by the one essential mineral that is in the shortest relative supply

Limiting Factors

Carl Gottfried Semper (1832-1893)

comparative anatomy and physiology

Major work: Animal Life as Affected by the Natural Conditions of Existence (1881)

animal physiological ecology

physiological approaches to explain particulars of distribution, adaptation, and morphology

Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (1856 - 1901)

first to describe chloroplasts

starch is a source of stored energy for plants

father of synecology – vegetation typestropical rain forest

physiological ecology - temperature and moisture and morphological adaptations

Major Work: Pflanzengeographie auf Physiologischer Grundlage (1898)

Die epiphytische Vegetation Amerikas (1888)

Joel Asaph Allen (1838-1921)one of America's leading naturalists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

detailed data on character traits variation –geographic variation

early concept of life zones

one of the first leaders of the American conservationist movement - bison

physical environment, especially climate, was the most importantforce promoting evolutionary change - neo-Lamarckian

bird migration patterns are related to climate shifts initiated by the glacial epochs

Allen’s Rule

From the northern arctic hare (L. arcticus) through the more southerly desert jackrabbit (L. alleni), members of the genus Lepus show progressively longer extremities (legs & ears) and leaner bodies.

The Rise of “Self-Conscious” Ecology1866 Ernst Haeckel – “oekologie”

Morphology of Organisms

1893 John Scott Burdon-SandersonBritish Association for the Advancement of Science

ecology was a branch of biology coequal with morphology and physiology

Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming (1841 – 1924)

first textbook on plant ecology Plantesamfund (1895)

father of plant ecology – first ecology course

morphological and anatomical adaptations to various environments

divided plants into four “life-forms”: hydrophytes, mesophytes, xerophytes, and halophytes

ecological plant geography

SELF-

CONSCIOUS

ECOLOG

Y

1897 chair of ecological botany established at Uppsala University

1902 funding from the Carnegie Institution

1905 Frederic Clements - ecology textResearch Methods in Ecology

1913 Journal of Ecology

1913 Charles Christopher AdamsGuide to the Study of Animal Ecology

1916 Ecological Society of America

1920 Ecology