conservation in tropics

In a quite rich article about the conservation of biodiversity in the tropics:

du Toit, J.T., Walker, B.H. and Campbell, B.M. 2004. Conserving tropical nature: current challenges for ecologists. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19 (1): 12-17.

du Toit et al. discuss important concepts for the conservation of tropical biodiversity. Among other things, they remember that conservation of biodiversity in the tropics is a global responsibility, and requires the commitment of firt-world citizens. I found interesting their statement that conservation practicioners should receive social rewards similars to those of medical doctors (for they carry out a similarly important work). They also discuss important ideas regarding different scale approaches, the importance of identifying ecological resilience theresholds, the role of protected areas, and others. From politics, to statistic approaches. A fairly good paper.

Image: Noah's Ark, oil in canvas by Edward Hicks (1846)

the worst mistake even! ...or not?

Mark Ridley suggested that Jared Diamond is not a single person, but a committee. This is because as you can find in wikipedia, Diamond has published scholar papers in the fields of evolutionary biology, biogeograpy, conservation, and physiology, as well as bestseller books that mix contents from these sciences with geography, history, and politics. He is said to speak a dozen languages (how many of them from New Guinea? :o)

Maybe much of this impressive CV is just fiction and a good PR ability... but I rather think that Ridley is right!

This week I invite you to read his essay:

Diamond, J. 1987. The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. Discovery Magazine, May 66-64.

in which Diamond gives us his view regarding how much was leftthe day that our ancestors decided to start toproduce their own food, instead of simply collect and hunt it. DId our ancestors condemned us?

Image: Agricultor andino, canvas by Hugo Espíritu Escobar.

Landscape structure and pop dynamics

This week I propose a heavyweight paper: a spatially-explicit individual-based population dynamics model. Too bad? I think that this paper has some interesting perspectives about present trends in population dynamics modeling. It also serves to illustrate how these models are getting more and more complex, but on the same time more and more close to natural systems.

Paper:
Wiegand, T., Moloney, K.A., Naves, J., and Knauer, F. 1999. Finding the missing link between landscape structure and population dynamics: a spatially explicit perspective. The American Naturalist 145, 606-627.

Hope you like it :o)

Image: William Gear's painitng, Landscape structure (1948)

beware of your good reputation!

Collective action in large groups whose members are genetically unrelated is a distinguishing feature of the human species. Individual reputations may be a key to a satisfactory evolutionary explanation. This week I suggest a brief and easy to read letter about cooperative behavior in humans:

Fehr, E. 2004. Don't lose your reputation. Nature 449, 449-450

In this letter Fehr comments the findings of Panchanthan and Boyd (published in the same issue of Nature) and reviews the state of the art of collective cooperative behavior theories. I assume that you all are familiar with the basic concepts of reciprocal altruism and the importance of status into animal behavior (including us).

Image: Woo Suk Hwang, fallen angel of the South Corean Scientific arena with his truly clonned dog, Snuppy.