No Species Is an Island - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook No Species Is an Island write by Theodore H. Fleming. This book was released on 2017-09-05. No Species Is an Island available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In the darkness of the star-studded desert, bats and moths feed on the nectar of night-blooming cactus flowers. By day, birds and bees do the same, taking to blooms for their sweet sustenance. In return these special creatures pollinate the equally intriguing plants in an ecological circle of sustainability. The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world. Four species of columnar cacti, including the iconic saguaro and organ pipe, are among its most conspicuous plants. No Species Is an Island describes Theodore H. Fleming’s eleven-year study of the pollination biology of these species at a site he named Tortilla Flats in Sonora, Mexico, near Kino Bay. Now Fleming shares the surprising results of his intriguing work. Among the novel findings are one of the world’s rarest plant-breeding systems in a giant cactus; the ability of the organ pipe cactus to produce fruit with another species’ pollen; the highly specialized moth-cactus pollination system of the senita cactus; and the amazing lifestyle of the lesser long-nosed bat, the major nocturnal pollinator of three of these species. These discoveries serve as a primer on how to conduct ecological research, and they offer important conservation lessons for us all. Fleming highlights the preciousness of the ecological web of our planet—Tortilla Flats is a place where cacti and migratory bats and birds connect such far-flung habitats as Mexico’s tropical dry forest, the Sonoran Desert, and the temperate rain forests of southeastern Alaska. Fleming offers an insightful look at how field ecologists work and at the often big surprises that come from looking carefully at a natural world where no species stands alone.
The Song Of The Dodo
The Song Of The Dodo - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Song Of The Dodo write by David Quammen. This book was released on 2012-03-31. The Song Of The Dodo available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into island-like fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.
The Theory of Island Biogeography
The Theory of Island Biogeography - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Theory of Island Biogeography write by Robert H. MacArthur. This book was released on 2001. The Theory of Island Biogeography available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Population theory.
Bulletin of the Botanical Department, Jamaica ...
Bulletin of the Botanical Department, Jamaica ... - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Bulletin of the Botanical Department, Jamaica ... write by Jamaica. Botanical Department. This book was released on 1887. Bulletin of the Botanical Department, Jamaica ... available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
The Loom of Life
The Loom of Life - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Loom of Life write by Menno Schilthuizen. This book was released on 2008-08-15. The Loom of Life available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In an age of increasing environmental problems, ecology has had to grow up fast from a discipline dealing with relatively simple interactions between species to one that tries to explain changes in global patterns of diversity and richness. The issues are complex. Every species may seem to have its own unique role, but if that is true, then why are there hundreds of species of plankton in an ecosystem with only a handful of niches? The tropics have a high biodiversity, but does anybody know why? And how can a single introduced tree species wreak havoc in Hawaii’s rainforests, when it is one of thousands of quietly coexisting tree species in its native continent, South America? The strength of this book is that it will help digest some of these more complex issues in the ecology of biodiversity. It will do this by zooming out from the local scale to the global scale in a number of steps, marrying community ecology with macroecology, and introducing unexpected nuggets of natural history along the way. The reader will notice that, the larger the scale, the more the familiar niche-concept appears to be overshadowed by exotic fields from fractal and complexity theory. However, scientists differ in opinion on the scale at which niches become irrelevant. These differences of opinion, but also the search for unified ecological theories, will form another force by which the story will be carried along to its conclusion. A conclusion which, surprisingly, seeks to find a glimpse of the globe's future in the traces from its past.
