Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States

Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples in the United States
Author: Julie Koppel Maldonado
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2014-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3319052667

With a long history and deep connection to the Earth’s resources, indigenous peoples have an intimate understanding and ability to observe the impacts linked to climate change. Traditional ecological knowledge and tribal experience play a key role in developing future scientific solutions for adaptation to the impacts. The book explores climate-related issues for indigenous communities in the United States, including loss of traditional knowledge, forests and ecosystems, food security and traditional foods, as well as water, Arctic sea ice loss, permafrost thaw and relocation. The book also highlights how tribal communities and programs are responding to the changing environments. Fifty authors from tribal communities, academia, government agencies and NGOs contributed to the book. Previously published in Climatic Change, Volume 120, Issue 3, 2013.

Mutualism

Mutualism
Author: Judith L. Bronstein
Publisher:
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2015
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 019967566X

Mutualisms, interactions between two species that benefit both of them, have long captured the public imagination. Their influence transcends levels of biological organization from cells to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Mutualistic symbioses were crucial to the origin of eukaryotic cells, and perhaps to the invasion of land. Mutualisms occur in every terrestrial and aquatic habitat; indeed, ecologists now believe that almost every species on Earth is involved directly or indirectly in one or more of these interactions. Mutualisms are essential to the reproduction and survival of virtually all organisms, as well as to nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Furthermore, the key ecosystem services that mutualists provide mean that they are increasingly being considered as conservation priorities, ironically at the same time as the acute risks to their ecological and evolutionary persistence are increasingly being identified. This volume, the first general work on mutualism to appear in almost thirty years, provides a detailed and conceptually-oriented overview of the subject. Focusing on a range of ecological and evolutionary aspects over different scales (from individual to ecosystem), the chapters in this book provide expert coverage of our current understanding of mutualism whilst highlighting the most important questions that remain to be answered. In bringing together a diverse team of expert contributors, this novel text captures the excitement of a dynamic field that will help to define its future research agenda.

The Singing Neanderthals

The Singing Neanderthals
Author: Steven J. Mithen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2006
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780674021921

An examination of our language instinct. Steven Mithen draws on a huge range of sources, from neurological case studies, through child psychology and the communication systems of non-human primates to the latest paleoarchaeological evidence.

Obligate Pollination Mutualism

Obligate Pollination Mutualism
Author: Makoto Kato
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 4431565329

This book presents a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of mutualism origin, plant–pollinator specificity, mutualism stability, and reciprocal diversification. In particular, it focuses on the natural history and evolutionary history of the third example of obligate pollination mutualism, leafflower–leafflower moth association, which was discovered in the plant family Phyllanthaceae by the lead editor and then established by the editors and their coworkers as an ideal model system for studies of mutualism and the coevolutionary process. This work brings together the knowledge they have gained through an array of research conducted using different approaches, ranging from taxonomy, phylogenetics, ecology, and evolutionary biology to biogeography. Richly illustrated with numerous original color photographs, the volume consists of 13 chapters and is divided into three main parts: natural history, ecology, and evolution. It begins by showcasing numerous examples of plant–animal interactions and their origins to guide readers in the world of leafflowers and their pollinators. The immense diversity of Phyllanthaceae and pollinator moths is then explored, and in the following 7 chapters mutualism is discussed from a range of ecological and evolutionary points of view. The final chapter presents a review of the evolution and variety of obligate pollination mutualisms. This book offers researchers and students in the field of ecology, botany, evolutionary biology, pollination biology, entomology, and tropical biology fascinating insights into why such a costly pollination system has evolved and why Phyllanthaceae is so diverse despite the inconspicuousness of their flowers.

Introduction to Cultural Ecology

Introduction to Cultural Ecology
Author: Mark Q. Sutton
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2004
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9780759105317

This volume is geared toward students and instructors involved in cultural ecology, ecological anthropology, and/or human ecology. While covering basic concepts for beginners, this book also provides a thorough and sophisticated discussion of cultural ecology's history and theory using examples from throughout the world, both historical and contemporary.

Fungal Diseases

Fungal Diseases
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2011-10-08
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 030921226X

Fungal diseases have contributed to death and disability in humans, triggered global wildlife extinctions and population declines, devastated agricultural crops, and altered forest ecosystem dynamics. Despite the extensive influence of fungi on health and economic well-being, the threats posed by emerging fungal pathogens to life on Earth are often underappreciated and poorly understood. On December 14 and 15, 2010, the IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats hosted a public workshop to explore the scientific and policy dimensions associated with the causes and consequences of emerging fungal diseases.

Friction

Friction
Author: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2011-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400830591

What the struggle over the Indonesian rainforests can teach us about the social frictions that shape the world around us Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and light while one stick alone is just a stick. It is the friction that produces movement, action, and effect. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing challenges the widespread view that globalization invariably signifies a clash of cultures, developing friction as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting social interactions that make up our contemporary world. Tsing focuses on the rainforests of Indonesia, where in the 1980s and 1990s capitalist interests increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from previous claimants, creating resources for distant markets. In response, environmental movements arose to defend the rainforests and the communities of people who live in them. Not confined to a village, province, or nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforests includes local and national environmentalists, international science, North American investors, advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, United Nations funding agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban students—all drawn into unpredictable, messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that sometimes work out. Providing an invaluable portfolio of methods for the study of global interconnections, Friction shows how cultural differences are in the grip of worldly encounter and reveals how much is overlooked in contemporary theories of the global.

The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution

The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution
Author: John N. Thompson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2005-06-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226797627

Coevolution—reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species driven by natural selection—is one of the most important ecological and genetic processes organizing the earth's biodiversity: most plants and animals require coevolved interactions with other species to survive and reproduce. The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution analyzes how the biology of species provides the raw material for long-term coevolution, evaluates how local coadaptation forms the basic module of coevolutionary change, and explores how the coevolutionary process reshapes locally coevolving interactions across the earth's constantly changing landscapes. Picking up where his influential The Coevolutionary Process left off, John N. Thompsonsynthesizes the state of a rapidly developing science that integrates approaches from evolutionary ecology, population genetics, phylogeography, systematics, evolutionary biochemistry and physiology, and molecular biology. Using models, data, and hypotheses to develop a complete conceptual framework, Thompson also draws on examples from a wide range of taxa and environments, illustrating the expanding breadth and depth of research in coevolutionary biology.