Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
One of the great works of natural history travel and study by one of the cofounders of the
field of evolution.
Chapter
3
. A Jaguar on the Beach
Asner, Gregory P., George V. N. Powell, Joseph Mascaro, David E. Knapp, John K. Clark,
James Jacobson, Ty Kennedy-Bowdoin, et al. 2010. “High-Resolution Forest Carbon
Stocks and Emissions in the Amazon.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America
107, no. 38 (2010): 16738-42.
The first published account of an effort to map forest carbon across a large tropical land-
scape.
Colinvaux, Paul A.
Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist's Perspective
. Prin-
ceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
An excellent explanation of the costs of being an apex predator.
Dinerstein, Eric, Keshav Varma, Eric Wikramanayake, George Powell, Susan Lumpkin,
Robin Naidoo, Mike Korchinsky, et al. “Linking Ecosystem Services, Conservation,
and Local Livelihoods through a Wildlife Premium Mechanism.”
Conservation Bi-
ology
(in press).
The wildlife premium mechanism is a new performance-based approach to link conserva-
tion of carbon held in rain forests and recovery of endangered wildlife such as jaguars, ti-
gers, and elephants.
Estes, James A., John Terborgh, Justin S. Brashares, Mary E. Power, Joel Berger, William J.
Bond, Stephen R. Carpenter, et al. “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth.”
Science
333, no. 6040 (2011): 301-6.
An important review paper that identifies an extensive suite of “ecological sur-
prises”—unanticipated impacts on ecosystems ranging from tundra to coral reefs and ecolo-
gical processes ranging from wildfire to disease—stemming from the loss of apex con-
sumers.
Forsyth, Adrian, and Ken Miyata.
Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of
Central and South America
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
One of the classic natural history accounts of rain forests.
Foster, Robin B. “The Floristic Composition of the Rio Manu Floodplain Forest.” In
Four
Neotropical Rainforests
, edited by Alwyn H. Gentry, 99-111. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1990.
A description of the vegetation in one of richest rain forests on Earth.
