Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution PDF Download

Author: Stephen Shennan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520255999
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This volume offers an integrative approach to the application of evolutionary theory in studies of cultural transmission and social evolution and reveals the enormous range of ways in which Darwinian ideas can lead to productive empirical research, the touchstone of any worthwhile theoretical perspective. While many recent works on cultural evolution adopt a specific theoretical framework, such as dual inheritance theory or human behavioral ecology, Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution emphasizes empirical analysis and includes authors who employ a range of backgrounds and methods to address aspects of culture from an evolutionary perspective. Editor Stephen Shennan has assembled archaeologists, evolutionary theorists, and ethnographers, whose essays cover a broad range of time periods, localities, cultural groups, and artifacts.

Author: F.Herbert Bormann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461262321
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The advent of ecosystem ecology has created great difficulties for ecologists primarily trained as biologists, since inevitably as the field grew, it absorbed components of other disciplines relatively foreign to most ecologists yet vital to the understanding of the structure and function of ecosystems. From the point of view of the biological ecologist struggling to understand the enormous complexity of the biological functions within an ecosystem, the added necessity of integrating biology with geochemis try, hydrology, micrometeorology, geomorphology, pedology, and applied sciences (like silviculture and land use management) often has appeared as an impossible requirement. Ecologists have frequently responded by limiting their perspective to biology with the result that the modeling of species interactions is sometimes considered as modeling ecosystems, or modeling the living fraction of the ecosystems is considered as modeling whole ecosystems. Such of course is not the case, since understanding the structure and function of ecosystems requires sound understanding of inanimate as well as animate processes and often neither can be under stood without the other. About 15 years ago, a view of ecology somewhat different from most then prevailing, coupled with a strong dose of naivete and a sense of exploration, lead us to believe that consideration of the inanimate side of ecosystem function rather than being just one more annoying complexity might provide exceptional advantages in the study of ecosystems. To examine this possibility, we took two steps which occurred more or less simultaneously.

Author: Kevin Gaston
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470999586
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Issues of scale have become increasingly important to ecologists. This book addresses the structure of regional (large-scale) ecological assemblages or communities, and the influence this has at a local (small-scale) level. This macroecological perspective is essential for the broader study of ecology because the structure and function of local communities cannot be properly understood without reference to the region in which they are situated. The book reviews and synthesizes the issues of current importance in macroecology, providing a balanced summary of the field that will be useful for biologists at advanced undergraduate level and above. These general issues are illustrated by frequent reference to specific well-studied local and regional assemblages -- an approach that serves to relate the macroecological perspective (which is perhaps often difficult to comprehend) to the everyday experience of local sites. Macroecology is an expanding and dynamic discipline. The broad aim of the book is to promote an understanding of why it is such an important part of the wider program of research into ecology. Summarises the current macroecological literature. Provides numerous examples of key patterns. Explicitly links local and regional scale processes. Exploits detailed knowledge of one species assemblage to explore broad issues in the structuring of biodiversity.

Author: Simon Bell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1135820066
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Providing a fresh approach to the theory of design, Landscape: Pattern, Perception and Process synthesizes planning, design and ecology and shows a new view of where design can develop. The book brings together the work and subject areas of a range of disciplines including psychologists, philosophers, geologists, ecologists, cultural geographers, foresters, urban planners and landscape architects and synthesizes all these together. Since many landscape and environmental problems require multi-disciplinary approaches for their solution, this book demonstrates how the best integration can be achieved. Highly illustrated, it contains examples from North America, Canada, Europe and Australasia. Glossary, references and further reading provide the reader with guidance and back-up resources.

Author: Monica G. Turner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387216944
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
An ideal text for students taking a course in landscape ecology. The book has been written by very well-known practitioners and pioneers in the new field of ecological analysis. Landscape ecology has emerged during the past two decades as a new and exciting level of ecological study. Environmental problems such as global climate change, land use change, habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity have required ecologists to expand their traditional spatial and temporal scales and the widespread availability of remote imagery, geographic information systems, and desk top computing has permitted the development of spatially explicit analyses. In this new text book this new field of landscape ecology is given the first fully integrated treatment suitable for the student. Throughout, the theoretical developments, modeling approaches and results, and empirical data are merged together, so as not to introduce barriers to the synthesis of the various approaches that constitute an effective ecological synthesis. The book also emphasizes selected topic areas in which landscape ecology has made the most contributions to our understanding of ecological processes, as well as identifying areas where its contributions have been limited. Each chapter features questions for discussion as well as recommended reading.

Author: Michael D. Fortescue
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9781588110589
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The purpose of this book is to illustrate the relevance to linguistics today of Whitehead's philosophy of organism. Although largely ignored by linguists, Whitehead has in fact much to say as regards the cognitive processes underpinning language pattern. His theory of symbolism conceives of language as the 'systematization of expression', and relates meaning to feeling (in the broadest sense). The Whiteheadian perspective allows a synthesis of the psychological and the social approaches to language that does not fall into one or another fashionable form of reductionism. The volume represents a first application of Whitehead's thinking to a broad range of linguistic phenomena, ranging from speech act theory to the production and comprehension of texts, from language acquisition to historical change and the evolution of language. It is argued that Whitehead's holistic philosophy is uniquely suited to the view of language as an emergent phenomenon - regardless of whether one's approach to cognition is via the 'nativist' or the 'functionalist' route.

Author: Steven M. Stanley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"Not only is a wealth of evidence presented to support the model of punctuated equilibria, but Stanley's stream of refreshing insights into classic topics of evolution, such as living fossils, mass extinctions and adaptive radiations add further weight to the validity of the general model".--GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. "Overall, Stanley offers an imaginative treatment of almost every issue in macroevolution".--AMERICAN SCIENTIST. 192 illustrations.

Author: Felisa A. Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601228X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Galileo wrote that “nature cannot produce a horse as large as twenty ordinary horses or a giant ten times taller than an ordinary man unless by miracle or by greatly altering the proportions of his limbs and especially of his bones”—a statement that wonderfully captures a long-standing scientific fascination with body size. Why are organisms the size that they are? And what determines their optimum size? This volume explores animal body size from a macroecological perspective, examining species, populations, and other large groups of animals in order to uncover the patterns and causal mechanisms of body size throughout time and across the globe. The chapters represent diverse scientific perspectives and are divided into two sections. The first includes chapters on insects, snails, birds, bats, and terrestrial mammals and discusses the body size patterns of these various organisms. The second examines some of the factors behind, and consequences of, body size patterns and includes chapters on community assembly, body mass distribution, life history, and the influence of flight on body size.

Author: Bradford A. Hawkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521460298
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
How is the staggering biodiversity of the parasitoid insects maintained? This book, first published in 1994, explores patterns in host-parasitoid interactions, including parasitoid community richness, the importance of parasitoids as mortality factors, and their impact on host densities as determined by the outcomes of parasitoid introductions for biological control. It documents general patterns using data sets generated from the global literature and evaluates potential underlying biological, ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. A theme running throughout the book is the importance of host refuges as a major constraint on host-parasitoid interactions. Much can be learnt from the analysis of broad patterns; a few simple rules can go a long way in explaining the major components of these interactions. This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers interested in community ecology, population biology, entomology and biological control.

Author: David O'Sullivan
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118527070
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
A ground-up approach to explaining dynamic spatial modelling for an interdisciplinary audience. Across broad areas of the environmental and social sciences, simulation models are an important way to study systems inaccessible to scientific experimental and observational methods, and also an essential complement to those more conventional approaches. The contemporary research literature is teeming with abstract simulation models whose presentation is mathematically demanding and requires a high level of knowledge of quantitative and computational methods and approaches. Furthermore, simulation models designed to represent specific systems and phenomena are often complicated, and, as a result, difficult to reconstruct from their descriptions in the literature. This book aims to provide a practical and accessible account of dynamic spatial modelling, while also equipping readers with a sound conceptual foundation in the subject, and a useful introduction to the wide-ranging literature. Spatial Simulation: Exploring Pattern and Process is organised around the idea that a small number of spatial processes underlie the wide variety of dynamic spatial models. Its central focus on three ‘building-blocks’ of dynamic spatial models – forces of attraction and segregation, individual mobile entities, and processes of spread – guides the reader to an understanding of the basis of many of the complicated models found in the research literature. The three building block models are presented in their simplest form and are progressively elaborated and related to real world process that can be represented using them. Introductory chapters cover essential background topics, particularly the relationships between pattern, process and spatiotemporal scale. Additional chapters consider how time and space can be represented in more complicated models, and methods for the analysis and evaluation of models. Finally, the three building block models are woven together in a more elaborate example to show how a complicated model can be assembled from relatively simple components. To aid understanding, more than 50 specific models described in the book are available online at patternandprocess.org for exploration in the freely available Netlogo platform. This book encourages readers to develop intuition for the abstract types of model that are likely to be appropriate for application in any specific context. Spatial Simulation: Exploring Pattern and Process will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in environmental, social, ecological and geographical disciplines. Researchers and professionals who require a non-specialist introduction will also find this book an invaluable guide to dynamic spatial simulation.