Rainforest Biodiversity References

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Chapter 3:

The opening quotation comes from The Song of the Dodo (New York: Scribner, 1996) by David Quammen.

In his The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992), E.O. Wilson eloquently depicts rainforest diversity using the example of the number of ants in a bush: a single bush in the bush in the Amazon may have more species of ants than the entire British Isles.

The "Mean Net Primary Production by Ecosystem" table is derived from Holdgate, M. ("The Ecological Significance of Biological Diversity," Ambio Vol. 25, No. 6, Sept. 1996).

E.O. Wilson demonstrates the Increase in Diversity Towards the Tropics using the number of bird species in locations of similar size (The Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992).

The box, "Portraits of Rainforest Diversity" is derived from several sources: plant species (E.O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992); butterflies (Robbins, R.K. and Opler, P.A., "Butterfly Diversity and a Preliminary Comparison with Bird and Mammal Diversity," p 69-75 in Biodiversity II. Reaka-Kudla, Wilson, Wilson, eds., Joseph Henry Press, Washington D. C. 1997); and insects (Didham, R.K. and Stork, N.E., "Rise of the Supertramp Beetles," Natural History, Vol. 107, No. 6. July/August 1998).

The section on stability - especially on competition and evolutionary processes - is heavily influenced by E.O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992.

MacArthur and Wilson presented the idea that habitat size is correlated with the diversity of species in The Theory of Island Biogeography, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967.
The background for the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems Project (Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project) is given in Lovejoy, T.E. et al., "Ecosystem Decay of Amazon Forest Remnants," in M.H. Nitecki, ed., Extinction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984; Lovejoy, T.E. et al., "Edges and other effects of isolation on Amazon Forest Fragments." in M.E. Soulè, ed., Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity, Sunderland: Sinauer, 1986; Wilson, E.O., The Diversity of Life, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992; Quammen, D., The Song of the Dodo, New York: Scribner, 1996; and Laurance, W.F. and R.O. Bierregaard, Jr, eds., Tropical Forest Remnants: Ecology, Management, and Conservation of Fragmented Communities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Smaller fragments suffered greater disturbance through tree falls and suffered losses of biomass according to Laurance, W.F. and R.O. Bierregaard, Jr, eds., Tropical Forest Remnants: Ecology, Management, and Conservation of Fragmented Communities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997; and Laurance, W.F., "Biomass Collapse in Amazonian Forest Fragments," Science Vol. 278 (1117-1118), Nov. 1997. The work edited by Laurance and Bierregaard further surveys fragmented sites around the world coming to the conclusion that fragmentation reduces global biodiversity. A similar result is reached in Bawa, K.S. and Seidler, R., "Natural Forest Management and Conservation of Biodiversity in Tropical Forests," Conservation Biology Vol. 12 No. 1 (46-55), Feb 1998.

Island biogeography is discussed further in Williamson, M. (Island Populations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Quammen, D. (The Song of the Dodo, New York: Scribner, 1996); Oosterzee, P. (Where Worlds Collide, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997); James H. Brown, J.H., and M.V. Lomolino (Biogeography (2nd edition), Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, 1998); and Whittaker, R.J. (Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

The box on population diversity draws from Hughes, J.B., G.C. Daily, and P.R. Ehrlich, "Population diversity: Its extent and extinction," Science 278: 689, Oct. 24, 1997.

Whitmore, T.C. (Biogeographical Evolution of the Malay Archipelago, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) and Van Oosterzee, P. (Where Worlds Collide, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997) review the effect of the Ice Ages on Indonesia and New Guinea in their discussion of the Wallace Line. Both also briefly discusses some of the theories on the causes of global ice ages. More detail on ice ages is provided in J. Imbrie, (Ice Ages : Solving the Mystery, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1986); Raup, D, (Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? New York: W.W. Norton, 1991); Lundqvist, J. ("Quaternary climatic fluctuations, global environment changes, and the impact of man," Nature and Resources, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1996); Van Oosterzee, P. (Where Worlds Collide, New York: Cornell University Press, 1997); and Bradley, R.S. (Paleoclimatology (International Geophysics Series vol 64), Academic Press Limited, 1999).

"Doomsday genes" which may enable species to undergo radical structural changes in mere generations in response to sudden environmental changes are discussed in Rutherford, S.L. and S. Lindquist, "HSP90 as a capacitor for morphological evolution," Nature 396: 336-342, 1998.

Eldredge, N. and Gould S. ("Punctuated equilibrium: an alternative to phyletic gradualism." in T. Schopf, Models in Paleobiology, New York: WH Freeman 1972) introduce the idea of punctuated equilibrium as a new theory for evolution.

The merits of the "refugia" ice age theory are debated between Colinvaux, P.A., et al., "A long pollen record from lowland Amazonia: forest and cooling in glacial times," Science Vol. 274 (85-88), Oct.1996; Turcq, B. et al., "Amazonia rainforest fires: a lacustrine record of 7000 years," Ambio Vol. 27 No. 2 (139-142), March 1998; and Hooghiemstra, H. and van der Hammen, T., "Neogene and Quaternary development of the Neotropical rain forest: the refugia hypothesis, and a literature overview," Earth-Science Reviews, Vol. 44, issue 3-4 (147-183) Sept. 1998.

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Copyright Rhett Butler 1994-2007

"Rainforest" is used interchangeably with "rain forest" on this site.
Same for "rainforests" and "rain forests". "Jungle" is generally not used.

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