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The avifauna of the study area is described and quantified, beginning with historical coverage since 1872. The Van Cortlandt Park cumulative and breeding avifaunas are dissected and contrasted with those of Central and Prospect Parks. Study area breeding species are treated quantitatively, followed by winter species, and migration phenomena; features and conclusions are amplified in 39 tables. The chapter concludes with extended discussion of past and current avian resource problems, particularly in Van Cortlandt Park and what park management is doing about them, with specific recommendations for needed research and management actions.

This chapter explains how citizen science can be used to develop a conservation research program. It describes a specific case in which “super citizen scientists” used manipulative sampling to gather data implicating acid rain and mercury in forest bird declines, highlighting the advantages of partnerships with governmental and nongovernmental organizations. Focusing on the Birds in Forested Landscapes (BFL) project that was originally developed at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the chapter demonstrates how citizen data can help address the effects of pollution on birds over wide regions. It also considers the BFL's collaboration with The Nature Conservancy as well as new research using data from another citizen science project, the Breeding Bird Survey, to develop a program for investigating significant conservation issues for birds and for translating science for policy and management.

In this chapter, we consider the causes and evolutionary consequences of phenotypic variation among individuals in random-mating, unstructured populations. We focus on quantitative traits because they illustrate well the difficulties in determining genetic versus environmental causes of phenotypic variation. This is an important step when aiming to make precise predictions concerning phenotypic change in traits that influence individual longevity and reproduction. We also describe several recent conceptual advances concerning the evolutionary significance of population structure. Variation among individuals in quantitative traits is typically measured as total phenotypic variance (the variance estimated from all phenotypes measured in a population). This parameter has three convenient properties; first, total phenotypic variance can be partitioned into components that are themselves variances attributable to different causes, and second, these components are additive, summing to the total phenotypic variance. These attributes allow one to identify and to compare the magnitudes of different sources of variance to determine their relative evolutionary and ecological importance. Third, even when total phenotypic variance in a trait is high, resulting in a high degree of overlap among the means of different Variation among individuals in quantitative traits is typically measured as total phenotypic variance (the variance estimated from all phenotypes measured in a population). This parameter has three convenient properties; first, total phenotypic variance can be partitioned into components that are themselves variances attributable to different causes, and second, these components are additive, summing to the total phenotypic variance. These attributes allow one to identify and to compare the magnitudes of different sources of variance to determine their relative evolutionary and ecological importance. Third, even when total phenotypic variance in a trait is high, resulting in a high degree of overlap among the means of different populations or genotypes, the statistical control of one or more variance components often permits the detection of significant differences among phenotypic means. The proportion of total phenotypic variance accounted for by genotypic versus environmentally induced causes determines the degree of resemblance between parents and offspring or between other types of relatives (e.g., clonal replicates, siblings, half-siblings, maternal lineages). Given that a high degree of resemblance among relatives is a criterion for natural selection to cause evolutionary change, a major goal of evolutionary ecologists is to measure these variance components in wild populations.

The study of mating is one of the most active areas in evolutionary ecology. What fuels this research is curiosity about a stunning diversity of ways in which zygotes are formed. Many plants and some animals can reproduce without combining gametes. Many other plants combine gametes but do so within the same individual (selfing). Still other plants and animals require a gamete from another individual to stimulate reproduction but do not incorporate the genetic material contained in that gamete in the offspring. Finally, many organisms combine gametes produced from different individuals in sexual reproduction, but the ways in which these individuals get together to reproduce are also amazingly diverse and have major implications for how selection acts in these populations. Why are there so many different ways to reproduce? Answering this question is a major challenge for evolutionary ecologists. Our approach begins with how a variety of ecological factors affect selection on reproductive traits. Because many reproductive traits show genetic variation, diversity in selective pressures can lead to a diversity of evolutionary changes. Thus, understanding the evolutionary ecology of mating systems can help to interpret the significance of this variation and can provide new insight into related phenomena. For example, costs of female reproduction associated with development of offspring greatly impact other aspects of the life history, and males are often limited by mates (Savalli, this volume). Factors such as levels of selfing, inbreeding depression, and allocation of resources play a part in mating systems of both plants and animals (Waser and Williams, this volume), and sex allocation theory has been used in both plants and animals to explore the evolution of hermaphroditism and unisexuality (Campbell 2000; Orzack, this volume). This chapter explores some of the major forces affecting mating systems. Our treatments of plants and animals differ in emphasis, but our goal is to use the perspective of evolutionary ecology to define more fully the similarities, differences, and diversity in plant and animal mating systems, and to highlight potentially interesting yet currently unanswered questions. Diversity in patterns of zygote production arises in part from ecological factors influencing two issues: selection on the evolution of sexual reproduction itself and differentiation of the sexes.

The diversity of known strategies for parasitic lifestyles is truly astonishing. Many species of parasitic worms, for example, utilize only one host species, while others cycle between two or more (as many as four) different species of hosts. Some parasites are highly virulent, seriously debilitating or even killing their hosts, while others cause only minor damage. Some parasites (such as viruses) are very small relative to their hosts and have the capacity for explosive reproduction. Others are almost as large as their hosts, and have relatively slow generation times. Therefore, parasites are difficult to categorize. Here, I use parasite to refer to organisms that have an obligate association with, and a negative effect on, another organism (the host). Host strategies for dealing with parasites are equally complex. Vertebrates have highly specialized immune systems that can rapidly respond to infection and then store information that can be used to mount future responses to the same type of infection. Invertebrates lack the memory cells of true immune systems, but they do have complex self-nonself recognition systems for recognizing and killing foreign tissues. Plants also have highly specialized defenses against pathogens, and the genetic basis of these defenses is especially well known due to the work of plant pathologists on crop plants. The myriad of details involved in the interactions between hosts and their parasites is overwhelming, but there are some shared, general aspects of these interactions that are of particular interest to evolutionary ecologists. First, parasites may attack in a frequency-dependent way. In other words, the probability of infection for a particular host genotype is expected to be, at least in part, a function of the frequency of that host genotype. This expectation has implications for sexual selection and the evolutionary maintenance of cross-fertilization (Sakai, this volume; Savalli, this volume). Second, parasites may affect the population density of their hosts, and host density may feed back to affect the numerical dynamics of the parasite. Host density may also affect natural selection on the reproductive rates of parasites, which in turn is likely to affect host fitness and host dynamics.

“This afternoon, the sky will start to clear, with cloud shreds, runners, and thin bars followed by flocks.” If Jean- Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) had had his way, this might have been an uplifting early- morning weather forecast announcing the coming of a sunny day. Unfortunately for poetry, in 1803, several months after Lamarck proposed this first cloud classification, the “namer of clouds,” Luke Howard (1772–1864), introduced his own staid Latin nomenclature that is still with us today and includes terms such as “cumulus,” “stratus,” and “cirrus.” Howard not only had a more scientific-sounding jargon, but was soon given publicity in the form of a poem by Goethe; Lamarck’s names didn’t stand a chance. For a long time, human- scale observation of clouds was the primary source of scientific knowledge of atmospheric morphologies and dynamics. This didn’t change until the appearance of the first weather maps based on meager collections of ground station measurements around 1850. This was the beginning of the field of “synoptic” (literally “map- scale”) meteorology. Under the leader­ship of Wilhelm Bjerknes (1862–1951), it spawned the Norwegian school of me­teorology that focused notably on airmasses, the often sharp gradients between them called “fronts,” and the stability of the airmass interfaces. This was the dom­inant view when, in the mid 1920s, Richardson proposed his scaling 4/ 3 diffusion law. The spatial resolution of these “synoptic- scale” maps was so low that features smaller than 1,000 kilometers or so could not be discerned. Between these and the kilometric human “microscales,” virtually nothing was known. Richardson’s claim that a single scaling law might hold from thousands of kilometers down to millimeters didn’t seem so daring. Not only was it compatible with the scale- free equations that he had elaborated, but also there were no scalebound paradigms to contradict it. By the late 1940s and ʼ50s, the development of radar finally opened a window onto the intermediate range.

The contradictions between the cities and the countryside, between mental and manual labor, and between intellectuals and rural people with which the Mao-era state wrestled have by no means disappeared. Moreover, current state policies and efforts by various social actors to transform Chinese rural society and agriculture yet again suggest strong continuities with Mao-era agricultural extension and the scientific experiment movement—though translated into the new context of global capitalism. The Epilogue first presents a sketch of the so-called sannong ("three-rural") problems that Chinese peasants, rural society, and agriculture face today. It then discusses some of the efforts now under way to address these problems, in particular the New Rural Reconstruction movement, the state campaign to "Build a New Socialist Countryside," the Participatory Plant Breeding project, and the Food Sovereignty Movement. In the process, it demonstrates the lasting significance of the Mao-era’s red and green revolutions, and their meanings for various social actors, in the current Chinese agricultural landscape.

This chapter traces rice seeds as they circulated from the genetics laboratory through a vertically organized system for production and consumption onto the Spanish landscape. Rice production in Spain during the early years of Francoism offers an illuminating example of the links between agricultural research and state corporatism. Agronomists who were engaged in rice breeding placed themselves at the center of a vertically integrated system that attempted to unify state politics, capital and labor issues, and scientific research. The scientific laboratory was able to shape the system from within and to capitalize on it to obtain new seeds and distribute them throughout the Spanish territory. Seeds provide a new entry point into the actual functioning of the regime's vertical unions. They also explain the transformation of the Guadalquivir marshes into a rice producing landscape.

This chapter considers the failure of communication dramatized in Supplément au voyage de Bougainville which exists in tension with Diderot's empirical efforts at detailed description in the Histoire des deux Indes and the Encyclopédie. In one the effort to gather knowledge with infinite aspiration is asserted, while in another the emphasis is on the incommensurability of one culture with another. There is a double movement in the French Enlightenment: an encyclopedic impulse aiming to incorporate and comprehend alongside a sometimes contrary impulse emphasizing cultural and ethical singularity/uniqueness. Based on these antislavery/anticolonial works, this chapter examines how Diderot argued against empire. Yet, tacking in the other direction, it argues that Diderot's radicalism placed him in a bind that could be resolved only by turning to political fantasy: unwilling to fully accept the legitimacy of colonial dominance, he imagines a “consensual colonialism,” a soft colonization, in which the interests of settler and native are unified and the dominance of the settler is established with the voluntary consent of the colonized. Diderot speculates on how biologically breeding a docile subject has enabled the successful settling and peopling of colonial spaces.

Human control of animal reproduction ties the subjects of this book together in yet another way. Given past and ongoing human injustices against animals, humans who wish to care for animals incapable of living free face difficult choices.

In this paper, I clarify Nietzsche’s troubling notion of the morality of breeding or cultivation (Züchtung). I defend it as a naturalist morality that promotes life and human flourishing. I begin by arguing that breeding should be interpreted metaphorically as the socially conditioned production of character types through habitual, incorporated behaviour. I then place Nietzsche’s contrast of breeding and taming in the context of his broader categories of noble and slavish, natural and anti-natural, moralities. Moral breeding is a noble form of evaluation because it begins with affirmation and cultivation of character traits, in contrast to the slavish form of taming, which begins by identifying harmful traits for elimination. Breeding is consequently a natural morality because it affirms human nature and life, while taming condemns fundamental aspects of human nature and life. Finally, I argue that moral breeding is a natural morality in an additional sense. Because Nietzsche believes the accidental selection and preservation of traits is the necessary form of all human development, we are unable to opt out of the natural process of breeding. We can choose only to participate intentionally or accidentally. Consequently, the dangers of breeding are lessened, not increased, by bringing moral inquiry into the selection process to counter the ethical dangers of amoral and accidental criteria of breeding.

This chapter provides a definition of status dog; a term first identified in 2007. Media roles are addressed and consideration given to the concept of moral panic. This is also reviewed in terms of the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991). A cultural criminology perspective is also employed regarding moral panic theory. A critical discourse analysis of the coverage of status dogs in the UK news media is presented and parallels are drawn between UK reporting and media coverage in the USA which is revealed as unbalanced, sensationalist and biased. Over the past 20 years there has been a shift in human-animal relations with increased commodification of animals. The media has also failed to distinguish between owners with commodification values and traditional values, an issue which has resulted in the Staffordshire bull terrier being viewed by many as a status dog. This chapter reviews Beverland’s concept of intrinsic and extrinsic ownership of animals. The causes of animal cruelty among owners of status dogs is considered which is linked to irresponsible dog ownership, and the vicious circle of demand and supply of status dogs, via irresponsible breeders seeking to make a profit.

In the first years of the twentieth century geneticists promised a revolution in plant breeding that would bring new forms of agriculture. This chapter tracks the successes and failures of the first geneticists’ plans for agriculture. Specifically we follow Rowland Biffen, based at University of Cambridge's Department of Agriculture, and his plan for an All-English loaf, produced without imported flour. The All-English loaf was a failure in Biffen’s lifetime but his varieties were a huge success. Farmers – especially in the south east of England – enthusiastically adopted the new wheat varieties for their own purposes rather than Biffen’s. Little Joss and Yeoman, the most successful varieties to emerge from Biffen’s scientific breeding program, were the leading edge of a large-scale technological intervention in English farming, in which science was to play a guiding role and backing came from the British Government. However, by the end of the 1920s, when it became obvious the All-English loaf was still a far-off dream, it was Biffen and the Ministry of Agriculture who had changed their views on how to farm wheat, as yields rather than bread-making quality became the leitmotif of intensive arable production.

Tim D. Smith seeks to examine the ecology of cetacean species, by bringing together data from whaling logbooks, governmental records, the examination of historical environmental sources, and evidence from archaeological investigations, with the aim of creating a thorough and accurate history of the whaling industry and marine ecology. This final chapter raises the questions of changes in carrying capacity, breeding habitat, and breeding success of cetacean specifes, and concludes by finding gaps in records and previous analysis that the collaboration of whale biologists, ecolologists, climatologists and historians must seek to heal.

This chapter discusses the twentieth century sealing industry in the Falklands, paying particular attention to the Falklands Islands and Dependencies Sealing Company - established in 1928 - and their subsequent operation in the Falklands. It examines the company’s catch distribution; catch and production rates; and assets and liabilities in the 1920s and 1930s. It also explores the government’s role in twentieth-century sealing, noting the laudable attempts at re-establishing a stable industry, but that ultimately they made several major errors of judgement, such as basing quotas on outdated statistics. The conclusion identifies declining stock, poor demand, and high operating costs as key reasons for the failure of the Falkland Islands to establish a successful sealing industry in the twentieth century.