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This chapter discusses some general techniques and considerations common to managing most habitats. These include principles of managing for different groups, landscape factors, and disturbances; different approaches to grazing, and methods of controlling unwanted plant species. Eradication of rats and cats on islands is also covered, since this affects a number of different habitats, and can be of critical importance in conserving some island endemics and important seabird colonies. The chapter also includes a discussion of the likely effects of climate change on species and habitats, and potential ways to mitigate and compensate for its damaging effects.

This chapter introduces the dramatis personae of contemporary wild canids, along with some of their features. Topics discussed include interspecific variation; intraspecific variation; phylogenetic baggage; communicative canids; dispersal, disease, and body size; sympatry and interspecific relations; and canid geography. A vignette account of all thirty-six canid taxa (including dingoes, here listed as a grey wolf subspecies Canis lupus dingo) is also presented.

This chapter discusses current understanding of primate phylogeny. It argues that a cladistic approach based on genetics, supplemented by morphological and behavioral data, offers unique promise for organizing relationships among living primates, as well as their pattern of descent from a common ancestor. Understanding evolutionary relationships within the Order Primates is a key starting point for the comparative study of primate behavior and neurobiology.

This chapter begins by distinguishing phenology from seasonality. Phenology is defined as the study of the occurrence of phenomena in relation to time. In contrast, seasonality refers to temporal variation in abiotic environmental conditions. The chapter then presents the central findings of four major reviews of phenological change over the past several decades. This overview shows that, first, in general, recent phenological trends in plants and animals tend overwhelmingly to be negative—that is, species across a diverse array of taxa appear to have tended toward earlier timing of springtime activity in concert with recent climatic warming. Second, however, it demonstrates that there has not been a universal tendency toward earlier timing of springtime phenological events with warming. Lastly, the overview reveals that there is, indeed, some evidence for a latitudinal trend in rates of phenological advance. The chapter also looks at phenological dynamics across taxa, latitude, and time.

This chapter defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. The chapter argues that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behaviour of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The objection that, according to current ‘species concepts’, species are relational is rejected. These concepts are primarily concerned with what it is for a kind to be a species and throw little light on the essentialist issue of what it is for an organism to be a member of a particular kind. Finally, the chapter argues that this essentialism can accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change.

This chapter presents an analysis of the recorded vascular plant taxa of Maquipucuna. It provides a list of the 16 most species-rich vascular plants, vascular plants with the largest number of native species and of epiphytic species, diversity of woody taxa, and exotic taxa in the Maquipucuna flora. The vascular flora of the Maquipucuna area includes 621 genera and 1,640 species of vascular plants, of which only 44 are exotic. The largest family in number of species, with about 12.8 percent of the flora, is Orchidaceae, for which 204 species are reported currently. The pteridophytes, with 227 native species (14.2 per cent of the vascular flora), are a more prominent floristic component at Maquipucuna than at most other cloud forest sites. About 441 species, or approximately 27.7 percent of those recorded from Maquipucuna, are epiphytic. Polypodiaceae have the highest percentage of epiphytism (87 percent), while orchids and Araceae have over 50 epiphytic species.

This chapter introduces the viruses—biological entities so small they are not even selves. It analyzes how viruses, although not autopoietic entities nor alive, promote healthy life by engaging in “cyclical symbioses.” It evaluates cyclical symbioses: how viruses move genes into and then out of living cells and whole organisms. This chapter shows that the recent insight into viruses and their potential in symbiosis as part of “self” offers exciting new possibilities for research. It suggests that viruses are still fundamental to genetic fusions across disparate taxa lineages and in the origin of sensation in cells and organisms.

We present new information regarding the status of some endemic freshwater fishes of México from eight states and 24 localities. From earlier descriptions summarized in 1991, two fishes were known extinct, but by 2017, the total increased to 15 taxa either extinct or gone from the wild and present only in captive populations. Species in the genus Cyprinodon are the most threatened taxa at the sites we visited. Main reasons for rapid declines or extinctions are springs drying due to increased water consumption by domestic, industrial, and agricultural practices, and negative effects of nonnative species. The destruction of aquatic habitats occurs everywhere in México and requires more protected areas for aquatic organisms. The survival of this group of animals, especially in arid zones, is in jeopardy of disappearing forever. The number of species declining or extinct continues to rise, increasing the importance of protection by Mexican laws.

Aquatic invertebrates inhabiting arid-land streams possess diverse adaptations to withstand cycles of drying and flooding. However, anthropogenic water withdrawals and climate change are modifying the historical hydrological variability, increasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of droughts. These novel drought regimes act as catastrophic disturbances that restructure aquatic invertebrate communities and generate novel community trajectories. Here, we use a case study from a stream in southeastern Arizona to demonstrate how taxa differ in their capacity to survive severe droughts and that these different responses have consequences for ecosystem ecology. We posit that, in addition to changes caused by direct loss of taxa due to drought, other widespread community changes may be indirect consequences of the disappearance of a few particularly vulnerable, functionally important taxa. Focusing conservation efforts on these key taxa should be a component of mitigation and restoration efforts and may increase the overlap of invertebrate and fish conservation strategies.

This chapter discusses the role of the concept of endemism in biogeography and biodiversity investigations. Endemic areas are the building blocks of biogeography; relationships among them form the basis of biogeographical classification. This classification is a hierarchy incorporating increasingly encompassing areas, such as districts, regions, and realms, which form biotic areas. The concept of an endemic area, the area occupied by a lineage through time, is related to an area of endemism, an area occupied by at least two purportedly monophyletic taxa—at least two, because an area occupied by just one taxon will have no history shared with any other area.

This chapter provides a list of all taxa known to be present in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology as of December 31, 2001, whose geographic place of capture constitutes a type of locality. The nature of the type material in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology—holotype, neotype, syntypes, or paratopotypes—is indicated by an “H,” “N,” “S,” or “P,” correspondingly, in parenthesis after the name of each taxon as given in the original description.

This chapter discusses the various expeditions Alexander and Kellogg made in order to begin a collection of topotypes for the Museum of Vertebrae Zoology. Topotypes are specimens from localities where new taxa had been previously described. This new project was based on the suggestion of Grinnell, who believed that such material could contribute to the independence and resourcefulness of the museum as a research institution. The chapter also reveals several misadventures the women experienced during their travels, including a car accident and Alexander's interaction with a skunk.

This chapter discusses the enduring legacy of Annie Montague Alexander, which is shown through the collections she gathered with Louise Kellogg. This legacy is further supplemented by seventeen taxa that are named in her honor. The discussion shows that Alexander did not change her annual cycle of activity, even when she was in her early eighties. The only change she made was that she stopped traveling abroad; instead, she and Kellogg hosted small dinner parties for researchers who returned after an extended field trip. Alexander's find of a rare variety of grass and her death on September 10, 1950, are discussed in the latter portion of the chapter.

This chapter can be regarded as a sequel to George Ettlinger's 1984 paper, ‘Humans, apes and monkeys: the changing neuropsychological viewpoint’. He noted that in 1963 ‘there was no evidence for cerebral functional asymmetry in any nonhuman animal’. He then reviewed a number of findings of functional asymmetries in other primates, reported in the following twenty years and concluded that while ‘it might be prudent not to assert that cerebral hemispheric specialization is homologous in man and in monkey…the likelihood of such an eventual outcome has increased enormously’. This chapter contends that there is not only homology across vertebrate taxa for a number of individual specializations, but there is probably some evolutionary continuity in relationships between specializations.

This chapter discusses aspects of domain-specific thinking, including categorization and causal inferencing from conceptual categories, within and across cultures. It focuses on the structure of categories in the domain of biology, such as the organization of taxonomic relations that hold between cat and mammal or oak and tree. It examines the extent to which this categorical structure constrains inferences that causally relate biological taxa to one another, and the extent to which culturally specific belief systems, or theories are able to modify that structure and hence change the nature of biological reasoning.

This chapter explores the ecology and management of feral pig populations California grasslands. It discusses the history, taxonomy, geography, and basic ecology of feral pigs; the response of native and exotic plant taxa from different functional groups to pig disturbances; the impacts of pig disturbances on ecosystem processes; and efforts to control or eradicate pig populations and manage grasslands in the face of invasion by these mammals.

This chapter describes the extant taxa most relevant to studies about the conquest of land by vertebrates: the coelacanth and the dipnoans (lungfishes), the closest relatives of tetrapods. It begins by discussing the acquisition by an aquatic taxon of an amphibious lifestyle, as shown by Periophthalmus, a teleost that lives on the shores of tropical rivers and lakes and feeds on prey generally caught on land. The chapter then examines the coelacanth, which is considered as a living fossil, an expression applied to extant taxa that resemble old lineages, especially if they were discovered after their extinct relatives. The dipnoans, the closest extant relatives of tetrapods, are also discussed. Dipnoans possess functional lungs and gills, and can consequently breathe both air and water.