ecology

"may act as both and . They influence local environments and s, determine related ecosystem processes and functions, and are associated with high levels of biodiversity. However, the intrinsic characteristics of megafauna species including long lifespan, large body size, sparseness and/or rarity, late maturity, and low fecundity, as well as high market value, make them very prone to extinction. Up to now, scientific interest and conservation efforts have mainly focused on terrestrial and marine megafauna, while freshwater species have received comparatively little attention, despite evidence suggesting that freshwaters are losing species faster than marine or terrestrial realms. The high susceptibility of freshwater megafauna to multiple threats, coupled with immense human pressure on freshwater ecosystems, places freshwater megafauna amongst the most threatened species globally. The main threats include , dam construction, , , and ."

"At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about one hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools."

"Zoos worldwide are visited by great numbers of people, and many of these visitors prefer to see large, rare mammals, the so-called . Zoos and the researchers who use them also appear to prioritise these species, as evidenced by the number of scientific publications which investigate the welfare of charismatic rather than non-charismatic species. However, the charismatic animals also attract more welfare-related concern from groups and the media than the non-charismatics. To this extent the charismatics could be regarded as problematic animals in the zoo. ... However, there is also evidence that their popularity helps zoos achieve their conservation mission, both by increasing funding available for field conservation and by contributing towards education and awareness raising of conservation issues. Nevertheless, the non-charismatics are equally deserving of attention, and more work needs to be done on their welfare."

"Hunting by humans played a major role in extirpating terrestrial megafauna on several continents and megafaunal loss continues today in both terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Recent declines of large marine vertebrates that are of little or no commercial value, such as s, s and s, have focused attention on the ecological impacts of , in global fisheries. In spite of the recognition of the problem of bycatch, few comprehensive assessments of its effects have been conducted. Many vulnerable species live in pelagic habitats, making surveys logistically complex and expensive. Bycatch data are sparse and our understanding of the demography of the affected populations is often rudimentary. These factors, combined with the large spatial scales that pelagic vertebrates and fishing fleets cover, make accurate and timely bycatch assessments difficult. Here, we review the current research that addresses these challenging questions in the face of uncertainty, analytical limitations and mounting conservation crises."

"We identified a total of 362 extant megafauna species. We found that 70% of megafauna species with sufficient information are decreasing and 59% are threatened with extinction. Surprisingly, direct harvesting of megafauna for human consumption of meat or body parts is the largest individual threat to each of the classes examined, and a threat for 98% (159/162) of threatened species with threat data available. Therefore, minimizing the direct killing of the world's largest vertebrates is a priority conservation strategy that might save many of these iconic species and the functions and services they provide."

"The extinction of the Australian Megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet."

"... [T]here were more shoals outside Than teeth in a shark’s head."

"Flowers turned to stone! Not all the botany Of Joseph Banks, hung pensive in a porthole, Could find the Latin for this loveliness, Could put the Barrier Reef in a glass box Tagged by the horrid Gorgon squint Of horticulture. Stone turned to flowers It seemed—you’d snap a crystal twig, One petal even of the water-garden, And have it dying like a cherry-bough."

"Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. [...] Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. It’s not enough to grieve. It’s not enough to just stop doing bad things."

"Restoration is imperative for healing the earth, but reciprocity is imperative for long-lasting, successful restoration. Like other mindful practices, ecological restoration can be viewed as an act of reciprocity in which humans exercise their caregiving responsibility for the ecosystems that sustain them. We restore the land, and the land restores us."

"Plants are the first restoration ecologists. They are using their gifts for healing the land, showing us the way."

"The inability to control horizontal position or to swim against significant currents in open waters separates 'plankton' from the 'nekton' of active swimmers, which include adult fish, large cephalopods, aquatic reptiles, birds and mammals. In this way, plankton comprises organisms that range in size from that of viruses (a few tens of nanometres) to those of large jellyfish (a metre or more). Representative organisms include bacteria, protistans, fungi and metazoans."

"Phytoplankton and zooplankton — tiny drifting plants and animals — are vital components of the marine and freshwater aquatic food chains, and our waterways. Plankton communities reflect the effects of water quality and cannot isolate themselves as oysters do by closing their shells in adverse conditions. Plankton are effectilvely our aquatic 'canaries-in-a-cage' — they accumulate over days the effects of hourly changes in water quality."

"Oceanic phytoplankton seems generally to be associated with low biodiversity, and phytoplankton biodiversity does not correlate with zooplankton biodiversity ..."

"Local Futures has been involved with cultural, economic and ecological issues for more than four decades now, and we are proud of our accomplishments. What follows is far from comprehensive, but gives an idea of the depth and breadth of our work. Our organization has always been ahead of its time... we were warning about the dangers of both biotechnology and so-called “free trade” (and the link between them) three decades ago, while at the same time pioneering the localization movement – the local food movement, in particular. It is very gratifying to see that these issues are finally beginning to receive the attention they deserve"

"These programs are helping to catalyze a global movement for systemic change. Recognition of the importance of local economies is at an all-time high. Through our events and resources, we promote a holistic view of what it will take to heal the damage caused by the corporate-run economy and build structures that foster human and ecological wellbeing."

"Local Futures works to renew ecological, social, and spiritual well-being by promoting a systemic shift towards economic localization. A pioneer of the new economy movement, Local Futures has been raising awareness for four decades about the need to shift direction – away from dependence on global monopolies, and towards decentralized, regional economies."

"After long pondering, I believe that I can define good and evil in terms to which even a biologist of the mechanical school can hardly take exception. At least, I fancy that I can do so for evil. The great evil of life is parasitism."

"This day relenting God Hath placed within my hand A wondrous thing; and God Be praised. At His command, Seeking His secret deeds With tears and toiling breath, I find thy cunning seeds, O million-murdering Death. I know this little thing A myriad men will save. O Death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave? [Poem he wrote following the discovery that the malaria parasite was carried by the amopheline mosquito]"

"I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes."

"Some species of carpenter ants infected with metacercariae of the fluke Brachylecithutn mosquensis, are more obese than noninfected ants and, unlike the latter, they do not conceal themselves but crawl on exposed surfaces where they are easily found by birds that are the next hosts of the fluke. This behaviour seems to be a remarkable example of an animal that sacrifices its life for its parasites. The 'sacrifice', of course, is induced by the parasite."

"Nowhere is it more true that "prevention is better than cure," than in the case of Parasitic Diseases."

"The belief is growing on me that the disease is communicated by the bite of the mosquito [...] She always injects a small quantity of fluid with her bite—what if the parasites get into the system in this manner."

"The insidious lethality of a parasitic wasp, the cruelty of a cat playing with a mouse – these are, after all, just the tip of the iceberg. To ponder natural selection is to be staggered by the amount of suffering and death that can be the price for a single, slight advance in organic design. And it is to realize, moreover, that the purpose of this "advance" – longer, sharper canine teeth in male chimpanzees, say – is often to make other animals suffer or die more surely. Organic design thrives on pain, and pain thrives on organic design."

"To choose a rough example, think of a thorn which has stuck in a finger and produces an inflammation and suppuration. Should the thorn be discharged with the pus, then the finger of another individual may be pricked with it, and the disease may be produced a second time. In this case it would not be the disease, not even its product, that would be transmitted by the thorn, but rather the stimulus which engendered it. Now supposing that the thorn is capable of multiplying in the sick body, or that every smallest part may again become a thorn, then one would be able to excite the same disease, inflammation and suppuration, in other individuals by transmitting any of its smallest parts. The disease is not the parasite but the thorn. Diseases resemble one another, because their causes resemble each other. The contagion in our sense is therefore not the germ or seed of the disease, but rather the cause of the disease. For example, the egg of a taenia is not the product of a worm disease even though the worm disease may have been the cause, which first gave rise to the taenia in the intestinal contents—nor of the individual afflicted with the worm disease, but rather of the parasitic body, which, no matter how it may have come into the world at first, now reproduces itself by means of eggs, and produces the symptoms of the worm disease, at least in part. It is not the seed of the disease; the latter multiplies in the sick organism, and is again excreted at the end of the disease."

"What keeps snails and flukes apart in evolution is their divergent future interests, and this is because they do not share reproductive propagules. What keeps host genes together with host genes — and parasite genes together with parasite genes - is that they do share future interests. Parasites, then, have led us to the solution to the paradox of the organism. The genes in an organism share desiderata lists. And this is simply because they submit to the same meiotic lottery and possess the same stochastic gametic destiny."

"It is only within the present epoch, that physiology and chemistry have reached the point at which they could offer a scientific foundation to agriculture; and it is only within the present epoch, that zoology and physiology have yielded any very great aid to pathology and hygiene. But within that time, they have already rendered highly important services by the exploration of the phenomena of parasitism. Not only have the history of the animal parasites, such as the tapeworms and the trichina, which infest men and animals, with deadly results, been cleared up by means of experimental investigations [...] but the terrible agency of the parasitic fungi and of the infinitesimally minute microbes, which work far greater havoc among plants and animals, has been brought to light."

"I have failed in finding parasites in mosquitoes fed on malaria patients, but perhaps I am not using the proper kind of mosquito."

"[A] major difficulty in the parasite's life is the return to water. It is, therefore, of particular interest that the parasite appears to affect the behaviour of its hosts, and 'encourages' it to return to water. The mechanism by which this is achieved is obscure, but there are sufficient isolated reports to certify that the parasite does influence its hosts, and often suicidally for the host [...] One of the more dramatic reports describes an infected bee flying over a pool and, when about six feet over it, diving straight into the water. Immediately on impact the gordian worm burst out and swam into the water, the maimed bee being left to die."

"It is about the most awful thing you can imagine in terms of a non-fatal ailment. It's a parasitic disease and you know you've got it when at some point you develop a blister on your skin on your leg or your arm, and it's a burning blister and soon what emerges is a worm, and it's a worm that eventually, as it comes out, could be three-feet-long. It looks like a long strand of angel hair pasta and it's excruciatingly painful as it comes out. And the way it's transmitted is through drinking water. The worm, when it comes out, you've got that burning blister, your instinct is to want to immerse the skin in water. Well, when you do that, the worm puts out thousands and thousands of larvae that infects the drinking water. If anyone drinks the water, it gets into their system and a year later they develop a blister and out comes another worm."

"I hope no such planet exists, but consider one where slow, painful death from parasitism is universal. How would we talk about nature on such a planet? What kind of book would Thoreau have written there?"

"Lately, however, on abandoning the brindled and grey mosquitos and commencing similar work on a new, brown species, of which I have as yet obtained very few individuals, I succeeded in finding in two of them certain remarkable and suspicious cells containing pigment identical in appearance to that of the parasite of malaria. As these cells appear to me to be very worthy of attention [...] I think it would be advisable to place on record a brief description both of the cells and of the mosquitos."

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice."

"Nearly all birds build nests of some kind in which to cradle their eggs and young. The cow-bird and cuckoo (European), however, are exceptions. These birds have the rather human practice of turning their cares and labours over to somebody else. They are loafers and parasites. They lay their eggs secretly in the nests of other birds, where their eggs are hatched and their young cared for by an alien mother. I have seen a mother song-sparrow hustling about among the shrubs and grasses for an hour at a time almost, gathering food for a young cow-bird nearly twice as big as she was, while her foundling sat phlegmatically at the foot of a tree chirping and fluttering its wings, and acting as a thankless and apparently bottomless receptacle for the morsel after morsel laboriously harvested for it by its tireless little foster-mother."

"The facts obtained in this study may possibly be sufficient proof of the causal relationship, that only the most sceptical can raise the objection that the discovered microorganism is not the cause but only an accompaniment of the disease [...] It is necessary to obtain a perfect proof to satisfy oneself that the parasite and the disease are [...] actually causally related, and that the parasite is the [...] direct cause of the disease. This can only be done by completely separating the parasite from the diseased organism [and] introducing the isolated parasite into healthy organisms and induce the disease anew with all its characteristic symptoms and properties."

"There is an extremely thin line of demarcation between the ferment and the parasite."

"All infections, of whatever type, with no exceptions, are products of parasitic beings; that is, by living organisms that enter in other living organisms, in which they find nourishment, that is, food that suits them, here they hatch, grow and reproduce themselves."

"[The parasite that causes malaria] edges through the cells of the stomach wall of the mosquito and forms a cyst which grows and eventually bursts to release hundreds of "sporozoites" into the body cavity of the mosquito [...] As far as we can tell, the parasite does not harm the mosquito [...] It has always seemed to me, though, that these growing cysts [...] must at least give the mosquito something corresponding to a stomach-ache."

"Fell Oestrus buries in her rapid course Her countless brood in stag, or bull, or horse; Whose hungry larva eats its living way, Hatch'd by the warmth, and issues into day."

"The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng. The cruel larva mines its silky course, And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse."

"Let me repeat that these parasitic insects comprise ten percent of all known animal species. How can this be understood? Certainly we give our infants the wrong idea about their fellow creatures in the world. Teddy bears should come with tiny stuffed bearlice; ten percent of all baby bibs and rattles sold should be adorned with colorful blowflies, maggots, and screw-worms. What kind of devil’s tithe do we pay? What percentage of the world’s species that are not insects are parasitic? Could it be, counting bacteria and viruses, that we live in a world in which half the creatures are running from—or limping from—the other half?"

"Whoever looks at the insect world, at flies, aphides, gnats and innumerable parasites, and even at the infant mammals, must have remarked the extreme content they take in suction, which constitutes the main business of their life. If we go into a library or newsroom, we see the same function on a higher plane, performed with like ardor, with equal impatience of interruption, indicating the sweetness of the act. In the highest civilization the book is still the highest delight."

"In this strange and apparently cruel operation one circumstance is truly remarkable. The larva of the Ichneumon, though every day, perhaps for months, it gnaws the inside of the caterpillar, and though at last it has devoured almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully all this time it avoids injuring the vital organs, as if aware that its own existence depends on that of the insect upon which it preys!"

"This paper introduces a concept of organizational ecology. This refers to the organizational field created by a number of organizations, whose interrelations compose a system at the level of the field as a whole. The overall field becomes the object of inquiry, not the single organization as related to its organization-set. The emergence of organizational ecology from earlier organization theory is traced and illustrated from empirical studies. Its relevance to the task of institution-building, in a world in which the environment has become exceedingly complex and more interdependent, is argued."

"Major theory and research in organizational ecology are reviewed, with an emphasis on the organization and population levels of analysis and processes of organizational foundings, mortality, and change. The main approach to organizational foundings examines the roles of density dependence and population dynamics. Six approaches to studying organizational mortality are fitness set theory, liability of newness, density dependence, resource partitioning, liability of smallness, and the effects of founding conditions. Research on organizational change is just beginning to appear in the literature. The convergence between ecological and institutional research is discussed, especially the role of legitimacy in population dynamics, and the effects of institutional variables on vital rates. Some key criticisms of organizational ecology are addressed, and some suggestions for future research are proposed."

"This paper investigates organizational mortality in the early American telephone industry, in which thousands of companies proliferated and failed under conditions of technological change. Drawing on the theory of community ecology, it is predicted that when technologies are systemic, technological change does not necessarily favor advanced organizations. Instead, mutualism is predicted among both advanced and primitive firms, as long as they are technologically standardized and differentiated. Competition is expected when organizations are technologically incompatible or non-complementary. The hypotheses are supported by dynamic models of organizational mortality, estimated using archival data describing the life histories of all telephone companies that operated in Pennsylvania up to 1934 and in southeast Iowa from 1900 to 1930."

"Until the mid-1970s, the prominent approach in organization and management theory emphasized adaptive change in organizations. In this view, as environments change, leaders or dominant coalitions in organizations alter appropriate organizational features to realign their fit to environmental demands (e.g. Lawrence and Lorsch 1967; Thompson 1967; Child 1972; Chandler 1977; Pfeffer and Salancik 1978; Porter 1980; Rumelt 1986). Since then, an approach to studying organizational change that places more emphasis on environmental selection processes, introduced at about that time (Aldrich and Pfeffer 1976; Hannan and Freeman 1977; Aldrich 1979; McKelvey 1982), has become increasingly influential. The stream of research on ecological perspectives of organizational change has generated tremendous excitement, controversy and debate in the community of organization and management theory scholars. Inspired by the question, Why are there so many kinds of organizations?"

"Recent research on organizational ecology is reviewed. Three levels of analysis and approaches to evolution are distinguished: (a) the organizational level, which uses a developmental approach; (b) the population level. which uses a selection approach; and (c) the community level, which uses a macroevolutionary approach. Theoretical and empirical research is critiqued within this framework. Proposals to develop organizational taxonomies are considered."

"Hannan and Freeman examine the ecology of organizations by exploring the competition for resources and by trying to account for rates of entry and exit and for the diversity of organizational forms. They show that the destinies of organizations are determined more by impersonal forces than by the intervention of individuals by the intervention of individuals."

"We situate the Special Research Forum on Organizational Ecology in the program of ecological research on organizations. We begin with a broad description of organizational ecology's theoretical and empirical development based on the contents of prior collections of work in the field. We then highlight key issues facing ecological research, outline how the articles in this special research forum are linked by common threads, and discuss their contributions. We close with suggested directions for future research."