Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

The influence of diet on the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in animals was investigated by analyzing animals grown in the laboratory on diets of constant nitrogen isotopic composition. 
The isotopic composition of the nitrogen in an animal reflects the nitrogen isotopic composition of its diet. The δ^(15)N values of the whole bodies of animals are usually more positive than those of their diets. Different individuals of a species raised on the same diet can have significantly different δ^(15)N values. The variability of the relationship between the δ^(15)N values of animals and their diets is greater for different species raised on the same diet than for the same species raised on different diets. Different tissues of mice are also enriched in ^(15)N relative to the diet, with the difference between the δ^(15)N values of a tissue and the diet depending on both the kind of tissue and the diet involved. The δ^(15)N values of collagen and chitin, biochemical components that are often preserved in fossil animal remains, are also related to the δ^(15)N value of the diet. 
The dependence of the δ^(15)N values of whole animals and their tissues and biochemical components on the δ^(15)N value of diet indicates that the isotopic composition of animal nitrogen can be used to obtain information about an animal's diet if its potential food sources had different δ^(15)N values. The nitrogen isotopic method of dietary analysis probably can be used to estimate the relative use of legumes vs non-legumes or of aquatic vs terrestrial organisms as food sources for extant and fossil animals. However, the method probably will not be applicable in those modern ecosystems in which the use of chemical fertilizers has influenced the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in food sources. 
The isotopic method of dietary analysis was used to reconstruct changes in the diet of the human population that occupied the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico over a 7000 yr span. Variations in the δ^(15)C and δ^(15)N values of bone collagen suggest that C_4 and/or CAM plants (presumably mostly corn) and legumes (presumably mostly beans) were introduced into the diet much earlier than suggested by conventional archaeological analysis.

Influence of Diet On the Distribtion of Nitrogen Isotopes in Animals

Fire is a worldwide phenomenon that appears in the geological record soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants. Fire influences global ecosystem patterns and processes, including vegetation distribution and structure, the carbon cycle, and climate. Although humans and fire have always coexisted, our capacity to manage fire remains imperfect and may become more difficult in the future as climate change alters fire regimes. This risk is difficult to assess, however, because fires are still poorly represented in global models. Here, we discuss some of the most important issues involved in developing a better understanding of the role of fire in the Earth system.

/pdf/fire-in-the-earth-system-481yvwaoo1.pdf

Fire in the Earth System

In the Hamadryas baboon, males are substantially larger than females. A troop of baboons is subdivided into a number of ‘one-male groups’, consisting of one adult male and one or more females with their young. The male prevents any of ‘his’ females from moving too far from him. Kummer (1971) performed the following experiment. Two males, A and B, previously unknown to each other, were placed in a large enclosure. Male A was free to move about the enclosure, but male B was shut in a small cage, from which he could observe A but not interfere. A female, unknown to both males, was then placed in the enclosure. Within 20 minutes male A had persuaded the female to accept his ownership. Male B was then released into the open enclosure. Instead of challenging male A , B avoided any contact, accepting A’s ownership.

Evolution and the Theory of Games

The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mstiner/pdf/Stiner_etal1995.pdf

Differential Burning, Recrystallization, and Fragmentation of Archaeological Bone

This study illustrates the potential of small-game data for identifying and dating Paleolithic demographic pulses such as those associated with modern human origins and the later evolution of food-producing economies. Archaeofaunal series from Israel and Italy serve as our examples. Three important implications of this study are that (1) early Middle Paleolithic populations were exceptionally small and highly dispersed, (2) the first major population growth pulse in the eastern Mediterranean probably occurred before the end of the Middle Paleolithic, and (3) subsequent demographic pulses in the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic greatly reshaped the conditions of selection that operated on human subsistence ecology, technology, and society. The findings of this study are consistent with the main premise of Flannery's broad-spectrum-revolution hypothesis. However, ranking small prey in terms of work of capture (in the absence of special harvesting tools) proved far more effective in this investigation of human diet breadth than have the taxonomic-diversity analyses published previously.

The Tortoise and the Hare. Small-Game Use, the Broad-Spectrum Revolution, and Paleolithic Demography.

This study uses ecological niche theory to analyze and interpret several Middle Palaeolithic archaeological and palaeontological sites in southern Europe. The hunting, scavenging and foraging behaviour of Neandertals is compared and contrasted with the subsistence behaviour of other large predators living in the region at the time - lions, hyenas and wolves, for example - and with how Neandertal subsistence behaviour related to the behaviour of the anatomically modern humans who subsequently came to dominate the area in the Upper Paleolithic. Her conclusion, broadly stated, is that Neandertals entered the Middle Palaeolithic in direct and successful competition with lions, hyenas and wolves, but ended the period in unsuccessful struggle for the ecological niche that modern humans came to occupy with more advanced technology and slightly more sophisticated ambush hunting strategies and techniques.

Honor among thieves : a zooarchaeological study of Neandertal ecology

Variations in small game hunting along the northern and eastern rims of the Mediterranean Sea and results from predator-prey simulation modeling indicate that human population densities increased abruptly during the late Middle Paleolithic and again during the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic periods. The demographic pulses are evidenced by increasing reliance on agile, fast-reproducing partridges, hares, and rabbits at the expense of slow-reproducing but easily caught tortoises and marine shellfish and, concurrently, climate-independent size diminution in tortoises and shellfish. The results indicate that human populations of the early Middle Paleolithic were exceptionally small and highly dispersed.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/283/5399/190.full.pdf

Paleolithic population growth pulses evidenced by small animal exploitation

All Paleolithic hominids lived by hunting and collecting wild foods, an aspect of existence that began to disappear only with the emergence of the farming and herding societies of the Neolithic ≤10,000 years ago (10 KYA). What are the roots of this remarkable economic transformation? The answer lies in equally revolutionary changes that took place within certain stone age cultures several millennia before. In 1968, Lewis R. Binford noted what appeared to be substantial diversification of human diets in middle- and high-latitude Europe at the end of the Paleolithic, roughly 12–8 KYA (1). Rapid diversification in hunting, food processing, and food storage equipment generally accompanied dietary shifts, symptoms of intensified use of habitats, and fuller exploitation of the potential foodstuffs they contained. Some of this behavior was directed to grinding, drying, and storing nuts, but it also involved small animals (2–6). Kent Flannery pushed these observations further in 1969 with his “Broad Spectrum Revolution” (BSR) hypothesis, proposing that the emergence of the Neolithic in western Asia was prefaced by increases in dietary breadth in foraging societies just before this period (7). He argued that subsistence diversification, mainly by adding new species to the diet, raised the carrying capacity of an environment increasingly constrained by climate instability at the end of the Pleistocene.

/pdf/thirty-years-on-the-broad-spectrum-revolution-and-48zclbq95b.pdf

Mary C. Stiner

Papers

Differential Burning, Recrystallization, and Fragmentation of Archaeological Bone

The Tortoise and the Hare. Small-Game Use, the Broad-Spectrum Revolution, and Paleolithic Demography.

Honor among thieves : a zooarchaeological study of Neandertal ecology

Paleolithic population growth pulses evidenced by small animal exploitation

Thirty years on the "broad spectrum revolution" and paleolithic demography.