PDF Island Life Download
- Author: Anita Ganeri
- Publisher: Raintree
- ISBN: 1406262455
- Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
- Languages : en
- Pages :
eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
Alfred Russel Wallace is best known as the codiscoverer, with Charles Darwin, of natural selection, but he was also history’s foremost tropical naturalist and the father of biogeography, the modern study of the geographical basis of biological diversity. Island Life has long been considered one of his most important works. In it he extends studies on the influence of the glacial epochs on organismal distribution patterns and the characteristics of island biogeography, a topic as vibrant and actively studied today as it was in 1880. The book includes history’s first theory of continental glaciation based on a combination of geographical and astronomical causes, a discussion of island classification, and a survey of worldwide island faunas and floras. The year 2013 will mark the centennial of Wallace’s death and will see a host of symposia and reflections on Wallace’s contributions to evolution and natural history. This reissue of the first edition of Island Life, with a foreword by David Quammen and an extensive commentary by Lawrence R. Heaney, who has spent over three decades studying island biogeography in Southeast Asia, makes this essential and foundational reference available and accessible once again.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.
The second largest order of mammals, Chiroptera comprises more than one thousand species of bats. Because of their mobility, bats are often the only native mammals on isolated oceanic islands, where more than half of all bat species live. These island bats represent an evolutionarily distinctive and ecologically significant part of the earth’s biological diversity. Island Bats is the first book to focus solely on the evolution, ecology, and conservation of bats living in the world’s island ecosystems. Among other topics, the contributors to this volume examine how the earth’s history has affected the evolution of island bats, investigate how bat populations are affected by volcanic eruptions and hurricanes, and explore the threat of extinction from human disturbance. Geographically diverse, the volume includes studies of the islands of the Caribbean, the Western Indian Ocean, Micronesia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Zealand. With its wealth of information from long-term studies, Island Bats provides timely and valuable information about how this fauna has evolved and how it can be conserved.
'Pragmatic Modernism' traces an alternative strain of modernism influenced by pragmatist philosophy and characterized by its commitment to gradualism, continuity, and habit rather than spectacular events and radical rupture.
In this docu-novel an unlikely relationship developed between an island man from Grenada and a Kansas woman in the 1950's. Both worked in Brooklyn and became casually acquainted until they vacationed at his family's modest cottage in rural Grenada. Though mesmerized by everything Grenadian, his guest experienced disquieting cultural shocks. Every experience, pleasant and unpleasant, she diligently recorded including details of their slow moving island-style romance. Driven to socially construct her multicultural family tree, their American-born granddaughter visited Grenada sixty years later. The flamboyant social life, intimacy and intense spicy aura captivated her and like her grandmother she too was inescapably "Caribbeanized."
This book takes an explicitly feminist approach to studying gender and social inequalities in island settings while deliberating on ‘islandness’ as part of the intersectional analysis. Though there is a wealth of recent literature on islands and island studies, most of this literature focuses on islands as objects of study rather than as contexts for exploring gender relations and local gendered developments. Taking Karides’ ‘Island feminism’ as a starting point and drawing from the wider literature on island studies as well as gender and place, this book bridges this gap by exploring gender, gender relations, affect and politics in various island settings spanning a great variety of global locations, from the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the north to Tasmania in south. Insights on recent developments and gendered contestations in these locations provide rich food for thought on the intricate links between gender and place in a local/global world. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of gender and feminist studies, cultural studies, Island studies, anthropology, and more broadly to sociology, geography, diversity and social justice studies, global democracy, and international relations.
In Life of Marsupials, one of the world's leading experts explores the biology and evolution of this unusual group - with their extraordinary diversity of forms around the world - in Australia, New Guinea and South America. -back cover.