The Kingdom of Rarities (41 page)

Chapter
1
. The Uncommon Menagerie

Dinerstein, Eric.
The Return of the Unicorns: The Natural History and Conservation of the Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros
. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

A monograph covering most aspects of the biology and conservation of a megafauna species, including interactions with its environment.

Gaston, Kevin J.
Rarity
. London: Chapman and Hall, 1994.

An excellent introduction to the biology of rarity by perhaps the world's foremost authority on the subject.

———.
The Structure and Dynamics of Geographic Ranges
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

This work provides an excellent background to the science of species' geographic distributions and abundances.

Kunin, William E., and Kevin J. Gaston, eds.
The Biology of Rarity: Causes and Consequences of Rare-Common Differences
. London: Chapman and Hall, 1997.

These essays, by some of the world's leading authorities on rarity, are technical but thought provoking and challenge many assumptions about rarity. A great place to start for any scientist or student of the field.

Ricketts, Taylor H., Eric Dinerstein, Tim Boucher, Thomas M. Brooks, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Michael Hoffmann, John F. Lamoreux, et al. “Pinpointing and Preventing Imminent Extinctions.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
102, no. 51 (2005): 18497–501.

The scientific paper that underpins the work of the Alliance for Zero Extinction. The organization's website,
http://www.zeroextinction.org
, contains useful information about rare vertebrates and some plants (conifers).

Chapter
2
. The Gift of Isolation

Beehler, Bruce M. “The Lost World.”
Living Bird
25, no. 4 (2006): 15–24. Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program expedition to the Foja Mountains of Indonesia New Guinea.

———.
Lost Worlds: Adventures in the Tropical Rainforest
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

A naturalist's travels in tropical countries around the world for research and nature conservation, with a special focus on New Guinea.

Diamond, Jared M. “Distributional Ecology of New Guinea Birds: Recent Ecological and Biogeographical Theories Can Be Tested on the Bird Communities of New Guinea.”
Science
179, no. 4075 (1973): 759–69.

A magisterial overview of the ecology and distribution of the rich bird fauna of the island of New Guinea.

Frith, Clifford B., and Bruce M. Beehler. “The Birds of Paradise.”
Scientific American
261 (December 1989): 117–23.

A review of the ecological underpinnings of the polygamous mating systems of birds of paradise.

———.
The Birds of Paradise: Paradisaeidae
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

A monographic treatment of the biology of the birds of paradise.

Frith, Clifford B., and Dawn W. Frith.
The Bowerbirds: Ptilonorhynchidae
. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

A monographic treatment of the biology of bowerbirds.

Gressitt, J. Linsley, ed.
Biogeography and Ecology of New Guinea
. 2 vols. The Hague: W. Junk, 1982.

A multiauthored treatment of the ecology and biogeography of the island of New Guinea.

Marshall, Andrew J., and Bruce M. Beehler, eds.
The Ecology of Papua
. 2 vols. Singapore: Periplus, 2007.

Fifty-two chapters on the natural history of western New Guinea, contributed by more than sixty expert authors.

Wallace, Alfred Russel.
The Malay Archipelago, the Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise: A Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature
. New York: Dover, 1962.

One of the great works of natural history travel and study by one of the cofounders of the field of evolution.

Chapter
3
. A Jaguar on the Beach

Asner, Gregory P., George V. N. Powell, Joseph Mascaro, David E. Knapp, John K. Clark, James Jacobson, Ty Kennedy-Bowdoin, et al. 2010. “High-Resolution Forest Carbon Stocks and Emissions in the Amazon.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
107, no. 38 (2010): 16738–42.

The first published account of an effort to map forest carbon across a large tropical landscape.

Colinvaux, Paul A.
Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare: An Ecologist's Perspective
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

An excellent explanation of the costs of being an apex predator.

Dinerstein, Eric, Keshav Varma, Eric Wikramanayake, George Powell, Susan Lumpkin, Robin Naidoo, Mike Korchinsky, et al. “Linking Ecosystem Services, Conservation, and Local Livelihoods through a Wildlife Premium Mechanism.”
Conservation Biology
(in press).

The wildlife premium mechanism is a new performance-based approach to link conservation of carbon held in rain forests and recovery of endangered wildlife such as jaguars, tigers, and elephants.

Estes, James A., John Terborgh, Justin S. Brashares, Mary E. Power, Joel Berger, William J. Bond, Stephen R. Carpenter, et al. “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth.”
Science
333, no. 6040 (2011): 301–6.

An important review paper that identifies an extensive suite of “ecological surprises”—unanticipated impacts on ecosystems ranging from tundra to coral reefs and ecological processes ranging from wildfire to disease—stemming from the loss of apex consumers.

Forsyth, Adrian, and Ken Miyata.
Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America
. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

One of the classic natural history accounts of rain forests.

Foster, Robin B. “The Floristic Composition of the Rio Manu Floodplain Forest.” In
Four Neotropical Rainforests
, edited by Alwyn H. Gentry, 99–111. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

A description of the vegetation in one of richest rain forests on Earth.

Nuñez-Iturri, Gabriela, Ola Olsson, and Henry F. Howe. 2008. “Hunting Reduces Recruitment of Primate-Dispersed Trees in Amazonian Peru.”
Biological Conservation
141, no. 6 (2008): 1536–46.

The negative impacts of hunting of primates on the regeneration of trees is the subject here, and how the loss of seed dispersers leads to changes in tree species composition that are independent of logging or other human activities in the forest.

Palminteri, Suzanne, George Powell, Whaldener Endo, Chris Kirkby, Douglas Yu, and Carlos A. Peres. “Usefulness of Species Range Polygons for Predicting Local Primate Occurrences in Southeastern Peru.”
American Journal of Primatology
73, no. 1 (2011): 53–61.

This paper shows how range polygons, which are generated at the scale of species' geographic ranges, can be used for conservation planning at the project scale (usually a single landscape).

Sanderson, Eric W., Kent H. Redford, Cheryl-Lesley B. Chetkiewicz, Rodrigo A. Medellin, Alan R. Rabinowitz, John G. Robinson, and Andrew B. Taber. “Planning to Save a Species: The Jaguar as a Model.”
Conservation Biology
16, no. 1 (2002): 58–72.

The first expert-driven effort to gather current (1999) scientific knowledge about jaguars—their known geographic range, conservation status, and chances for survival—at the continental scale.

Terborgh, John.
Five New World Primates: A Study in Comparative Ecology
. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.

The ecology of five primates in Manú National Park, Madre de Dios, Peru, is featured in this book. The author also explains the underlying environmental processes that influence these species in their movement, including feeding, predator avoidance, and other behaviors.

Terborgh, John, Lawrence Lopez, Percy Nuñez, Madhu Rao, Ghazala Shahabuddin, Gabriela Oriheula, Mailen Riveros, et al. “Ecological Meltdown in Predator-Free Forest Fragments.”
Science
294, no. 5548 (2001): 1923–26.

A classic paper in ecology that documents the changes to an ecological system stemming from the exclusion of predators on forested islands created by a dam in Venezuela. The resulting herbivore population explosion led to lower recruitment of favored tree species and subsequent changes in plant composition, which in turn decreased the amount of food available to the herbivores, leading to a loss of diversity at several trophic levels.

Tobler, Mathias W., Sarnia E. Carrillo-Percastegui, Renata Leite Pitman, Rosa E. Mares, and Glen E. Powell. “An Evaluation of Camera Traps for Inventorying Large- and Medium-Sized Terrestrial Rainforest Mammals.”
Animal Conservation
11, no. 3 (2008): 169–78.

A study in the Los Amigos River basin evaluates the efficiency of camera trapping for inventorying larger rain forest mammals and estimating species richness at a given research site.

Ziegler, Christian, and Egbert Giles Leigh Jr.
A Magic Web: The Forest of Barro Colorado Island
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

The best introduction available to tropical rain forests, accompanied by stunning photographs.

Chapter
4
. The Firebird Suite

Askins, Robert A.
Restoring North America's Birds: Lessons from Landscape Ecology
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

Overview of the characteristics and nature of management required for the Kirtland's warbler on its breeding grounds.

Deloria-Sheffield, Christie M., Kelly F. Millenbah, Carol I. Bocetti, Paul W. Sykes Jr., and Cameron B. Kepler. “Kirtland's Warbler Diet as Determined through Fecal Analysis.”
Wilson Bulletin
113, no. 4 (2001): 384–87.

A useful guide to what this endangered songbird eats.

Mayfield, Harold.
The Kirtland's Warbler
. Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1960.

Good natural history of this species.

Probst, John R., and Jerry Weinrich. “Relating Kirtland's Warbler Population to Changing Landscape Composition and Structure.”
Landscape Ecology
8, no. 4 (1993): 257–71.

The relationship between breeding success in Kirtland's warblers and landscape characteristics, especially the birds' reliance on young jack pine stands, is made clear in this paper.

Rabinowitz, Deborah, Sara Cairns, and Theresa Dillon. “Seven Forms of Rarity and Their Frequency in the Flora of the British Isles.” In
Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity
, edited by Michael E. Soulé, 182–204. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1986.

One of the foundational papers on rarity in nature by a leading thinker. Rabinowitz was the first to combine a species range, population number, and habitat specificity to define various forms of rarity in nature, tested against the flora of the British Isles.

Walkinshaw, Lawrence H.
Kirtland's Warbler: The Natural History of an Endangered Species
. Bloomfield Hills, MI: Cranbrook Institute of Science, 1983.

Another classic natural history of this species.

Wunderle, Joseph M., Jr., Dave Currie, Eileen H. Helmer, David N. Ewert, Jennifer D. White, Thomas S. Ruzycki, Bernard Parresol, and Charles Kwit. “Kirtland's Warblers in Anthropogenically Disturbed Early-Successional Habitats on Eleuthera, the Bahamas.”
Condor
112, no. 1 (2010): 123–37.

Provides an overview of the Kirtland warbler's winter habitat and factors that affect the production of the winter habitat and its conservation.

Chapter
5
. There in the Elephant Grass

Dinerstein, Eric. “Effects of
Rhinoceros unicornis
on Riverine Forest Structure in Lowland Nepal.”
Ecology
73, no. 2 (1992): 701–4.

How forests with rhinos look different from forests without them.

———. “Family Rhinocerotidae (Rhinoceroses).” In
Handbook of the Mammals of the World
, vol. 2,
Hoofed Mammals
, edited by Don E. Wilson and Russell A. Mittermeier, 144–81. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions, 2011.

A recent review of the ecology and conservation of the five extant rhinoceros species.

———. “Seed Dispersal by Greater One-Horned Rhinoceros (
Rhinoceros unicornis
) and the Flora of
Rhinoceros
Latrines.”
Mammalia
55, no. 3 (1991): 355–62.

Rhinoceroses as major fruit eaters and landscape engineers.

Dinerstein, Eric, and Chris M. Wemmer. “Fruits
Rhinoceros
Eat: Dispersal of
Trewia nudiflora
(Euphorbiaceae) in lowland Nepal.”
Ecology
69, no. 6 (1988): 1768–74.

An account of megafaunal fruits and megafauna in Asia.

Owen-Smith, R. Norman.
Megaherbivores: The Influence of Very Large Body Size on Ecology
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

A classic account of the advantages and disadvantages of body mass in large terrestrial mammals.

Peters, Robert H.
The Ecological Implications of Body Size
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

A stimulating book on a topic central to the ecology of pachyderms.

Chapter
6
. Scent of an Anteater

Brannstrom, Christian, Wendy Jepson, Anthony M. Filippi, Daniel Redo, Zengwang Xu, and Srinivasan Ganesh. 2008. “Land Change in the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado), 1986–2002: Comparative Analysis and Implications for Land-Use Policy.”
Land Use Policy
25, no. 4 (2008): 579–95.

This paper discusses the implications of the Forest Code for past and projected land-use patterns in the Cerrado.

Cremaq, Piauí. “Brazilian Agriculture: The Miracle of the Cerrado.”
Economist
, August 26, 2010,
http://www.economist.com/node/16886442
.

This article provides a perspective on how the Cerrado became the new midwestern United States and allowed Brazil to emerge as a global agricultural superpower.