Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1993

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Zoology

Major Professor

Stuart L. Pimm

Committee Members

John Gittleman, Lou Gross, Jim Drake

Abstract

This research attempts to address the importance of historical perspective in ecology and evolution. The first section is an overview. The rest focuses on two topics: 1) reconstructing historical processes in ecological communities, and 2) removing historical components from the ecological and evolutionary data. In Parts 2 and 3 I use a directed Boolean hypercube (a self-organizing system) to simulate the process of community assembly. This system of assembly has a varying degree of restriction. With more restriction, the system displays disorderly dynamic behavior, and the assembly trajectory is determined by certain critical states (past accidents). Part 2 was published in Journal of Animal Ecology (see Literature Cited in Part 3). Part 3 will be submitted soon. In Parts 4 and 5 1 use simulation to compare two comparative methods, independent contrasts and phylogenetic autoregression, under a variety of evolutionary models (amount of phylogenetic information, accuracy of phylogeny). Phylogenetic information plays a crucial role in the comparative method. Forcing comparative methods to filter out non-existing phylogenetic correlation may introduce statistical bias. Biologists must take historical processes (as described by phylogenetic correlation) into account when they analyze comparative data over the broad range of taxa. Part 4 will appear in Phylogenetics and Ecology (see Literature Cited in Part 5). Part 5 will appear in Journal of Theoretical Ecology.

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