Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
A Historical Perspective Ecology and natural history have a long tradition of interest in the spatial patterning and geographic distribution of organisms. The latitudinal and altitudinal distribution of vegetative zones was described by Von Humboldt (154) , whose work provided a major impetus to studies of the geographic distribution of plants and animals (74) . Throughout the nineteenth century, botanists and zoologists described the spatial distributions of various taxa, particularly as they related to macroclimatic factors such as temperature and precipitation (e.g. 21, 82, 83, 156). The emerging view was that strong interdependencies among climate, biota, and soil lead to long-term stability of the landscape in the absence of climatic changes (95). The early biogeog raphical studies also influenced Clements' theory of successional dynamics, in which a stable endpoint, the climax vegetation, was determined by mac roclimate over a broad region ing. Gleason (14, 15). Clements stressed temporal dynamics but did not emphasize spatial pattern (36-38) argued that spatially heterogeneous patterns were im portant and should be interpreted as individualistic responses to spatial gra dients in the environment. The development of gradient analysis (e.g. 17, 164) allowed description of the continuous distribution of species along environmental gradients. Abrupt
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics – Annual Reviews
Published: Nov 1, 1989
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.