Humboldt's climb of Chimborazo in the Andes Mountains in present-day Ecuador resulted in this map of vegetation change in relation to elevation, published in 1807 in the seminal book Essay on the Geography of Plants. This work laid the foundation for biogeography.Humboldt's climb of Chimborazo in the Andes Mountains in present-day Ecuador resulted in this map of vegetation change in relation to elevation, published in 1807 in the seminal book Essay on the Geography of Plants. This work laid the foundation for biogeography. Credit: Science Source

2017’s Most Popular…

The most popular articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on our website over the year, 2017.

#3

Why Ecology Needs Natural History

The two fields’ intertwined histories show that most theoretical breakthroughs are preceded by the kind of deep observational work that has fallen out of vogue in the past half century.
(September–October 2017 by John G. T. Anderson)

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In March 1908 a remarkable partnership was forged that would affect the practice and teaching of field biology for more than a century.

Annie Montague Alexander, heiress to a Hawaiian sugar fortune, had trained in paleontology at the University of California. To the surprise and consternation of friends and family, Miss Alexander—as she was generally known—had participated in a number of expeditions in Alaska, the western United States, and Africa. Her experiences in the field had raised her concern over the loss of biodiversity and habitat as industrial agriculture and a growing human population transformed the western landscape. Teaming up with Joseph Grinnell, a recent Stanford University graduate who shared her passion for fieldwork, Alexander established the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley.

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