Do Lemmings Commit Suicide?: Beautiful Hypotheses and Ugly FactsIn 1929, a group of scientists, working at Oxford University, began "the pursuit of the ecological Holy Grail," an endeavor devoted to the search for the secret mechanisms behind biological life cycles as they occur in many animal populations. By 1935, the group had become the Bureau of Animal Population and was joined for one year, part-time, by a newly minted graduate of the University of Toronto. Twenty-six years later, when he returned to Canada. Dennis Chitty had learned much about cycles and even more about the process of science. The results are presented here in an intriguing and often irreverent account of science, not as it should be, but as it was and is. Unlike many science books which tell of successful ventures and satisfactory conclusions, this book reveals the harsher but more common story of a scientific question left unanswered. Written by one of this century's most distinguished small-mammal ecologists, it is both a personal history and a vigorous defense of a life in pure science - even when no final dramatic closure was reached. Included along the way are important accounts of the pioneering work of Charles Elton, from which much of modern population biology has grown, and insights on the philosophy and practice of science. |
Contents
Preface | 3 |
Pioneering Observations 19291939 | 27 |
Qualitative Changes 19371939 | 56 |
Wartime Rat and Mouse Control 19391946 | 71 |
Behavior Physiology and Natural Selection 19491961 | 98 |
Controversies 19521956 | 113 |
Varying the Circumstances 19521959 | 125 |
From Wytham Woods to Baker Lake 19591962 | 149 |
Other editions - View all
Do Lemmings Commit Suicide?: Beautiful Hypotheses and Ugly Facts Dennis Chitty No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
abundance animals Baker Lake Baltensweiler bank voles behavior Beveridge 1950 birds body weights Boonstra Bureau cages changes Charles Elton Charley Krebs Chitty condition Crick critical cycle cyclic decline cyclic populations David Lack daylength decline in numbers declining populations density-dependent differences discovery ecologists effects enquiry evidence experiment experimental explain factors females field field voles Figure fluctuations genetic habitats hypothesis ideas increase phase J.B.S. Haldane Lake Vyrnwy later lemmings less low phase males maternal stress Medawar methods mice Mihok natural selection Newcastleton noncyclic populations numbers observations one's Oxford partridges peak physiological Pitelka population density population ecology predation predictions present problem reason red grouse regulation rejected relevant reproduction scientific scientists Section shock disease small mammals snowshoe hares species spite spleens spring suggested survival synchrony T.H. Huxley theory thought tion trap variables weather Whitehead 1953 winter wrong Wytham Wytham Woods young