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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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Animal Studies

Selected Works

Climate

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Climate And Species Richness Predict The Phylogenetic Structure Of African Mammal Communities, Jason Kamilar, Lydia Beaudrot, Kaye Reed Apr 2015

Climate And Species Richness Predict The Phylogenetic Structure Of African Mammal Communities, Jason Kamilar, Lydia Beaudrot, Kaye Reed

scholarworks@library.umass.edu

We have little knowledge of how climatic variation (and by proxy, habitat variation) influences
the phylogenetic structure of tropical communities. Here, we quantified the phylogenetic
structure of mammal communities in Africa to investigate how community structure
varies with respect to climate and species richness variation across the continent. In addition,
we investigated how phylogenetic patterns vary across carnivores, primates, and ungulates.
We predicted that climate would differentially affect the structure of communities
from different clades due to between-clade biological variation. We examined 203 communities
using two metrics, the net relatedness (NRI) and nearest taxon (NTI) indices. We
used simultaneous autoregressive …

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Health Professionals’ Roles In Animal Agriculture, Climate Change, And Human Health, Aysha Z. Akhtar, Michael Greger, Hope Ferdowsian, Erica Frank Dec 2014

Health Professionals’ Roles In Animal Agriculture, Climate Change, And Human Health, Aysha Z. Akhtar, Michael Greger, Hope Ferdowsian, Erica Frank

Michael Greger, MD, FACLM

What we eat is rapidly becoming an issue of global concern. With food shortages, the rise in chronic disease, and global warming, the impact of our dietary choices seems more relevant today than ever. Globally, a transition is taking place toward greater consumption of foods of animal origin, in lieu of plantbased diets. With this transition comes intensification of animal agriculture that in turn is associated with the emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases, environmental degradation, and the epidemics of chronic disease and obesity. Health professionals should be aware of these trends and consider them as they promote healthier and more …

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The Climatic Niche Diversity Of Malagasy Primates: A Phylogenetic Perspective, Jason Kamilar, Kathleen Muldoon Jun 2010

The Climatic Niche Diversity Of Malagasy Primates: A Phylogenetic Perspective, Jason Kamilar, Kathleen Muldoon

scholarworks@library.umass.edu

Background:
Numerous researchers have posited that there should be a strong negative relationship between the
evolutionary distance among species and their ecological similarity. Alternative evidence suggests that members of adaptive radiations should display no relationship between divergence time and ecological similarity because rapid evolution results in near-simultaneous speciation early in the clade’s history. In this paper, we performed the first
investigation of ecological diversity in a phylogenetic context using a mammalian adaptive radiation, the Malagasy
primates.
Methodology/Principal Findings:
We collected data for 43 extant species including: 1) 1064 species by locality samples, 2) GIS climate data for each sampling locality, …

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