Extinction in Our Times: Global Amphibian Decline
- ISBN-10
- 0195316940
- ISBN-13
- 9780195316940
- Category
- Nature
- Pages
- 273
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-07-07
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press on Demand
- Authors
- James P. Collins, Martha L. Crump, Thomas E. Lovejoy III
Description
For over 350 million years, thousands of species of amphibians have lived on earth, but since the 1990s they have been disappearing at an alarming rate, in many cases quite suddenly and mysteriously. What is causing these extinctions? What role do human actions play in them? What do they tell us about the overall state of biodiversity on the planet? In Extinction in Our Times, James Collins and Martha Crump explore these pressing questions and many others as they document the first modern extinction event across an entire vertebrate class, using global examples that range from the Sierra Nevada of California to the rainforests of Costa Rica and the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Joining scientific rigor and vivid storytelling, this book is the first to use amphibian decline as a lens through which to see more clearly the larger story of climate change, conservation of biodiversity, and a host of profoundly important ecological, evolutionary, ethical, philosophical, and sociological issues.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2009-07-07
- 304 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
-
- 2009-07-07
- 304 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
Similar books
-
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
By Elizabeth KolbertThrough these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the ...
-
The Last Extinction
By Les Kaufman, Kenneth MalloryThis was one of the first books on biodiversity and species loss, and today there is a new and more widespread awareness of what some consider to be the great tragedy of our time-organisms that took many thousands or even millions of years ...
-
Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them
By Dan SaladinoAll human history is woven through these stories, from the first great migrations to the slave trade to the refugee crisis today. But Eating to Extinction is about so much more than preserving the past.
-
The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals
By Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich, Gerardo Ceballos"This book shows us the face of Earth’s sixth great mass extinction, revealing that this century is a time of darkness for the world’s birds and mammals.
-
The Ghost with Trembling Wings: Science, Wishful Thinking and the Search for Lost Species
By Scott WeidensaulThe naturalist author of Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds shares stories of the rediscovery of species previously believed extinct, discussing such topics as the Indian forest owlet, the thylacine of Tasmania, ...
-
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
By Peter BrannenUsing the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction.
-
Facing Extinction: The World's Rarest Birds and the Race to Save Them
By Paul DonaldHowever, statistical methods have been developed to attempt to quantify the likelihood that a given species is extinct, to estimate the likely date it succumbed, and to assess the likely validity ofa recent record (Solow & roberts 2003) ...
-
Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene
By David SepkoskiIntroduction: Why Extinction Matters -- The Meaning of Extinction: Catastrophe, Equilibrium, and Diversity -- Extinction in a Victorian Key -- Catastrophe and Modernity -- Extinction in the Shadow of the Bomb -- The Asteroid and the ...
-
A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction
By Joel GreenbergThe epic story of why passenger pigeons became extinct and what that says about our current relationship with the natural world.
-
Animals, Plants and Afterimages: The Art and Science of Representing Extinction
By Nicholas Chare, Valérie BienvenueEngaging with celebrated cases of vanished species such as the quagga and the thylacine as well as less well-known examples of animals and plants, these essays explore how representations of recent and ancient extinctions help advance ...