Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Michigan, 1931. / "Reprinted from Ecological monographs 2 ... January, 1932." Bibliography: p. 39-41.

No description available.

Diss. Luleå : Luleå tekniska universitet, 2008. / Härtill 6 uppsatser.

These (Ph.D.)--Boston University, 2008. / Title from PDF title page. Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-194). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 209-212).

No description available.

The Indian Ocean represents one of the oldest exchange networks connecting South-East-Asia with India, the Arabian peninsula, as far as Africa in the West. Since the beginning of the Common Era, extensive trade between geographically distant and culturally diverse people enabled the transmission of not only new technologies, exotic goods and food items, but also diverse plant and animal species. Although archaeological remains, particularly from the 1st millennium AD, reflect an intensification of maritime connectivity across the Indian Ocean, the exact routes of travel and trade across this vast area in early times are still subject to discussion. This thesis presents different projects that aim to assess the potential of using commensal animals, such as the house mouse Mus musculus, the black rat Rattus rattus, and the Asian house gecko Hemidactylus frenatus, as proxies to infer pathways of human travel and trade. Commensal species are usually small animals, that live in close association with humans and opportunistically exploit their habitat and food sources. Utilisation of these new resources has led to a close relationship between humans and certain species, and thus favoured their global distribution due to translocations through humans. Therefore, genetic analyses from modern and museum samples of the species in question have been employed, and embedded in a phylogeographic approach. This integrative methodology connects genealogy and geography, with the aim to reconstruct evolutionary, demographic, and biogeographic processes that led to the contemporary distribution of genetic lineages of the commensal species and subsequently mirrors travel routes of the humans who carried them. The incorporation of ancient DNA analysis provides a powerful method, not only enabling the detection of source populations, but direct monitoring of their genetic change through time. Given that people have moved them around for a long time, undirected distribution pattern of populations were expected for each species. However, the results demonstrate that several unique and geographically restricted lineages have been identified, reflecting past human-mediated translocation throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean from the 1st millennium AD onwards.

There is currently widespread concern about the impact of continuing climate change on the distribution, and ultimately persistence of species across all the major taxa. While much previous work has focussed on using climate envelope models to make projections of the location of potential future suitable climate space for a variety of species, these can at best give an indication of the likely direction and potential magnitude of distributional change. They lack information on spatial population dynamics, dispersal, habitat suitability, local adaptation and inter-specific interactions. The aim of this thesis was to explore how some of these other factors might alter projections regarding species’ distributional change in response to climate change, using both theoretical models, and garden warbler (Sylvia borin) as a model system. A key aspect which has been largely over-looked until very recently is the complex range dynamics which can result from spatial variation in population dynamics, and the impacts of inter-annual variability rather than simply mean climate, both of which can impact extinction risk. Much insight into future impacts of climate change can also be gained through studies of past distributional changes, such as that observed in the British breeding population of garden warbler in the last three decades. In many cases, studies at smaller-scales are necessary to elucidate the mechanisms of climate change impacts and further explore potential synergies with other drivers of ecosystem change such as habitat loss and species invasions. The particular combination of factors which should be included to make projections of distributional change will be species-specific and scale-dependent, therefore modelling exercises should be carefully designed depending on the intended outcome for conservation.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2002. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 41-44). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2005. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.