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I wanted to write the kind of book I'd enjoy reading. And, I intended to follow the time-honored advice to write about what I know. I am happy to report that I did both in Observing Evolution. My hope now is that a broad audience will enjoy my book, and will...

The late William “Bill” Porter, one of the editors of Wildlife Management and Landscapes (WML), was a fan of making up adages to lighten the mood in complex ecological discussions with his students. One of my favorites was, “Ecology isn’t rocket science… it’s...

Many people think of marsupials as Australian mammals, which get almost all the press attention. Most of the marsupials in nature documentaries are from Down Under: kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, koalas, bandicoots, sugar gliders, and so forth. But, despite...

Freshwater semi-aquatic mammals represent some of the world’s rarest species living within some of its most threatened habitats. Better known species, including the platypus, North American and Eurasian beavers, the common hippopotamus, and various species of...

In Foundations for Advancing Animal Ecology, authors Michael L. Morrison, Leonard A. Brennan, Bruce G. Marcot, William M. Block, and Kevin S. McKelvey examine how wildlife professionals can modernize their approaches to habitat and population management with a...

In his now classic 1985 publication, Michael E. Soulé posed a profound question. He asked, “What is conservation biology?” At the time, his article defined this emerging new discipline. Within his answer was an elegant, philosophical assumption. He stated...

Herpetologists have no idea how many lizard species there are. When I started planning Lizards of the World there were about 3000 species known worldwide. When I finished my data collection there were 6528; now there are over 7100. Is the true number 10,000 or...

The First Edition of Vertebrate Biology was published in 1998; the Second Edition in 2012. Since that time, many taxonomic changes and revisions have occurred, many new paleontological discoveries have enabled us to better comprehend the evolutionary origins...

I co-authored Tunas and Billfishes of the World with John Graves as the culmination of my 60 years of research on tunas, which began with studying tunas caught on a long-line cruise aboard the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (now NOAA) vessel “Delaware” in the...

Mollusks, which include mussels, clams, octopus, squid, chitons, snails, slugs, and a few less familiar groups, are the second most diverse animal phylum (arthropods are number one, which includes the hyper-diverse class of insects). Estimates of the total...