Reddit Reddit reviews The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction

We found 12 Reddit comments about The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Science & Math
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Biological Sciences
Biology
The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction
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12 Reddit comments about The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction:

u/salamander_salad · 10 pointsr/biology

The Song of the Dodo

Great book. Easy read.

u/MsRenee · 8 pointsr/birdpics

Usually it happens when a few animals end up on an island with no predators. Flight takes a lot of energy and if nothing's chasing you, mutations that reduce your flight ability will not be selected against, especially if the reduction in flight ability also increases something useful, like fat reserves. If you're interested in the topic, read The Song of the Dodo. You can get it off Abebooks.com for a couple bucks or your library probably has it. It's a thick book, but pretty easy reading.

u/nathan_w · 4 pointsr/biology

Song of the Dodo a book about island biogeography. Once you can understand that... you know whats up.

u/the_gnarts · 3 pointsr/vim

> did you just make this up?

Not at all. Tenrecs figure prominently in the book that I’m currently
reading: The Song of the Dodo
by David Quammen. The little critters are kind of like the super heroes
of island biogeography.

u/lafite · 3 pointsr/funny

I love David Quammen - [Song of the Dodo] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Dodo-Biogeography-Extinction/dp/0684827123) is a ridiculously well-written and incredibly interesting book.

Even if Island Bio-geography is not your thing - isn't particularly mine - you'll be hard-pressed to put the book down as the writing and ideas are so compelling (almost like a travelogue with science thrown in);

Quammen would make a great dinner guest - certainly among top 10, somewhere between Castro and Mitterand.

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/askscience

There is a trend towards gigantism (and, interestingly, dwarfism) in island populations; this is covered very nicely in The Song of the Dodo. A quick primer on the subject by PBS may be found here.

It is important to note that the largest dinosaurs- the sauropods and in particular the titanosaurs- appeared late in the game, with their greatest success (including having been found as fossil remnants on all continents) up until the K/T extinction (or shortly before).

Along with the usual explanations (food gathering, resistance to predators, etc.), I would like to suggest that large body size offers one advantage in cold-blooded animals: gigantothermy. The sheer mass of the body allows for internally generated heat to be retained, offering some of the benefits of homeothermy- including better response in cold conditions, ability to shake off pathogens, that sort of thing.

There is also the possibility the atmosphere was denser way the heck back when; it's tough to explain how dragonflies could manage a 3' wingspan unless the atmosphere was denser.

u/honilee · 2 pointsr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

This is my kinda contest! My Favorite Book! changes with my mood, but my current favorite would be Kushiel's Dart, which looks like a cheap romance novel judging by its cover, but is actually a story of political intrigue set in an alternate history of Europe (most of the action takes place in an alternate-medieval France whose inhabitants have the blood of literal angels running through their veins).

It's the first of a trilogy (and there's more books after that, but you can stop at the first trilogy), but if I recall correctly one can probably stop at the first book, but I know I couldn't. Carey has done a fabulous job building a world that feels real--she intermixes her story's religion, history, and politics into the main narrative in such a way that it doesn't feel clunky at all.

Fair warning: the beginning has quite a bit of exposition, but you need it all to understand anything. It's a long read; I think the print book has 799 pages; the Kindle version has 929 pages. Also: there are sex scenes, so if you don't like to read that kind of content, you probably want to give this book a pass.

If I should win the raffle, I'd love The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction!

u/reggietheporpoise · 2 pointsr/labrats

the song of the dodo by david quammen. one of my favorite science books. i wish there was an audiobook available, i’d love to experience it again on my commute to work.

u/HotKarl_Marx · 2 pointsr/exmormon

One of my favorite books that is tangentially on this subject is Song of the Dodo by David Quammen.

u/fungoid_sorceror · 2 pointsr/askscience

I'd imagine that there's selective pressure applied, though I doubt "wariness" is the defining trait.

Our highway system definitely increases the potential for speciation, though, as it creates several discrete isolated populations from what was once one large genetic pool. Effectively we're turning a single large land mass into sporadically connected islands, which creates its own set of dangers. This book does a great job explaining and discussing it.

u/TheBB · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/nana_nana_batman · 1 pointr/Entomology

Ive really enjoyed David Quamman's Song of the DoDo and E.O. Wilson's The Diversity of Life They both follow similar themes of Island Biogeography, extinction, and biodiversity. They also explain a lot of fundamental concepts in Ecology really well. E.O. is obviously an Entomologist so most of the large concepts he goes over are explained using insect models.