Discipline | Ecology, evolution, population biology |
---|---|
Language | English |
Edited by | Daniel I. Bolnick |
Publication details | |
History | 1867–present |
Publisher | |
Frequency | Monthly |
3.926 (2020) | |
Standard abbreviations | |
ISO 4 | Am. Nat. |
Indexing | |
ISSN | 0003-0147 |
LCCN | 00-227441 |
JSTOR | 00030147 |
OCLC no. | 45446849 |
Links | |
The American Naturalist is the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society of Naturalists, whose purpose is "to advance and to diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences." It was established in 1867 and is published by the University of Chicago Press. The journal covers research in ecology, evolutionary biology, population, and integrative biology. As of 2018 [update] , the editor-in-chief is Daniel I. Bolnick. According to the Journal Citation Reports , the journal had a 2020 impact factor of 3.926.
The journal was founded by Alpheus Hyatt, Edward S. Morse, Alpheus S. Packard Jr., and Frederick W. Putnam at the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. [1] The first issue appeared in print dated March 1867. [2] In 1885 the four men founded the American Naturalist Society, where in 1887 the journal was designated an official organ of the society for publication. [3]
In 1878 the journal was for sale and Edward Cope bought half the rights. He moved the journal to Philadelphia and arranged to edit it jointly with Professor Alpheus S. Packard Jr. Cope became editor-in-chief in 1887 and continued in that capacity until his death in 1897. [4]
In 1897, a group of professors from M.I.T., Harvard, and Tufts bought the rights from the Cope estate and kept the journal in publication until 1907 when J. McKeen Cattell acquired control. [3] Cattell's son Jacques became co-editor and publisher with his father in 1939. [5]
Although the ASN became increasingly involved in editing The American Naturalist through changes in 1941 and 1951, the journal remained with the Cattell family until 1968, when the University of Chicago Press took it over after Jacques Cattell's death. [5]
James Mark Baldwin was an American philosopher and psychologist who was educated at Princeton under the supervision of Scottish philosopher James McCosh and who was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at Princeton and the University of Toronto. He made important contributions to early psychology, psychiatry, and to the theory of evolution.
Edward Drinker Cope was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, he distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science, publishing his first scientific paper at the age of 19. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations.
Edward Sylvester Morse was an American zoologist, archaeologist, and orientalist. He is considered the "Father of Japanese archaeology."
Benjamin Dann Walsh was an English-born American entomologist who served as the first official state entomologist in Illinois. He was a leading influence during a time of significant transition in American entomology. Walsh championed the application of scientific methods to control agricultural pests. He was a proponent of biological control as an effective means to manage insects. He was also one of the first American scientists to support Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and was instrumental in securing its broad acceptance in the entomological community.
Mankind Quarterly is a peer-reviewed journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment", a "white supremacist journal", and "a pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality". It covers physical and cultural anthropology, including human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, linguistics, mythology, archaeology, and biology. It is published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research, which is presided over by Richard Lynn.
Alpheus Hyatt was an American zoologist and palaeontologist.
Alpheus Spring Packard Jr. LL.D. was an American entomologist and palaeontologist. He described over 500 new animal species – especially butterflies and moths – and was one of the founders of The American Naturalist.
The American Society of Naturalists was founded in 1883 and is one of the oldest professional societies dedicated to the biological sciences in North America. The purpose of the Society is "to advance and diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences."
The Boston Society of Natural History (1830–1948) in Boston, Massachusetts, was an organization dedicated to the study and promotion of natural history. It published a scholarly journal and established a museum. In its first few decades, the society occupied several successive locations in Boston's Financial District, including Pearl Street, Tremont Street and Mason Street. In 1864 it moved into a newly constructed museum building at 234 Berkeley Street in the Back Bay, designed by architect William Gibbons Preston. In 1951 the society evolved into the Museum of Science, and relocated to its current site on the Charles River.
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses. The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species. However, the fact that closely related lineages share many traits and trait combinations as a result of the process of descent with modification means that lineages are not independent. This realization inspired the development of explicitly phylogenetic comparative methods. Initially, these methods were primarily developed to control for phylogenetic history when testing for adaptation; however, in recent years the use of the term has broadened to include any use of phylogenies in statistical tests. Although most studies that employ PCMs focus on extant organisms, many methods can also be applied to extinct taxa and can incorporate information from the fossil record.
Caecidotea nickajackensis is a species of isopod crustacean in the family Asellidae. It was believed to be endemic to a single cave in Tennessee, and was thought to have been exterminated when that cave was flooded in 1967 by the building of the Nickajack Dam, however, in 2013 the species was discovered within Horseskull Cave and Raccoon Mountain Caverns.
Protostegidae is a family of extinct marine turtles that lived during the Cretaceous period. The family includes some of the largest sea turtles that ever existed. The largest, Archelon, had a head one metre (39 in) long. Like most sea turtles, they had flattened bodies and flippers for front appendages; protostegids had minimal shells like leatherback turtles of modern times.
Julian Huxley used the phrase "the eclipse of Darwinism" to describe the state of affairs prior to what he called the "modern synthesis". During the "eclipse", evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles but relatively few biologists believed that natural selection was its primary mechanism. Historians of science such as Peter J. Bowler have used the same phrase as a label for the period within the history of evolutionary thought from the 1880s to around 1920, when alternatives to natural selection were developed and explored—as many biologists considered natural selection to have been a wrong guess on Charles Darwin's part, or at least to be of relatively minor importance.
Jesse Appleton was the second president of Bowdoin College and the father of First Lady Jane Pierce.
Charles Emerson Beecher was an American paleontologist most famous for the thorough excavation, preparation and study of trilobite ventral anatomy from specimens collected at Beecher's Trilobite Bed. Beecher was rapidly promoted at Yale Peabody Museum, eventually rising to head that institution.
John Sterling Kingsley (1854–1929) was an American professor of biology and zoology.
Lynn K. Nyhart is the Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She served as president of the History of Science Society from 2012 to 2013. Her main areas of interest are the history of biology, international transfer of ideas, relations between elite and popular science, and theories of individuality, parts, and wholes. Her book Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany received the Susan E. Abrams Prize in 2009.
Ellen D. Ketterson is an American evolutionary biologist, behavioral ecologist, neuroendocrinologist and ornithologist best known for her experimental approach to the study of life-history trade-offs in a songbird, the Dark-eyed Junco. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Biology, Director of the Environmental Resilience Institute, and affiliate professor in Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Integrative Study of Animal Behavior, and Neuroscience at Indiana University.
Alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed by scholars investigating biology to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things. The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor that the organisms alive today share a common ancestor from the distant past ; rather, they propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change over time, arguing against mutations acted on by natural selection as the most important driver of evolutionary change.
The Chicago Conservator was an American newspaper. Founded by attorney Ferdinand Barnett in 1878, it was the first African-American newspaper in Chicago.