Abstract
In 1959, G.E. Hutchinson provided a general explanation for the diversity of species in his paper “Homage to Santa Rosalia or why are there so many kinds of animals?” To assess the contribution of the ideas Hutchinson introduced in “The Homage” to aquatic ecology research, we performed a bibliometric evaluation of all the articles that cited this paper between 1960 and 2009. The articles were retrieved using the database from Thomson Reuters (ISI Web of Knowledge) in March 2009. For each paper, we first identified the studied environment (terrestrial, marine or freshwater) and whether the study was theoretical or empirical. For marine and freshwater studies, we recorded the journal where the article was published, the year of publication, the number of citations, the taxonomic group (e.g. fish, phytoplankton, zooplankton, macroinvertebrates or macrophytes), the habitat (e.g. wetlands, lakes, rivers, streams or ocean) and the main ideas addressed. A total of 1345 articles cited “The Homage”, and the number of citations increased significantly with time. Most of the articles that cited “The Homage” described research carried out in a terrestrial environment or were theoretical, and a lesser number of citations came from freshwater and marine papers, which used mainly fish and invertebrates as model organisms. In the aquatic sciences, most of the papers discussed the influences of competition and energy (productivity) on diversity. Our results indicate that “The Homage” can still be considered a “citation classic” and a breakthrough contribution, and that it is still having a great impact on different fields of ecology, including limnology and marine ecology.
Guest editors: L. Naselli-Flores & G. Rossetti / Fifty years after the “Homage to Santa Rosalia”: Old and new paradigms on biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Amin, M. & B. Mabe, 2000. Impact factors: use and abuse. Perspectives in Publishing 1: 1–6.
Balian, J. H., H. Segers, H. Lévèque & K. Martens, 2008. The freshwater animal diversity assessment: an overview of the results. Hydrobiologia 595: 627–637.
Bonnet, X., R. Shine & O. Lourdais, 2002. Taxonomic chauvinism. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 17: 1–3.
Briggs, J. C., 1994. Species diversity: land and sea compared. Systematic Biology 43: 130–135.
Brown, J. H., 1981. Two decades of Homage to Santa Rosalia: toward a general theory of diversity. American Zoologist 21: 877–888.
Carvalho, P., J. A. F. Diniz-Filho & L. M. Bini, 2005. The impact of Felsenstein’s “Phylogenies and the comparative method” on evolutionary biology. Scientometrics 62: 53–66.
Colwell, R. K. & T. F. Rangel, 2009. Hutchinson’s duality: the once and future niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 106(Suppl. 2): 19651–19658.
Conley, D. J., H. W. Paerl, R. W. Howarth, D. F. Boesch, S. P. Seitzinger, K. E. Havens, C. Lancelot & G. E. Likens, 2009. Controlling eutrophication: nitrogen and phosphorus. Science 323: 1014–1015.
Dibble, E. D., S. M. Thomaz & A. A. Padial, 2006. Spatial complexity measured at a multi-scale in three aquatic plant species. Journal of Freshwater Ecology 21: 239–247.
Glänzel, W. & H. F. Moed, 2002. Journal impact measures in bibliometric research. Scientometrics 53: 171–193.
Hutchinson, G. E., 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia or why are there so many kinds of animals? American Naturalist 93: 145–159.
Hutchinson, G. E., 1961. Paradox of the plankton. American Naturalist 95: 137–145.
Jeffries, M., 1993. Invertebrate colonization of artificial pondweeds of differing fractal dimensions. Oikos 67: 142–148.
Jenkins, M., 2003. Prospects for biodiversity. Science 302: 1175–1177.
MacArtur, R., 1955. Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 36: 533–536.
McIntosh, R. P., 1985. The Background of Ecology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
McNaughton, S. J., 1977. Diversity and stability of ecological communities: a comment on the role of empiricism in ecology. The American Naturalist 111: 515–525.
Naeem, S., 2002. Ecosystem consequences of biodiversity loss: the evolution of a paradigm. Ecology 83: 1537–1552.
Naeem, S., L. J. Thompson, S. P. Lawler, J. H. Lawton & R. M. Woodfin, 1994. Declining biodiversity can alter the performance of ecosystems. Nature 368: 734–737.
Pennisi, E., 2005. What determines species diversity? Science 309: 90.
Richardson, D. M. & P. Pyšek, 2008. Fifty years of invasion ecology – the legacy of Charles Elton. Diversity and Distributions 14: 161–168.
Schindler, D. W., 1974. Eutrophication and recovery in experimental lakes: implications for lake management. Science 184: 897–899.
Slobodkin, L. B. & N. G. Slack, 1999. George Evelyn Hutchinson: 20th-century ecologist. Endeavour 23: 24–29.
Smith, V. H. & D. W. Schindler, 2009. Eutrophication science: where do we go from here? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24: 201–207.
Tilman, D. & J. A. Downing, 1994. Biodiversity and stability in grasslands. Nature 367: 363–365.
Wetzel, R. G., 2001. Limnology: Lake and River Ecosystems. Academic Press, San Diego.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thomaz, S.M., Michelan, T.S., Carvalho, P., Bini, L.M. (2010). The influence of “Homage to Santa Rosalia” on aquatic ecology: a scientometric approach. In: Naselli-Flores, L., Rossetti, G. (eds) Fifty years after the ‘‘Homage to Santa Rosalia’’: Old and new paradigms on biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. Developments in Hydrobiology 213, vol 213. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9908-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9908-2_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9907-5
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9908-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)