A. INTRODUCTION 



By V. E. Shelford 



The early naturalist travellers de- 

 scribed the regions which they visited 

 in terms of the vegetation landscape 

 aspect. Brehm and others wrote on 

 tundra, steppe, desert coniferous forest, 

 etc., and described the behavior charac- 

 teristics and mode of life of their larger 

 animals. Of the Arctic fox Brehm 

 saj'S: "Of the slyness and ingenuity, 

 the calculating craft, the never failing 

 presence of mind of his congeners he 

 evinces hardly a trace. His disposi- 

 tion is bold and forward, his manner 

 officious, his behavior foolish." Many 

 other naturalists made observations 

 of this tj'pe relative to the animals of 

 natural vegetation landscape aspect 

 regions. 



With the acceptance of evolutionary 

 doctrine attention turned to the seeking 

 of facts which supported doctrines of 

 origin, migration, modification, and 

 adaptation, and naturalistic observa- 

 tions relative to behavior, mode of life, 

 etc., of animals received little attention 

 from travellers, naturalists, and col- 

 lectors. The description of vegetation 

 in relation to climate, etc., however, 

 received a less serious check. In recog- 

 nizing natural regions these landscape 

 aspects still serve as a general guide in 

 modern ecology but the limits of areas 

 may be made on the basis of climax 

 communities whenever investigations 

 have demonstrated the facts. A cli- 

 max community may occur only locally, 

 for example within the coniferous forest 

 of southeastern United States, which 

 is commonly regarded as giving way to 

 a deciduous climax. In this case there 

 are two landscape aspects and only one 

 climatic climax. The nature of the 

 climax communities has been deter- 

 mined only for a few regions in tem- 

 perate latitude. Accordingly landscape 



aspect must serve as the chief guide 

 and plant ecologists of necessity ap- 

 proach the subject of plant geography 

 from the standpoint of the landscape 

 aspects and physiological characters 

 of the plants of the larger plant com- 

 munities. Animal ecologists recognize 

 the value of such a viewpoint as applied 

 to animals, but so far they have made 

 little progress with it largely because 

 little investigation has been done. As 

 a rule zoogeographical discussions have 

 proceeded along the line of refinements 

 of Wallace's faunistic ideas, of tracing 

 paths of migration for particular groups 

 of species or genera, etc. The point 

 of view of those using life zones based 

 largely on temperature is largely de- 

 scriptive, but has been related to fau- 

 nistic (i.e., evolutionary) work rather 

 than i)hysiology. They have made 

 few or no attempts to find differences 

 in physiological life histories, habits, 

 etc., between animals in different re- 

 gions, or similarities of those in like 

 regions. The ideas of modern ecologi- 

 cal geographj^ are known to but few 

 zoological investigators. 



The ecology of animal communities 

 which is the basis of modern animal 

 ecology has received little attention. 

 \\'hile much zoological work is referred 

 to as "ecology," especially among 

 economic entomologists, analysis shows 

 that it is largely the ecology of par- 

 ticular species and intlividuals (aute- 

 cology). In other words it is a con- 

 tinuation of the old natural history 

 under the new name. Where com- 

 munity studies are made, too often only 

 a part of the animals arc considered so 

 that we find such misnomers as "Insect 

 Associations," etc. Though the es- 

 sential principles were recognized by 

 a few early zoologists (Mobius, 1877 



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