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Article: The emergence of manipulative experiments in ecological spider research (1684-1973).
- Article from:
- Journal of Arachnology
- Article date:
- September 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 American Arachnological Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ABSTRACT. The history of spider ecology is discussed from its early beginnings in 1684 when the natural historian Martin Lister published his observations, to the post-war period up until 1973 when ecological spider research gathered momentum. While there have been many important observations since Lister, spider ecology appeared explicitly in the titles of papers only after the turn of the 20th century. However, much of what was published up until the 1950s is of little scientific value because these works contained natural history notes and conjecture, not manipulative experimentation. The exception was a paper written in 1939 by Pontus Palmgren who was not an ecologist ...