E.S. Ph.D. faculty member, John Stireman, recently coauthored a paper that deals with a central issue in ecology

(L. A. Dyer, M. S. Singer, J. T. Lill, J. O. Stireman, G. L. Gentry, R. J. Marquis, R. E. Ricklefs, H. F. Greeney, D. L. Wagner, H. C. Morais, I. R. Diniz, T. A. Kursar, P. D. Coley. 2007. Host specificity of Lepidoptera in tropical and temperate forests. Nature 448, 696–699 (09 Aug 2007)

How many animal species are there and how are they distributed?

Recent studies of insect herbivore diversity and host range in tropical systems have suggested that early estimates of 50 million animal species on earth (most of which are insects) are far too high because they make an incorrect assumption that