Broken Stick

Norman Ferris stood his ground as a group of 40 or 50 Bellonses warriors held their spears high and thundered across the sacred beach toward him. He had come to this remote island to tell the devil worshipers about the one true God . . . and he wasnt leaving until he did so.Norman wasnt afraid to die, and he wasnt afraid to live, either. In 1927, fully aware of the dangers awaiting them, he and his wife, Ruby, sailed to the Solomon Islands only a year and a half after their marriage. Daunting trials and challenges would follow, but so would profound spiritual victories and miraculous answers to prayer.Actually, this isnt just the story of two courageous missionaries from Australia. This book is full of stories about the incredible power of God in the lives of all those who choose to follow Him because somebody loved them enough to tell them. Head-hunting devil priests included.

It is 3289 when rumors of unusual people living in caves far from his land attract the attention of warrior leader Warlog. His shaman, Rayloc, fears the strangers are servants of evil determined to destroy his way of life. Meanwhile, Sotif, History Man of the Alliance between Earth People and Sun People, tries to guard his culture against changes that could induce Mother Earth to withdraw her blessings-while Warlog focuses on severing that alliance, which has lasted for hundreds of generations, by subjugating the Sun People and destroying the Earth People. Faced with this threat, Sotif races to find the Spirit Fire to help his people defeat Warlog. But the key to success lies in the hands of Tincolad, one of Warlog's warriors who has been captured by the Alliance. Now only time will tell if Sotif can persuade Tincolad to help find the Spirit Fire in time-as the fate of the Earth People hangs in the balance. The second book in a trilogy about the interaction between Neandertals and Cro-Magnons, Spirit Fire presents an epic adventure that sweeps across prehistoric Europe, Asia, and Alaska, as the man who invented war embarks on a quest to conquer the world.

This book provides a practical introduction to analyzing ecological data using real data sets. The first part gives a largely non-mathematical introduction to data exploration, univariate methods (including GAM and mixed modeling techniques), multivariate analysis, time series analysis, and spatial statistics. The second part provides 17 case studies. The case studies include topics ranging from terrestrial ecology to marine biology and can be used as a template for a reader’s own data analysis. Data from all case studies are available from www.highstat.com. Guidance on software is provided in the book.

The evolution of species abundance and diversity; Competitive strategies of resource allocation; Community structure; Outlook.

Ecological community data. Spatial pattern analysis. Species-abundance relations. Species affinity. Community classification. Community ordination. Community interpretation.

Despite its supreme importance and the threat of its global crash, biodiversity remains poorly understood both empirically and theoretically. This ambitious book presents a new, general neutral theory to explain the origin, maintenance, and loss of biodiversity in a biogeographic context. Until now biogeography (the study of the geographic distribution of species) and biodiversity (the study of species richness and relative species abundance) have had largely disjunct intellectual histories. In this book, Stephen Hubbell develops a formal mathematical theory that unifies these two fields. When a speciation process is incorporated into Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson's now classical theory of island biogeography, the generalized theory predicts the existence of a universal, dimensionless biodiversity number. In the theory, this fundamental biodiversity number, together with the migration or dispersal rate, completely determines the steady-state distribution of species richness and relative species abundance on local to large geographic spatial scales and short-term to evolutionary time scales. Although neutral, Hubbell's theory is nevertheless able to generate many nonobvious, testable, and remarkably accurate quantitative predictions about biodiversity and biogeography. In many ways Hubbell's theory is the ecological analog to the neutral theory of genetic drift in genetics. The unified neutral theory of biogeography and biodiversity should stimulate research in new theoretical and empirical directions by ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and biogeographers.

This much revised and expanded edition provides a valuable and detailed summary of the many uses of diatoms in a wide range of applications in the environmental and earth sciences. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of diatoms in analysing ecological problems related to climate change, acidification, eutrophication, and other pollution issues. The chapters are divided into sections for easy reference, with separate sections covering indicators in different aquatic environments. A final section explores diatom use in other fields of study such as forensics, oil and gas exploration, nanotechnology, and archaeology. Sixteen new chapters have been added since the first edition, including introductory chapters on diatom biology and the numerical approaches used by diatomists. The extensive glossary has also been expanded and now includes over 1,000 detailed entries, which will help non-specialists to use the book effectively.

With its focus on the practical application of the techniques of multivariate statistics, this book shapes the powerful tools of statistics for the specific needs of ecologists and makes statistics more applicable to their course of study. It gives readers a solid conceptual understanding of the role of multivariate statistics in ecological applications and the relationships among various techniques, while avoiding detailed mathematics and the underlying theory. More importantly, the reader will gain insight into the type of research questions best handled by each technique and the important considerations in applying them. Whether used as a textbook for specialised courses or as a supplement to general statistics texts, the book emphasises those techniques that students of ecology and natural resources most need to understand and employ in their research. While targeted for upper-division and graduate students in wildlife biology, forestry, and ecology, and for professional wildlife scientists and natural resource managers, this book will also be valuable to researchers in any of the biological sciences.