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Polar Marine Ecosystem Evolution

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The Arctic Seas

Abstract

From the mid-1960s to the late 1980s, several papers have analyzed polar marine ecosystems (Holdgate, 1967; Hedgpeth, 1977; Nemoto and Harrison, 1981; Dunbar, 1982, 1985), and there have been studies and speculations concerning the evolution of these systems (Dunbar, 1968, 1972, 1977). In the 1980s, new ideas have appeared about the basic mechanisms of evolution beyond the classical neo-Darwinian system of selection at the individual or specific level (Johnson, 1981; Ott, 1981; Wiley and Brooks, 1982). It is not intended here to go over this ground once more but rather to explore other ideas as they affect our understanding of the evolution of polar marine ecosystems, including (1) a recent paper by Jablonski (1986) and (2) ideas on the basic problem of how biological evolution began, and on what terms and conditions, and therefore of how it continued. High-latitude ecosystem evolution is only one aspect of the global pattern, but it happens to be within the focus of this book.

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© 1989 Van Nostrand Reinhold

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Dunbar, M.J. (1989). Polar Marine Ecosystem Evolution. In: Herman, Y. (eds) The Arctic Seas. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0677-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0677-1_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-8022-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0677-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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