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Introduction
In nature, assemblages are everywhere: a blade of grass is an assemblage of plant cells and pores; a beehive is an assemblage of bees and beeswax; a jungle is an assemblage of animals, plants, and microorganisms. Philosophers (e.g., DeLanda 2016) define “assemblage” as a collection of heterogeneous elements located within some area of interest. An example of an assemblage might be a study area within a rainforest. Assemblages have the following features (DeLanda 2016): they have a boundary (e.g., a defined study area), they have constituent parts which occur together nonrandomly (e.g., animals in the study area), the elements inside are interrelated to some extent (e.g., a rainforest ecosystem), the constituent parts might be removable (e.g., animals can depart the area; trees can be cut down) while keeping the identity of the assemblage intact (e.g., a rainforest can still be called a rainforest, if not too...
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Russell, Y.I. (2018). Assemblage. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_718-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_718-1
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