Sunday, March 27, 2011

Etymological challange: Evolutionary Demography

I have a bit of a stomach bug this weekend, so I am thinking about things that don't require so much concentration. A colleague had raised the question of when the term "evolutionary demography" was first used in print, and said that the oldest example he could find was:

Caswell, H. 1985. The evolutionary demography of clonal reproduction. pp. 187-224. In: J. B. C. Jackson, L. W. Buss and R. E. Cook (eds.) Population Biology and Evolution of Clonal Organisms. Yale Univ. Press.

I, currently having more time than brain power, did a little bit of searching, and found this:

Wilbur, H.M. 1975. The Evolutionary and Mathematical Demography of the Turtle Chrysemys picta. Ecology, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter), pp. 64-77.

which uses the phrase "evolutionary demography," explicitly in the acknowledgements and implicitly in the title.

Can anyone find an older explicit recorded use of the phrase? If so, the commenter presenting the oldest confirmable example will win a prize: I will personally make a sculpture representing a species of your choosing (excepting diatoms) and send it to you in recognition of your etymological achievement. Comments will be accepted for one month from today, or until I get the first winning example, whichever comes last.

1 comment:

A said...

That's the oldest reference I can find too. Some other old finds:

A book by the same Caswell in 1985:
Caswell, H., 1985. Evolutionary Demography: Matrix Models and Their
Interpretation. Macmillan, New York, NY.

Phenotypic plasticity in life-history traits: demographic effects and evolutionary consequences
H Caswell - American Zoologist, 1983 - Soc Integ Comp Biol

Evolutionary aspects of demographic cycles: the relevance of some models of cycles for microtine fluctuations
NC Stenseth - Oikos, 1977 - JSTOR