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Impact of a classic paper by H. Ronald Pulliam: An overview of the first twenty years (1988-2007)
Citation:
Hull, V., A. T. MORZILLO, AND J. Liu. Impact of a classic paper by H. Ronald Pulliam: An overview of the first twenty years (1988-2007). Presented at International Association for Landscape Ecology, US Chapter Meeting, Madison, WI, April 06 - 10, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
In 1988, H. Ronald Pulliam published the classic paper, “Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation.”
Description:
In 1988, H. Ronald Pulliam published the classic paper, “Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation.” The message of this paper was that population dynamics can change across heterogeneous landscapes, where populations in “sink” habitats rely on inputs from “source” habitats to persist. The author proposed an unparalleled integration of population dynamics and landscape ecology principles and set the stage for numerous advancements in ecological theory and practice. To assess this paper’s impact on the scientific community, we reviewed the 1,500+ journal articles that have cited it since its publication. According to ISI, the paper has been cited in 50+ subject categories in 250+ journals by 3,000+ different authors from 1,000+ different institutions in 75+ different countries. Although the earliest citations were bounded within the life sciences, the underlying message in “Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation” has rapidly spread across a variety of fields as diverse as economics, business, and international relations. The papers citing this work have encompassed a broad range of organisms, habitats, and scales in both the theoretical and empirical realms. Pulliam’s classic paper has advanced our understanding of key principles of populations and communities such as dispersal, reproduction, and diversity, as well as themes in landscape ecology such as scale, patch, and fragmentation. The theoretical interface between these disciplines has evolved over time and has consistently refined previously held assumptions. Key theoretical concepts related to habitat selection, dispersal, and inter-species relationships have gone from homogenous constants to complex variables. In addition, nearly 50% of the citations focus on applications related to conservation and management, thereby illustrating the relevance of this paper to real-world ecological issues such as invasive species, protected area design, and land use change.