Blaire Van Valkenburgh

Blaire Van Valkenburgh (October 13, 1952) is an American palaeontologist and professor of vertebrate biology at UCLA. She served for two academic years from 2008 to 2010 as president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and was elected in 2022 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Physics. Quotes The impact of Natural environment environment, interspecific competition, and, to a lesser extent History of life history, on the structure of the Guild (ecology) guild of large Carnivora predatory mammals is explored in one fossil and four Recent communities. Two aspects are emphasized: (1) the number of species within each guild and (2) the extent of locomotor convergence as inferred from morphology among the constituent species. Locomotor behavior reflects habitat choice, hunting mode, and escape strategy, all of which appear to be important avenues of adaptive divergence among coexisting predators. Locomotor diversity within past and present guilds of large predatory mammals Paleobiology 11 4 Fall 1985 406–428 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0094837300011702 10.1017/S0094837300011702 Despite the repeated tendency of Canidae canids to evolve adaptations for hypercarnivory, a canid has yet to appear that is completely catlike, that is, without any post-carnassial Molar (tooth) molars. This possible constraint on morphological evolution in canids is argued to have resulted, paradoxically, in increased flexibility over evolutionary time and a great potential for rapid diversification and clade survivorship. Finally, it is suggested that the iterative pattern of specialization of the lower molars for meat-slicing that is seen in all families of carnivores, past and present, is probably a result of intraspecific competition for food, perhaps among Litter (zoology) littermates. This intraspecific selective force is countered by competition among species, since there are limits on the number of Sympatry sympatric hypercarnivorous species within a single community. Iterative evolution of hypercarnivory in canids (Mammalia: Carnivora): evolutionary interactions among sympatric predators Paleobiology 17 4 Fall 1991 340–362 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0094837300010691 10.1017/S0094837300010691 Eaton (1979) was one of the first biologists to promote the importance of Competition (biology)#Interference competition interference competition among coexisting large Carnivora mammalian carnivores. In his review, he focused on interspecific interactions over carcasses and noted that larger carnivores tended to displace smaller ones from carcasses and that grouping behavior could reverse this relationship. He noted as well that interspecific battles over kills occurred and often resulted in injury or death to one of the participants. In a study of adaptations to coexistence among carnivores, Van Valkenburg (1985) pointed out the additional pressure of interspecific predation among Sympatry sympatric carnivores, noting that both juveniles and adults are killed but not always eaten. Chapter 5. The Dog-Eat-Dog World of Carnivores: A Review of Past and Present Carnivore Community Dynamics by Blaire Van Valkenburgh Meat-eating & Human Evolution Volume 2 of Human evolution series Oxford University Press 2001 9780195131390 https://books.google.com/books?id=4xFnDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA102 101–121 (370 pages; quote from p. 102; edited by Craig Britton Stanford & Henry Thomas Bunn) External links Category:1952 births Category:Living people Category:Biologists from the United States Category:Johns Hopkins University alumni Category:Paleontologists from the United States Category:People from Virginia Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty Category:Women scientists from the United States Category:Women academics from the United States