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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Animal behaviour
Originally published in 1943, this book presents a concise guide to the art of managing livestock aimed at younger readers. Information regarding various breeds is kept to a minimum so as to give as much space as possible to the general principles applicable to many types of animal. Photographic figures are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in British agriculture, animal husbandry and the history of farming.
The last decade has witnessed remarkable discoveries and advances in our understanding of the tool using behaviour of animals. Wild populations of capuchin monkeys have been observed to crack open nuts with stone tools, similar to the skills of chimpanzees and humans. Corvids have been observed to use and make tools that rival in complexity the behaviours exhibited by the great apes. Excavations of the nut cracking sites of chimpanzees have been dated to around 4-5 thousand years ago. Tool Use in Animals collates these and many more contributions by leading scholars in psychology, biology and anthropology, along with supplementary online materials, into a comprehensive assessment of the cognitive abilities and environmental forces shaping these behaviours in taxa as distantly related as primates and corvids.
How do chimpanzees say, 'I want to have sex with you?' By clipping a leaf or knocking on a tree trunk? How do they eat live aggressive ants? By using a short stick with one hand or long stick with both? Ivorian and Tanzanian chimpanzees answer these questions differently, as would humans from France and China if asked how they eat rice. Christophe Boesch takes readers into the lives of chimpanzees from different African regions, highlighting the debate about culture. His ethnography reveals how simple techniques have evolved into complex ones, how teaching styles differ, how material culture widens access to new food sources and how youngsters learn culture. This journey reveals many parallels between humans and chimpanzees and points to striking differences. Written in a vivid and accessible style, Wild Cultures places the reader in social and ecological contexts that shed light on our twin cultures.
Three invited international experts present overviews of recent developments in key fields and will submit chapters for the book. Jane Hurst from Liverpool University in the UK presents an overview on the function, mechanisms and evolution of chemical signals, Penelope Hawkins from the University of Western Australia will detail the importance of male odors in female mate-choice and the priming of female reproduction, and Francesco Bonadonna from CNRS-CEFE, Montpellier in France presents an overview of the importance of chemical signals for the formation and maintenance of pair-bonds, parent - offspring recognition and navigation in seabirds. Select submissions are invited by the scientific committee to contribute chapters.
Pheromones and other kinds of chemical communication underlie the behavior of all animals. Building on the strengths of the first edition, widely recognized as the leading text in the subject, this is a comprehensive overview of how pheromones work. Extensively revised and expanded to cover advances made over the last ten years, the book offers a thorough exploration of the evolutionary and behavioral contexts of chemical communication along with a detailed introduction to the molecular and neural basis of signal perception through olfaction. At a time of ever increasing specialization, Wyatt offers a unique synthesis, integrating examples across the animal kingdom. A final chapter critically considers human pheromones and the importance of olfaction to human biology. Its breadth of coverage and readability make the book an unrivaled resource for students and researchers in a range of fields from chemistry, genetics, genomics, molecular biology and neuroscience to ecology, evolution and behavior.
Having trained as a civil engineer and surveyor, the ornithologist William Eagle Clarke (1853 1938) established himself in his field by preparing reports on bird migration for the British Association. Focusing on the species passing through the British Isles, Clarke spent many months in various lighthouses and on remote islands. He brought all his research together in this two-volume work, first published in 1912 and illustrated with maps, weather charts and photographs of key research locations. In Volume 1, Clarke notes which species arrive in the British Isles during each season. A map shows the routes they take. He also explains how weather conditions affect avian journeys, using charts to indicate temperature changes across Europe and wind conditions over Britain. The annual movements of swallows, skylarks, rooks and other species are then discussed individually. The volume closes with Clarke's account of the month he spent at the Eddystone Lighthouse."
First published in 1923 as the second edition of a 1922 original, this book provides a brief account of the methods used in animal psychology and the aims of the discipline. Smith questions the point of evolutionary organization at which complex mental phenomena can be identified in animals and examines a variety of psychological abilities in animals, including form identification and the homing instinct. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in animal psychology and the history of the science.
Primates communicate with each other using a wide range of signals: olfactory signals to mark territories, screams to recruit help while fighting, gestures to request food and facial expressions to initiate play. Primate Communication brings together research on all forms of interchange and discusses what we know about primate communication via vocal, gestural, facial, olfactory and integrated multimodal signals in relation to a number of central topics. It explores the morphological, neural and cognitive foundations of primate communication through discussion of cutting-edge research. By considering signals from multiple modalities and taking a unified multimodal approach, the authors offer a uniquely holistic overview of primate communication, discussing what we know, what we don't know and what we may currently misunderstand about communication across these different forms. It is essential reading for researchers interested in primate behaviour, communication and cognition, as well as students of primatology, psychology, anthropology and cognitive sciences.
Six decades after the serendipitous discovery of chlorpromazine as an antipsychotic and four decades after the launch of clozapine, the first atypical or second generation antipsychotic, psychopharmacology has arrived at an important crossroad. It is clear that pharmacological research and pharmaceutical development must now focus on complementary or even alternative mechanisms of action to address unmet medical needs, i.e. poorly treated domains of schizophrenia, improved acceptance by patients, better adherence to medication, safety in psychoses in demented patients, and avoiding cardiac and metabolic adverse effects. The first completely novel mechanisms evolving from our insights into the pathophysiology of psychotic disorders, especially the role of glutamatergic mechanisms in schizophrenia, are now under development, and further principles are on the horizon. This situation, in many respects similar to that when the initial second-generation antipsychotics became available, can be rewarding for all. Preclinical and clinical researchers now have the opportunity to confirm their hypotheses and the pharmaceutical industry may be able to develop really novel classes of therapeutics. When we were approached by the publishers of the Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology to prepare a new volume on antipsychotics, our intention was to capture both, the accumulated preclinical and clinical knowledge about current antipsychotics as well as prospects for new and potentially more specific antischizophrenia principles. These efforts should be based on the pathophysiology of the diseases and the affected neurotransmitter systems. Since preclinical research on antipsychotic compounds is only reliable when intimately linked through translational aspects to clinical results, we decided to include clinical science as well. It turned out that that this endeavor could not be covered by a single volume. We thank the editorial board and the publishers for supporting our decision to prepare two volumes: Current Antipsychotics and Novel Antischizophrenia Treatments. These topics cannot really be separated from one another and should be seen as a composite entity despite the somewhat arbitrary separation of contributions into two volumes. The continuing challenges of developing improved and safer antipsychotic medications remain of concern and are discussed in the first volume. The new opportunities for the field to develop and license adjunctive treatments for the negative symptoms and cognitive deficits that are treated inadequately by existing compounds have been incentivized recently and provide the focus for the second volume. We hope these collective contributions will facilitate the development of improved treatments for the full range of symptomatology seen in the group of schizophrenias and other major psychotic disorders. Gerhard Gross, Ludwigshafen, Germany Mark A. Geyer, La Jolla, CA This volume will try to put current therapy - achievements, shortcomings, remaining medical needs - and emerging new targets into the context of increasing knowledge regarding the genetic and neurodevelopmental contributions to the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Some of the chapters will also deal with respective experimental and clinical methodology, biomarkers, and translational aspects of drug development. Non-schizophrenia indications will be covered to some extent, but not exhaustively.
Motion processing is an essential piece of the complex brain machinery that allows us to reconstruct the 3D layout of objects in the environment, to break camouflage, to perform scene segmentation, to estimate the ego movement, and to control our action. Although motion perception and its neural basis have been a topic of intensive research and modeling the last two decades, recent experimental evidences have stressed the dynamical aspects of motion integration and segmentation. This book presents the most recent approaches that have changed our view of biological motion processing. These new experimental evidences call for new models emphasizing the collective dynamics of large population of neurons rather than the properties of separate individual filters. Chapters will stress how the dynamics of motion processing can be used as a general approach to understand the brain dynamics itself.
In recent years, progress in fish biology has advanced at an unprecedented rate and has led to many breakthroughs in the field. This book provides a wealth of information on the strategies that fish adopt with respect to waters with markedly different physical and chemical characteristics. It shows how their physiology, behaviour and lifestyles are adapted to exploit particular niches and gives comprehensive insight into fish life under extreme conditions. The readers are introduced to the ways in which fish exemplify many phenomena of general biological interest - the existence of competitors, chaos, and predator-prey interaction. Fish pathology as well as the components of the immune system are addressed. In this book, original and at times controversial views are presented, areas which have so far received inadequate attention are highlighted and avenues for further research are suggested.
Throughout the history of economics, a variety of analytical tools have been borrowed from the so-called exact sciences. As Schoe?er (1955) puts it: "They have taken their mathematics and their ded- tive techniques from physics, their statistics from genetics and agr- omy, their systems of classi?cation from taxonomy and chemistry, their model-construction techniques from astronomy and mechanics, and their methods of analysis of the consequences of actions from en- neering". The possibility of similarities of structure in mathematical models of economic and physical systems has been an important f- tor in the development of neoclassical theory. To treat the state of an economy as an equilibrium, analogous to the equilibrium of a mech- ical system has been a key concept in economics ever since it became a mathematically formalized science. Adopting a Newtonian paradigm neoclassical economics often is based on three fundamental concepts. Firstly, the representative agent who is a scale model of the whole society with extraordinary capacities, particularly concerning her - pability of information processing and computation. Of course, this is a problematic reduction as agents are both heterogeneous and bou- edly rational and limited in their cognitive capabilities. Secondly, it often con?ned itself to study systems in a state of equilibrium. But this concept is not adequate to describe and to support phenomena in perpetual motion.
Metacognition is the capacity to reflect upon and evaluate cognition and behaviour. Long of interest to philosophers and psychologists, metacognition has recently become the target of research in the cognitive neurosciences. By combining brain imaging, computational modeling, neuropsychology and insights from psychiatry, the present book offers a picture of the metacognitive functions of the brain. Chapters cover the definition and measurement of metacognition in humans and non-human animals, the computational underpinnings of metacognitive judgments the cognitive neuroscience of self-monitoring ranging from confidence to error-monitoring and neuropsychiatric studies of disorders of metacognition. This book provides an invaluable overview of a rapidly emerging and important field within cognitive neuroscience.
Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior highlights, through concise summaries, the most important discoveries and scientific revolutions in animal behavior. These are assessed for their relative impact on the field and their significance to the forward motion of the science of animal behavior. Eighty short essays capture the moment when a new concept emerged or a publication signaled a paradigm shift. How the new understanding came about is explained, and any continuing controversy or scientific conversation on the issue is highlighted. Behavior is a rich and varied field, drawing on genetics, evolution, physiology, and ecology to inform its principles, and this book embraces the wealth of knowledge that comes from the unification of these fields around the study of animals in motion. The chronological organization of the essays makes this an excellent overview of the history of animal behavior, ethology, and behavioral ecology. The work includes such topics as Darwin's role in shaping the study of animal behavior, the logic of animal contests, cognition, empathy in animals, and animal personalities. Succinct accounts of new revelations about behavior through scientific investigation and scrutiny reveal the fascinating story of this field. Similar to Dr. John Avise's Contemporary Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Genetics, the work is structured into vignettes that describe the conceptual revolution and assess the impact of the conceptual change, with a score, which ranges from 1-10, providing an assessment of the impact of the new findings on contemporary science.
When this monograph was first published in 1872, there already existed a good deal of thought on facial expression via the study of physiognomy; this work, notes Charles Darwin (1809 82), was full of 'surprising nonsense'. Setting aside the assumption of previous studies that human facial muscles were created specifically for a range of expressions unique to the species, Darwin sets out here to make a systematic study of both human and animal expression. The range of his research is extraordinarily wide: he not only experimented on himself, but observed infants, consulted doctors in psychiatric hospitals and sent out requests to missionaries and travellers for first-hand notes on the expressions of aboriginal peoples. Learned, meticulous and illustrated with an impressive array of drawings, photographs and engravings, Darwin's work stands as an important contribution to the study of human behaviour and its origins.
The purpose of this volume is to present a comprehensive overview of recent advances in primate field research, ecology, and conservation biology in Mesoamerica. The overall goal of each contribution is to integrate newly collected field data with theoretical perspectives drawn from evolutionary biology, socioecology, biological anthropology, and conservation to identify how our current knowledge of primate behavior and ecology has moved beyond more traditional approaches. A corollary to this, and an important goal of the volume is to identify geographical regions and species for which we continue to lack sufficient information, to develop action plans for future research, and to identify areas for immediate conservation action. Despite many decades of primate research in Mesoamerica, much is still unknown concerning the basic ecology and behavior of these species, demography, current distribution, and conservation status of local populations, and the effectiveness of conservation policies on primate survivorship. Four major areas of research are the focus of the volume: Evolutionary Biology and Biogeography; Population Demography and Ecology; Behavior; and Conservation and Management Policies.
Increasing interest in the study of coordinated activity of brain cell ensembles reflects the current conceptualization of brain information processing and cognition. It is thought that cognitive processes involve not only serial stages of sensory signal processing, but also massive parallel information processing circuitries, and therefore it is the coordinated activity of neuronal networks of brains that give rise to cognition and consciousness in general. While the concepts and techniques to measure synchronization are relatively well characterized and developed in the mathematics and physics community, the measurement of coordinated activity derived from brain signals is not a trivial task, and is currently a subject of debate. Coordinated Activity in the Brain: Measurements and Relevance to Brain Function and Behavior addresses conceptual and methodological limitations, as well as advantages, in the assessment of cellular coordinated activity from neurophysiological recordings. The book offers a broad overview of the field for investigators working in a variety of disciplines (neuroscience, biophysics, mathematics, physics, neurology, neurosurgery, psychology, biomedical engineering, computer science/computational biology), and introduces future trends for understanding brain activity and its relation to cognition and pathologies. This work will be valuable to professional investigators and clinicians, graduate and post-graduate students in related fields of neuroscience and biophysics, and to anyone interested in signal analysis techniques for studying brain function.
The biological and genetic bases of behavioral diversity have long been topics of study within many disciplines, including evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, sociobiology, and comparative psychology, but only relatively recently have attempts been made to bring these different approaches together. This volume covers a wide range of interdisciplinary research which uses some of the newest and most promising methods and technologies. Presented here is an overview of findings in the ongoing search for the ultimate causes of behavior in several different species, including primates, dogs, rodents, birds, and fish. Divided into five parts, the work describes research on sexual and kin selection, personality and temperament, molecular genetics of personality, color vision and body coloration, and the neurological underpinnings of complex behaviors. Valuable for researchers as well as graduate students in a wide range of fields from neuroscience to ecology, the book is also useful to those seeking to move beyond the boundaries of their own discipline and to expand their knowledge.
This book reviews some of the most important scientific and philosophical theories concerning the nature of mind and consciousness. Current theories on the mind-body problem and the neural correlates of consciousness are presented through a series of biographical sketches of the most influential thinkers across the fields of philosophy of mind, psychology and neuroscience. The book is divided into two parts: the first is dedicated to philosophers of mind and the second, to neuroscientists/experimental psychologists. Each part comprises twenty short chapters, with each chapter being dedicated to one author. A brief introduction is given on his or her life and most important works and influences. The most influential theory/ies developed by each author are then carefully explained and examined with the aim of scrutinizing the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches to the nature of consciousness.
Coordination in Human and Primate Groups presents one of the first collections of the different approaches and methods used to assess coordination processes in groups. Written by psychologists and primatologists, the book represents a broad range of coordination research fields such as social psychology, work and organizational psychology, medicine, primatology, and behavioural ecology. It is designed for researchers and practitioners interested in understanding the behavioural aspects of group coordination.
This book takes a multidisciplinary approach to emotion, with contributions from biologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, robot engineers, and artists. A wide range of emotional phenomena is discussed, including the notion that humans' sophisticated sensibility, as evidenced by our aesthetic appreciation of the arts, is based at least in part on a basic emotional sensibility that is found in young children and perhaps even some non-human animal species. As a result, this book comprises a unique comparative perspective on the study of emotion. A number of chapters consider emotions in a variety of animal groups, including fish, birds, and mammals. Other chapters expand the scope of the book to humans and robots. Specific topics covered in these chapters run the gamut from lower-level emotional activity, such as emotional expression, to higher-level emotional activity, such as altruism, love, and aesthetics. Taken as a whole, the book presents manifold perspectives on emotion and provides a solid foundation for future multidisciplinary research on the nature of emotions.
The blurring of boundaries between hitherto distinct scientific disciplines, technologies or markets is a common and powerful phenomenon. Subjects of this convergence often change consumer behaviours, favouring products and platforms with multiple functions. The Anticipation of Converging Industries provides a detailed focus on the triggers, drivers and consequences of convergence to create a more concise definition of convergence. This detailed analysis includes a specifically developed toolbox for 'convergence foresight', creating a forecasting method for convergence trends. With the focus on the chemical, biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries, several indicators of convergence in the areas of Nutraceuticals/Functional Foods, Cosmeceuticals and ICT are derived from samples including over 1million patents and scientific publications. By supporting this methodical approach with real world data, The Anticipation of Converging Industries is perfect for industry practitioners looking for a competitive edge in the present and for the future. Similarly, academics will find a comprehensive theoretical concept for better understanding the underlying rationale of convergence at their disposal
Agriculture increasingly faces the challenge of balancing its multiple functions in a sustainable way. Integrated assessment and modelling (IAM) can provide insight into the potential impacts of policy changes. However, concepts to address the wide range of issues and functions typical for agriculture are still scarce. Environmental and Agricultural Modelling reviews and presents our current understanding of integrated and working tools to assess and compute, ex-ante, alternative agricultural and environmental policy options, allowing: 1. Analysis at the full range of scales (farm to European Union and global) whilst focusing on the most important issues emerging at each scale; 2. Analysis of the environmental, economic and social contributions of agricultural systems towards sustainable rural development and rural viability; 3. Analysis of a broad range of issues and agents of change, such as climate change, environmental policies, rural development options, effects of an enlarging EU, international competition, and effects on developing countries.
Nearly everything making up what we call the "environment" of a plant has an infuence on the way it grows. Sunlight, te- perature, moisture contents of soil and atmosphere and vib- tions are all obvious examples of environmental components, and transient variations in their amount or intensity lead the plant to manifest more or less immediate responses. Small changes in carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere can even have effects, but these take a longer time to be registered - at least those that are visible, albeit at the microscopic level. Plants meet the challenges of the environment by means of acclimation. In this respect, plants are notable for the pl- ticity of their development. However, where morphological or physiological plasticity is no longer an option, the responses would be by means of adaptations as a result of genetic - lection or genetic "assimilation" (Waddington 1957). Thus, a feature that was once a facultative transient response to an environmental perturbation becomes a constitutive charac- ristic of plant structure or function. It is in this way that the environment continually molds the way in which plants de- lop, and also defnes the areas upon planet Earth where they will thrive.
Mechanisms of neural plasticity enable the encoding and memorization of information based on sensory inputs and can be harnessed to partially restore function after CNS assault such as stroke or head trauma. In the present book, experts from the field of visual system plasticity describe and evaluate the evidence for neural mechanisms proposed to underlie CNS plasticity in the major divisions of the brain dedicated to visual processing, the retina, sub-cortical structures and cortex. We present studies from a wide variety of disciplines that range from molecular biology to neurophysiology and computer modeling. Leading investigators discuss their own work, and integrate this research with colleagues from other specializations. The book points out future applications for this research including clinical uses and engineering within the biomedical sciences. This book is an exciting and thought provoking read for all levels of science enthusiast interested in the physical basis of learning and cognition. |
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