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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Animal ecology
Despite the wealth of natural historical research conducted on
migration over decades, there is still a dearth of
hypothesis-driven studies that fully integrate theory and empirical
analyses to understand the causes and consequences of migration,
and a taxonomic bias towards birds in much migration research. This
book takes a comparative, integrated view of animal migration,
linking evolution with ecology and management, theory with
empirical research, and embracing all the major migratory taxa
(including human pastoralists). The scope extends beyond the target
organism to consider the ecosystem-level dynamics of migration. The
emphasis is on exciting new research avenues that are now opening
up, whether due to advances in our understanding of migration as a
biological phenomenon or through the availability of a range of new
technologies.
Living things are organized in a hierarchy of levels. Genes group
together in cells, cells group together in organisms, and organisms
group together in societies. Even different species form
mutualistic partnerships. Throughout the history of life,
previously independent units have formed groups that, in time, have
come to resemble individuals in their own right. Evolutionary
biologists term such events "the major transitions." The process
common to them all is social evolution. Each transition occurs only
if natural selection favors one unit joining with another in a new
kind of group.
Living things are organized in a hierarchy of levels. Genes group
together in cells, cells group together in organisms, and organisms
group together in societies. Even different species form
mutualistic partnerships. Throughout the history of life,
previously independent units have formed groups that, in time, have
come to resemble individuals in their own right. Evolutionary
biologists term such events "the major transitions." The process
common to them all is social evolution. Each transition occurs only
if natural selection favors one unit joining with another in a new
kind of group.
Origins of Biodiversity is a unique introduction to the fields of macroevolution and macroecology, which explores the evolution and distribution of biodiversity across time, space and lineages. Using an enquiry-led framework to encourage active learning and critical thinking, each chapter is based around a case-study to explore concepts and research methods from contemporary macroevolution and macroecology. The book focuses on the process of science as much as the biology itself, to help students acquire the research skills and intellectual tools they need to understand and investigate the biological world around them. In particular, the emphasis on hypothesis testing encourages students to develop and test their own ideas. This text builds upon the foundations offered in most general introductory evolutionary biology courses to introduce an exciting range of ideas and research tools for investigating patterns of biodiversity.
Introducing Biological Energetics is a novel, interdisciplinary
text that presents biological understanding in terms of general
underlying principles, treating energy as the overarching theme and
emphasizing the all-pervading influence of energy transformation in
every process, both living and non-living. Key processes and
concepts are explained in turn, culminating in a description of the
overall functioning and regulation of a living cell. The book
rounds off the story of life with a brief account of the
endosymbiotic origins of eukaryotic cells, the development of
multicellularity, and the emergence of modern plants and animals.
This book explores why human beings share food with others using a humanistic anthropological approach. This book provides a comparative examination of distinct features and historical changes in food-sharing practices in various hunting-gathering societies, especially in the Inuit. The author considers human nature through various human food-sharing practices. Food sharing is a characteristic of human behavior and has been one of the central topics in anthropological studies of hunter-gatherers for a long time. While anthropologists have attempted to understand it in functional, historical, adaptational, social, cultural, psychological, or phenomenological perspective, they have failed to convincingly explain its origin, variation, existence or/and change. Recently, evolutionary ecology or behavioral ecology has dominated research of the topic. However, neither of them adequately considers social, cultural and historical factors in the analysis of human food-sharing practices. This book is an essential and fundamental study for every researcher interested in the relationship between human nature, society and culture.
Bioinvasions and Globalization synthesises our current knowledge of
the ecology and economics of biological invasions, providing an
in-depth evaluation of the science and its implications for
managing the causes and consequences of one of the most pressing
environmental issues facing humanity today.
Community ecology is the study of the interactions between
populations of co-existing species. Co-edited by two prominent
community ecologists and featuring contributions from top
researchers in the field, this book provides a survey of the
state-of-the-art in both the theory and applications of the
discipline. It pays special attention to topology, dynamics, and
the importance of spatial and temporal scale while also looking at
applications to emerging problems in human-dominated ecosystems
(including the restoration and reconstruction of viable
communities).
Bumblebees are familiar and charismatic insects, occurring
throughout much of the world. They are increasingly being used as a
model organism for studying a wide range of ecological and
behavioural concepts, such as social organization, optimal foraging
theories, host-parasite interactions, and pollination. Recently
they have become a focus for conservationists due to mounting
evidence of range contractions and catastrophic extinctions with
some species disappearing from entire continents (e.g. in North
America). Only by improving our understanding of their ecology can
we devise sensible plans to conserve them. The role of bumblebees
as invasive species (e.g. Bombus terrestris in Japan) has also
become topical with the growing trade in commercial bumblebee nests
for tomato pollination leading to establishment of non-native
bumblebees in a number of countries.
This book is an essential reference source covering the chemical elements that are nutrients for plants or grazing animals. It deals with the concentrations and transformations of these elements in soils, grassland plants, and ruminant animals, particularly cattle and sheep. For each element, the following data are given: forms occurring in soil, factors that affect availability and concentration, uptake and distribution in grassland plants, role in animal nutrition, amounts and forms excreted by grazing animals, and concentrations needed by ruminant animals.
Coastal zones are becoming increasingly topical (and politically sensitive) as they face relentless pressures from urban expansion, recreational development, and sea level rise due to climate change. This timely book provides a comprehensive introduction to the formation, dynamics, maintenance, and perpetuation of coastal sand dune systems. It describes the interactions between living organisms and the physical processes of geomorphology. A global range of examples enhance the book's international appeal. Based on the research presented in this book, simple to complex field studies and experiments could be designed at undergraduate and graduate levels to illustrate various biological principles. This accessible book is intended for a diverse audience; as an invaluable reference for researchers who study coastal dune systems and for novice researchers requiring a sound introduction to the subject. This book is suitable for both senior undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in coastal zone management, plant ecology, restoration ecology, and conservation biology, as well as the many professional ecologists and conservation biologists requiring a concise but authoritative overview of the topic. The book also will be of relevance and use to coastal managers, planners, naturalists, and anyone pursuing a greater understanding of coastal sand dunes.
Coastal zones are becoming increasingly topical (and politically
sensitive) as they face relentless pressures from urban expansion,
recreational development, and sea level rise due to climate change.
This timely book provides a comprehensive introduction to the
formation, dynamics, maintenance, and perpetuation of coastal sand
dune systems. It describes the interactions between living
organisms and the physical processes of geomorphology. A global
range of examples enhance the book's international appeal. Based on
the research presented in this book, simple to complex field
studies and experiments could be designed at undergraduate and
graduate levels to illustrate various biological principles.
With the exception of climate change, biological invasions have
probably received more attention during the past ten years than any
other ecological topic. Yet this is the first synthetic,
single-authored overview of the field since Williamson's 1996 book.
Written fifty years after the publication of Elton's pioneering
monograph on the subject, Invasion Biology provides a comprehensive
and up-to-date review of the science of biological invasions while
also offering new insights and perspectives relating to the
processes of introduction, establishment, and spread. The book
connects science with application by describing the health,
economic, and ecological impacts of invasive species as well as the
variety of management strategies developed to mitigate harmful
impacts. The author critically evaluates the approaches, findings,
and controversies that have characterized invasion biology in
recent years, and suggests a variety of future research directions.
Carefully balanced to avoid distinct taxonomic, ecosystem, and
geographic (both investigator and species) biases, the book
addresses a wide range of invasive species (including protists,
invertebrates, vertebrates, fungi, and plants) which have been
studied in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial environments
throughout the world by investigators equally diverse in their
origins.
Water is fundamental to life and all metabolic reactions are
influenced by the aqueous environment in which they occur.
Osmoregulation and water balance are therefore absolutely essential
topics in animal physiology.
Ecologists now recognize that the dynamics of populations, communities, and ecosystems are strongly affected by adaptive individual behaviors. Yet until now, we have lacked effective and flexible methods for modeling such dynamics. Traditional ecological models become impractical with the inclusion of behavior, and the optimization approaches of behavioral ecology cannot be used when future conditions are unpredictable due to feedbacks from the behavior of other individuals. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to state- and prediction-based theory, or SPT, a powerful new approach to modeling trade-off behaviors in contexts such as individual-based population models where feedbacks and variability make optimization impossible. Modeling Populations of Adaptive Individuals features a wealth of examples that range from highly simplified behavior models to complex population models in which individuals make adaptive trade-off decisions about habitat and activity selection in highly heterogeneous environments. Steven Railsback and Bret Harvey explain how SPT builds on key concepts from the state-based dynamic modeling theory of behavioral ecology, and how it combines explicit predictions of future conditions with approximations of a fitness measure to represent how individuals make good-not optimal-decisions that they revise as conditions change. The resulting models are realistic, testable, adaptable, and invaluable for answering fundamental questions in ecology and forecasting ecological outcomes of real-world scenarios.
Covid-19, monkeypox, bird flu, SARS, HIV, AIDS, Ebola; we are living in the Age of Pandemics – one that we have created. As the climate crisis reaches a fever pitch and ecological destruction continues unabated, we are just beginning to reckon with the effects of environmental collapse on our global health. Fevered Planet exposes how the way we farm, what we eat, the places we travel to and the scientific experiments we conduct create the perfect conditions for deadly new diseases to emerge and spread faster and further than ever. Drawing on the latest scientific research and decades of reporting from more than 100 countries, former Guardian environment editor John Vidal takes us into deep, disappearing forests in Gabon and the Congo, valleys scorched by wildfire near Lake Tahoe and our densest, polluted cities to show how closely human, animal and plant diseases are now intertwined with planetary destruction. From fossil fuel use raising the global temperature to increased logging polluting our landscapes, Fevered Planet exposes the perils of reckless environmental destruction – not just to our planet but to ourselves. As Vidal expertly argues, unless we transform our relationship with the rest of the natural world, the pandemics we are facing today will just be the tip of the iceberg.
Understanding of animal social and sexual evolution has seen a renaissance in recent years with discoveries of frequent infidelity in apparently monogamous species, the importance of sperm competition, active female mate choice, and eusocial behavior in animals outside the traditional social insect groups. Each of these findings has raised new questions, and suggested new answers, about the evolution of behavioral interactions among animals. This volume synthesizes recent research on the sexual and social biology of the Crustacea, one of the dominant invertebrate groups on earth. Its staggering diversity includes ecologically important inhabitants of nearly every environment from deep-sea trenches, through headwater streams, to desert soils. The wide range of crustacean phenotypes and environments is accompanied by a comparable diversity of behavioral and social systems, including the elaborate courtship and wildly exaggerated morphologies of fiddler crabs, the mysterious queuing behavior of migrating spiny lobsters, and even eusociality in coral-reef shrimps. This diversity makes crustaceans particularly valuable for exploring the comparative evolution of sexual and social systems. Despite exciting recent advances, however, general recognition of the value of Crustacea as models has lagged behind that of the better studied insects and vertebrates. This book synthesizes the state of the field in crustacean behavior and sociobiology and places it in a conceptually based, comparative framework that will be valuable to active researchers and students in animal behavior, ecology, and evolutionary biology. It brings together a group of internationally recognized and rising experts in fields related to crustacean behavioral ecology, ranging from physiology and functional morphology, through mating and social behavior, to ecology and phylogeny. Each chapter makes connections to other, non-crustacean taxa, and the volume closes with a summary section that synthesizes the contributions, discusses anthropogenic impacts, highlights unanswered questions, and provides a vision for profitable future research.
Archie Carr, one of the greatest biologists of the twentieth century, played a leading part in finding a new and critical role for natural history and systematics in a post-1950s world dominated by the glamorous science of molecular biology. With the rise of molecular biology came a growing popular awareness of species extinction. Carr championed endangered sea turtles, and his work reflects major shifts in the study of ecology and evolution. A gifted nature writer, his books on the natural history of sea turtles and their habitats in Florida, the Caribbean, and Africa entertained and educated a wide audience. Carr's conservation ethic grew from his field work as well as his friendships with the fishermen who supplied him with many of the stories he retold so engagingly. With Archie Carr as the focus, The Man Who Saved Sea Turtles explores the evolution of the naturalist tradition, biology, and conservation during the twentieth century.
The last documented sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker--one of
the rarest and most intriguing animals in the world--was noted over
50 years ago. Long thought to be extinct, the 2005 announcement of
a sighting in Arkansas sparked tremendous enthusiasm and hope that
this species could yet be saved. But the subsequent failure of a
massive search to relocate Ivorybills in Arkansas made hope for the
species' revival short-lived.
Chickadees and titmice are among the most popular birds in North
America, due in large part to their readiness to use bird feeders,
to nest in urban gardens, and even to be trained to take food from
people's hands. These attributes have also made them (and their
Eurasian tit counterparts) perhaps the most intensively studied
bird family in the world. Long-term research in Europe has yielded
some of the most comprehensive data on the impact of global warming
on the breeding ecology of birds. Chickadees have amongst the
best-studied and most complex vocal behavior of any bird species,
displaying one of the closest analogies to human sentence structure
in the animal kingdom in their familiar chick-a-dee call. The
social dominance hierarchies commonly witnessed in the form of
squabbling at winter feeders are some of most stable and closely
studied, and have huge impacts on controlling the lives of these
small birds. Their food-storing behavior, and the brain and
physiological mechanisms controlling this, has contributed
significantly to our wider understanding of spatial orientation. In
recent years, these birds have also been used as model species for
investigating topics as diverse as inter-species hybridization, the
impacts of forest fragmentation and complex systems of
communication. In short, chickadees and titmice have contributed
enormously to our understanding of a myriad of topics in ecology,
behavior and psychology. This book brings together a range of
experts from across North America who utilize chickadees or titmice
as study organisms. Each chapter reviews the latest advances in
evolution and behavioral research that have been accomplished
through the study of North AmericanParids, and compares and
contrasts this literature with research on their Eurasian
counterparts as well as other avian families.
This book provides updated information on this intriguing and exciting group of insects: Neotropical Social Wasps. These insects have a particular biology and their colonies are formed by a few cooperative females living in either small or massive, structured nests where stinging individuals organize their activities and defend their offspring. Topics include evolutionary aspects, biogeography, post-embryonic development, community behavior and ecology, economic importance, and research methods.
This practical book covers all aspects of the biology of malaria vectors, with notes on the vectors of dengue. It is the first work in this field to concentrate on mosquitoes, rather than covering all disease vectors. Authored by renowned field entomologist Jacques Derek Charlwood, it disseminates his vast experience working on mosquito biology, ecology and the evaluation of new vector control tools across five continents over the past 40 years. Covering all aspects from classification and systematics, population dynamics, vector control, to surveillance and sampling, epidemics, and a selection of case histories, the book also considers genetics and resistance, Aedes biology, and malaria and dengue models. It is designed to fill the gap between very specialized texts and undergraduate books on general disease vectors, and is ideal as a textbook for postgraduate courses in entomology and mosquito vectors of disease.
"Cheetahs of the Serengeti Plains" is the most comprehensive
account of carnivore social behavior to date. Synthesizing more
than a decade of research in the wild, this book offers a detailed
account of the behavior and ecology of cheetahs. Compared with
other large cats, and other mammals, cheetahs have an unusual
breeding system; whereas lions live in prides and tigers are
solitary, some cheetahs live in groups while others live by
themselves. Tim Caro explores group and solitary living among
cheetahs and discovers that the causes of social behavior vary
dramatically, even within a single species.
Many infectious diseases of recent concern, including malaria, cholera, plague, and Lyme disease, have emerged from complex ecological communities, involving multiple hosts and their associated parasites. Several of these diseases appear to be influenced by human impacts on the environment, such as intensive agriculture, clear-cut forestry, and habitat loss and fragmentation; such environmental impacts may affect many species that occur at trophic levels below or above the hostcommunity. These observations suggest that the prevalence of both human and wildlife diseases may be altered in unanticipated ways by changes in the structure and composition of ecological communities. Predicting the epidemiological ramifications of such alteration in community composition will require strengthening the current union between community ecology and epidemiology.
Why are some kinds of organism species-rich and others species-poor? How do new species arise and why do some go extinct? Why do organisms grow and behave the way they do? This book provides an introduction to evolutionary ecology, the science that brings ecology and evolution together to help understand biological diversity. In a concise, readable format, Peter Mayhew covers the entire breadth of the subject, from life histories and the evolution of sex, to speciation and macroecology. Many emerging fields are also introduced, such as metabolic ecology, the evolution of population dynamics, and the evolution of global ecology. Discovering Evolutionary Ecology highlights the connections between these different subject areas, and for the first time paints a picture of a truly integrated field. It illustrates the research tools utilized, and demonstrates how advances in one area can spur on developments elsewhere when scientists combine evolutionary and ecological knowledge. To maximize accessibility, the book assumes only a basic knowledge of biology, includes a comprehensive glossary, and contains almost no maths. Each chapter provides suggestions for further reading, and there is also an extensive reference list. Ideal as an introduction to evolutionary ecology for undergraduates, this book will also interest established researchers, providing a broad and up-to-date context for their work. |
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