The work summarizes the current knowledge regarding the controlled reproduction of an emerging aquaculture species, the Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis). In great detail it describes and explains the principal of most of the controlled reproductive protocol leading to obtain high quality larvae. The book is primarily intended to be used as a hatchery manual by practicing aquaculturists and laboratory technicians working with this species. On the other hand, it also summarizes the scientific background of the methods applied, therefore, it can serve as a reference for the state-of-the-art in the controlled reproduction of Eurasian perch and other freshwater percid species.

This detailed volume presents a wide range of techniques that go beyond the standard assays typically used to assess Myogenesis. The content included addresses assays to analyze skeletal muscle gene expression, proliferating muscle cells, the process of myoblast fusion, muscle development (in vivo), as well as muscle repair. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and practical, Skeletal Muscle Development serves as an ideal guide to the study of this highly complex yet carefully regulated process.>

This volume offers a comprehensive history of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory (MDIBL), one of the major marine laboratories in the United States and a leader in using marine organisms to study fundamental physiological concepts. Beginning with its founding as the Harpswell Laboratory of Tufts University in 1898, David H. Evans follows its evolution from a teaching facility to a research center for distinguished renal and epithelial physiologists. He also describes how it became the site of major advances in cytokinesis, regeneration, cardiac and vascular physiology, hepatic physiology, endocrinology and toxicology, as well as studies of the comparative physiology of marine organisms. Fundamental physiological concepts in the context of the discoveries made at the MDIBL are explained and the social and administrative history of this renowned facility is described.

This volume examines fish sounds that have a proven signal function, as well as sounds assumed to have evolved for communication purposes. It provides an overview of the mechanisms, evolution and neurobiology behind sound production in fishes, and discusses the role of fish sounds in behavior with a special focus on choice of mate, sex-specific and age-specific signaling. Furthermore, it highlights the ontogenetic development of sound communication and ecoacoustical conditions in fish habitats and the influence of hormones on vocal production and sound detection. Sound Communication in Fishes offers a must-have compendium for lecturers, researchers and students working in the fields of animal communication, fish biology, neurobiology and animal behavior.

The emphasis in this volume is on the structure and functional design of the integument. The book starts with a brief introduction to some basic principles of physics (mechanics) including Newton’s Three Laws of Motion. These principles are subsequently used to interpret the problems animals encounter in motion. It is in only the last 40 or so years that we have begun to understand how important a role the integument plays in the locomotion of many marine vertebrates.  This involves the crossed-fiber architecture, which was first discovered in a classic study on nemertean worms. As a design principle we see that the crossed-fiber architecture is ubiquitous in nature. Research on some of the most dynamic marine vertebrates of the oceans – tuna, dolphins and sharks, and the extinct Jurassic ichthyosaurs – shows precisely how the crossed-fiber architecture contributes to high-speed swimming  and (in lamnid sharks) may even aid in energy conservation.  However, this design principle is not restricted to animals in the marine biota but is also found as far afield as the dinosaurs and, most recently, has been revealed as a major part of the microstructure of the most complex derivative of the integument, the feather. We see that a variety of phylogenetically diverse vertebrates take to the air by using skin flaps to glide from tree to tree or to the ground, and present detailed descriptions of innovations developed in pursuit of improved gliding capabilities in both extinct and modern day gliders. But the vertebrate integument had even greater things in store, namely true or flapping flight. Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to use the integument as a membrane in true flapping flight and these interesting extinct animals are discussed on the basis of past and cutting-edge research , most intriguingly with respect to the structure of the flight membrane. Bats, the only mammals that fly, also employ integumental flight membranes. Classic research on bat flight is reviewed and supplemented with the latest research, which shows the complexities of the wing beat cycle to be significantly different from that of birds, as revealed by particle image velocimetry. The book’s largest chapter is devoted to birds, given that they make up nearly half of the over 22,000 species of tetrapods. The flight apparatus of birds is unique in nature and is described in great detail, with innovative research highlighting the complexity of the flight structures, bird flight patterns, and behavior in a variety of species. This is complimented by new research on the brains of birds, which shows that they are more complex than previously thought. The feather made bird flight possible, and was itself made possible by β-keratin, contributing to what may be a unique biomechanical microstructure in nature, a topic discussed in some depth. A highly polarized subject concerns the origin of birds and of the feather. Alleged fossilized protofeathers (primal simple feathers) are considered on the basis of histological and taphonomic investigative studies in Chapter 6. Finally, in Chapter 7 we discuss the controversies associated with this field of research. Professor Theagarten Lingham-Soliar works at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth and is an Honorary Professor of Life Sciences at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The book "Parasitic Zoonoses" emphasizes a veterinary and public health perspective of zoonotic parasites. This book is suitable for higher undergraduate and graduate students of zoonoses and public health, veterinary parasitology, parasite epidemiology; public health workers; public health veterinarians; field veterinarians, medical professionals and all others interested in the subject. More than 15 protozoa and 50 other parasitic diseases are zoonotic in nature and all these diseases have been discussed in detail. The first chapter is concerned with classification of zoonotic parasites, food borne, vector borne and occupation related zoonotic parasites. The remaining chapters cover etiology, epidemiology, life cycle, transmission, clinical signs, diagnosis, prevention and control of zoonotic parasites. The text is illustrated with a large number of coloured figures. An alphabetical bibliography for every disease has also been included so that readers have access to further information.

Assembles a collection of experts to provide a current account of different approaches (e.g., traditional, comparative and experimental) being applied to study mobility. Moreover, the book aims to stimulate new theoretical perspectives that adopt a holistic view of the interaction among intrinsic (i.e. skeletal) and extrinsic (i.e. environmental) factors that influence differential expression of mobility. Since the environment undoubtedly impacts mobility of a wide variety of animals, insights into human mobility, as a concept, can be improved by extending approaches to investigating comparable environmental influences on mobility in animals in general. The book teases apart environmental effects that transcend typical categories (e.g., coastal versus inland, mountainous versus level, arboreal versus terrestrial). Such an approach, when coupled with a new emphasis on mobility as types of activities rather than activity levels, offers a fresh, insightful perspective on mobility and how it might affect the musculoskeletal system.

This book addresses the impacts of current and future reproductive technologies on our world food production and provides a significant contribution to the importance of research in the area of reproductive physiology that has never been compiled before. It would provide a unique opportunity to separate the impacts of how reproductive technologies have affected different species and their contributions to food production. Lastly, no publication has been compiled that demonstrates the relationship between developments in reproductive management tools and food production that may be used a reference for scientists in addressing future research areas. During the past 50 years assisted reproductive technologies have been developed and refined to increase the number and quality of offspring from genetically superior farm animal livestock species. Artificial insemination (AI), estrous synchronization and fixed-time AI, semen and embryo cryopreservation, multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET), in vitro fertilization, sex determination of sperm or embryos, and nuclear transfer are technologies that are used to enhance the production efficiency of livestock species.

This book discusses oxidative stress and hormesis from the perspective of an evolutionary ecologist or physiologist. In the first of ten chapters, general historical information, definitions, and background of research on oxidative stress physiology, hormesis, and life history are provided. Chapters 2-10 highlight the different solutions that organisms have evolved to cope with the oxidative threats posed by their environments and lifestyles. The author illustrates how oxidative stress and hormesis have shaped diversity in organism life-histories, behavioral profiles, morphological phenotypes, and aging mechanisms. The book offers fascinating insights into how organisms work and how they evolve to sustain their physiological functions under a vast array of environmental conditions.

This new volume provides a concise overview of the most basic and exciting chapters of comparative medicine with regards to physiology and function in healthy individuals. The book includes core concepts in anatomy and physiology in human and animal models, which are key to understanding comparative medicine and to making contributions to research in this area. While writing this book, the authors were in constant interdisciplinary dialogue. They aim to contribute to improvements in quality of life for human and animal patients.

Channels and transporters are multi-functional proteins that mediate substrate transport and signal transmission and simultaneously act as regulators for other proteins and biosensors for environmental materials. Patch clamping is an epoch-making technique that allows researchers to perform real-time measurements of electrogenic channel/transporter functions at the single/multiple molecular level. This book describes not only the conventional patch clamp techniques but also their newly developed variations or applications, such as perforated patch, slice patch, blind patch, in vivo patch, imaging patch, smart patch, and automated patch clamping. These patch clamp techniques are now essential and are extensively used across the life sciences and in related industries. With plain and practical descriptions of patch clamping and how to carry it out, especially for beginners, the book also shows how widely and exquisitely the patch clamp techniques can be applied by expert electrophysiologists. This work serves as a useful guide for young researchers and students in training and laboratory courses as well as for senior researchers who wish to extend their repertoire of techniques.

Darwinian medicine looks at the ecological and evolutionary roots of disease. A disease is an interaction between a genome and its biotic or abiotic environment and therefore a disease is essentially an ecological process. Good understanding of ecology and a Darwinian way of thinking can give us novel and useful perspectives on health and disease. If we understand the disease process better, we can certainly prevent, control as well as treat diseases in a better way. Although the thought that the origins of obesity and type 2 diabetes (T2D) might lie in our hunter gatherer adaptations is not new, research over the last decade makes us rethink many of the classical concepts. Brain and behavior is increasingly being recognized as central to all the endocrine, metabolic and immunological changes that earmark type 2 diabetes and other metabolic syndrome disorders. A major change in paradigm appears to be on the horizon and the proposed book intends to speed up the paradigm shift by raising important questions, pointing out flaws and inadequacies in the prevalent paradigm and stimulating radical rethinking which would redirect and refine the line of research as well as bring some fundamental changes in drug discovery and clinical practice.

The Micro-Tomographic Atlas of the Mouse Skeleton provides a unique systematic description of all calcified components of the mouse. It includes about 200 high resolution, two and three dimensional m CT images of the exterior and interiors of all bones and joints. In addition, the spatial relationship of bones within complex skeletal units is also described. The images are accompanied by detailed explanatory text, thus highlighting special features and newly reported structures. The Atlas fulfils an emerging need for a comprehensive reference to assist both trained and in-training researchers.

The study of animal communication has led to significant progress in our general understanding of motor and sensory systems, evolution, and speciation. However, one often neglected aspect is that signal exchange in every modality is constrained by noise, be it in the transmission channel or in the nervous system. This book analyses whether and how animals can cope with such constraints, and explores the implications that noise has for our understanding of animal communication. It is written by leading biologists working on different taxa including insects, fish, amphibians, lizards, birds, and mammals. In addition to this broad taxonomic approach, the chapters also cover a wide array of research disciplines: from the mechanisms of signal production and perception, to the behavioural ecology of signalling, the evolution of animal communication, and conservation issues. This volume promotes the integration of the knowledge gained by the diverse approaches to the study of animal communication and, at the same time, highlights particularly interesting fields of current and future research.

A history of the agricultural sciences in Nazi Germany is presented in this book. The book analyzes scientific practice under the Nazi regime, Nazi agricultural policy and autarkic strategies, and the expansion policy in Eastern Europe. It offers new insights into the Auschwitz concentration camp and new perspectives on the cooperation between German elite scientists and the Nazi regime. The book goes on to dismiss the assumption that "Arian physics" were typical for Nazi Germany.

This book summarizes the key adaptations enabling extremophile fishes to survive under harsh environmental conditions. It reviews the most recent research on acidic, Antarctic, cave, desert, hypersaline, hypoxic, temporary, and fast-flowing habitats, as well as naturally and anthropogenically toxic waters, while pointing out generalities that are evident across different study systems. Knowledge of the different adaptations that allow fish to cope with stressful environmental conditions furthers our understanding of basic physiological, ecological, and evolutionary principles. In several cases, evidence is provided for how the adaptation to extreme environments promotes the emergence of new species. Furthermore, a link is made to conservation biology, and how human activities have exacerbated existing extreme environments and created new ones. The book concludes with a discussion of major open questions in our understanding of the ecology and evolution of life in extreme environments.

This book offers a new explanation for the development of flight in mammals and offers detailed morphological descriptions of mammals with flapping flight. The skeletomuscular apparatus of the shoulder girdle and forelimbs of tree shrews, flying lemurs and bats is described in detail. Special attention is paid to the recognition of peculiar features of the skeleton and joints. For the basic locomotor patterns of flying lemurs and bats, the kinematic models of the shoulder girdle elements are developed. The most important locomotor postures of these animals are analyzed by means of statics. The key structural characters of the shoulder girdle and forelimbs of flying lemurs and bats, the formation of which provided transition of mammals from terrestrial locomotion to gliding and then, to flapping flight, are recognized. The concept is proposed that preadaptations preceding the acquisition of flapping flight could have come from widely sprawled forelimb posture while gliding from tree to tree and running up the thick trunks. It is shown that flying lemur is an adequate morphofunctional model for an ancestral stage of bats. The evolutionary ecomorphological scenario describing probable transformational stages of typical parasagittal limbs of chiropteran ancestors into wings is developed.

This authoritative volume explores advances in the techniques used to measure percutaneous penetration of drugs and chemicals to assess bioavailability and bioequivalence and discusses how they have been used in clinical and scientific investigations. Seven comprehensive sections examine topics including in vitro drug release, topical drugs products, clinical studies, and guidelines and workshop reports, among others. The book also describes how targeted transdermal drug delivery and more sophisticated mathematical modelling can aid in understanding the bioavailability of transdermal drugs. The first edition of this book was an important reference guide for researchers working to define the effectiveness and safety of drugs and chemicals that penetrated the skin. This second edition contains cutting-edge advances in the field and is a key resource to those seeking to define the bioavailability and bioequivalence of percutaneously active compounds to improve scientific and clinical investigation and regulation.

This book covers advances made since the 2004 Springer volume "Polarized Light in Animal Vision" edited by Horvath and Varju, but also provides reviews and synopses of some areas. Part I examines polarization sensitivity across many animal taxa including vertebrates and invertebrates and details both terrestrial and aquatic life. Part II is devoted to the description of polarized light in nature and explores how the physics of light must be taken into account when understanding how polarized light is detected by the visual system. This includes underwater polarization due to scattering; polarization patterns reflected from freshwater bodies; polarization characteristics of forest canopies; normal and anomalous polarization patterns of the skies; skylight polarization transmitted through Snell's window and both linearly and circularly polarized signals produced by terrestrial and aquatic animals. This Part also examines polarized "light pollution" induced by anthropogenic factors such as reflection off asphalt surfaces, glass panes, car bodies, and other man-made structures that are now known to form ecological traps for polarotactic insects. Part III surveys some of the practical applications of polarization vision including polarization-based traps for biting insects, ground-based polarimetric cloud detectors and an historical examination of the navigational abilities of Viking seafarers using the sky polarization compass. The deterrent qualities of ungulate pelage to polarization-sensitive biting insects is also examined in this section.

Every coordination within or between animals depends on communication processes. Although the signaling molecules, vocal and tactile signs, gestures and its combinations differ throughout all species according their evolutionary origins and variety of adaptation processes, certain levels of biocommunication can be found in all animal species:  (a) Abiotic environmental indices such as temperature, light, water, etc. that affect the local ecosphere of an organism and are sensed, interpreted. (b) Trans-specific communication with non-related organisms. (c) Species-specific communication between same or related species. (d) Intraorganismic communication, i.e., sign-mediated coordination within the body of the organism. This book gives an overview of the manifold levels of animal communication exemplified by a variety of species and thereby broadens the understanding of these organisms.

Entomology as a science of inter-depended branches like molecular entomology, insect biotechnology, has made rapid progress. This also implies that there is an urgent need to manage the available resources. In the past five decades, entomology has taken giant steps ahead. The aim of this work is to integrate perspectives across molecular and biochemistry, physiology, reproduction, developmental biology, molecular evolution, genetics and RNAi applications. This century is proclaimed as the Era of Biotechnology and it consists of all types of Mol-Bio-Gen applications, which is an essential component for a thorough understanding of the insect biology. The aim of this work is to provide the comprehensive review of recent research from various geographic areas around the world and contributing authors that are recognized experts in their respective field of Genomic entomology. This Volume emphasizes upon the need for and relevance of studying molecular aspects of entomology in Universities, Agricultural Universities and other centers of molecular research. It will also serve as a landmark source for Insect advance science technology.

E.F.F. Chladni's experiments and observations with sound and vibrations profoundly influenced the development of the field of Acoustics. The famous Chladni diagrams along with other observations are contained in Die Akustik, published in German in 1802 and Traite d'Acoustique, a greatly expanded version, published in French in 1809. This is the first comprehensive translation of the expanded French version of Traite d'Acoustique, using the 1802 German publication for reference and clarification. The translation was undertaken by Robert T. Beyer, PhD (1920-2008), noted acoustician, Professor of Physics at Brown University, and Gold Medal recipient of the Acoustical Society of America. Along with many other projects completed over the course of his career, Dr. Beyer translated Von Neumann's seminal work, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics from the original German, spent 30 years translating Russian physics treatises and journals, served as editor of the English translation of the Soviet Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, and also authored Sounds of our Times: Two Hundred Years of Acoustics.

This book summarizes recent advances in understanding of the mammalian and fish olfactory system and provides perspective on the translation of external odor information into appropriate motivational and behavioral responses. Following the discovery of the odorant receptor gene family in 1991, understanding of the basic biological mechanisms of the olfactory system has advanced enormously. Despite such rapid progress, however, it remains unclear how odor information is processed at levels beyond the olfactory bulb, including the olfactory cortex, olfactory tubercle, and orbitofrontal cortex. This book thus describes the most recent developments in olfactory research, with particular focus on the basic neurobiological mechanisms of the neuronal circuit function in the olfactory system and its related higher centers. Exploring the basic functional logic of the neuronal circuits in the olfactory system in this way appears to be crucial in understanding the workings of the complex neuronal circuits of the brain, particularly those in the cerebral cortex that link sensory perception to appropriate behavioral responses. This book is written for the coming generation of scientists: undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers in the fields of neuroscience, neurobiology, chemical senses, food and nutritional sciences, medical science, sensory psychology, and behavioral sciences.

The past decade has seen an exponential increase in our knowledge and understanding of adipose tissue biology. This has coincided with the continued rise in obesity across all generations. Clearly despite substantial advances in research into adipose tissue this still has had limited impact on the on-going obesity epidemic across a majority of countries in the world. This book brings together many leading experts in the field to provide an up to date and comprehensive review of the key aspects of adipose tissue. It therefore includes chapters on evolution, development and inflammation together with a detailed review of brown and beige adipose tissue biology and their potential significance in preventing or combating obesity. These chapters are complemented by those on genetics and gender influences, together with nutrition through the life cycle. Ultimately the book provides an overview of the complexities of adipose tissue biology and the continuing challenge to combat obesity in the 21st century.

The first book to highlight research done by women of color in the field of shark science. A special emphasis is placed on amplifying the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color as well as artisanal fishers and economically disadvantaged coastal communities. Accessible to younger readers too, encouraging school children to get into marine science. Covers a broad range of topics including biology, ecology and evolution as well as some less talked about topics like outreach and stakeholder engagement. Interdisciplinary approach to shark science and conservation Easily digestible content for non-experts Focuses on a charismatic group of animals, sharks Offers diverse perspectives and cutting-edge research while diving into issues regarding the decolonization of shark science and changing public perception of sharks. This is an opportunity to challenge the notion that there is only one type of scientist or that scientists look and think a certain way.