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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Invertebrates
This book compiles for the first time all the current information
on the electronic monitoring of the feeding behavior of
phytophagous true bugs. It includes state-of-the-art illustrations
of feeding sites on the various plant structures, and examines how
the different feeding strategies are related to the variable
waveforms generated using the electropenetrography (EPG) technique.
Further, the book describes the mouthparts and modes of feeding and
discusses the physical and chemical damage resulting from feeding
activities. Covering in detail all EPG studies developed and
conducted using true bugs published to date, it explores the use of
electronic monitoring of feeding coupled with histological analyses
to improve strategies to control true bugs, from traditional
chemical methods to gene silencing (RNAi).
'A funny and beautifully written welcome to the enigmatic, weird
and wonderful world of wasps' DAVE GOULSON, author of SILENT EARTH
There may be no insect with a worse reputation than the wasp, and
none guarding so many undiscovered wonders. Where bees and ants
have long been the darlings of the insect world, wasps are much
older, cleverer and more diverse. They are the bee's evolutionary
ancestors - flying 100 million years earlier - and today they are
just as essential for the survival of our environment. A bee,
ecologist Professor Seirian Sumner argues, is just a wasp that has
forgotten how to hunt. For readers of Entangled Life, Other Minds
and The Gospel of Eels, this is a book to upturn your expectations
about one overlooked animal and the wider architecture of our
natural world. With endless surprises, this book might teach you
about the wasps that spend their entire lives sealed inside a fig,
about stinging wasps, about parasitic wasps, about wasps that turn
cockroaches into living zombies, about how wasps taught us to make
paper. It offers up a maligned insect in all its diverse,
unexpected splendour; as both predator and pollinator, the wasp is
an essential pest controller worldwide. Inside their sophisticated
social worlds is the best model we have for the earth's major
evolutionary transitions. In their understudied biology are clues
to progressing medicine, including a possible cure for cancer. The
closer you look at these spurned, winged insects - both custodians
and bouncers of our planet - the more you see. Their secrets have
so far gone mostly untapped, but the potential of the wasp is
endless.
Offering an example for transnational cooperation and successful
reduction of a neglected tropical disease, this volume shows how
Chinese scientists and local physicians controlled schistosomiasis
in Zanzibar. Over a four-year study, local medical specialists and
the population of Zanzibar were taught how to diagnose the
parasitosis caused by flukes (trematode worms) of the genus
Schistosoma. Furthermore, methods to eliminate the disease and
prevent new infections were established. The developed control
system will avoid repeated increase of human schistosomiasis, which
is still prevalent in the tropics and subtropics. Rural populations
and poor communities lacking access to clean drinking water and
adequate sanitation are most affected. This book is a blueprint of
activities urgently needed to combat schistosomiasis in countries
with low medical impact. The strategies outlined are particularly
relevant to parasitologists and professionals in public health,
physicians, medical personnel and also governmental, healthcare and
pharmaceutical institutions.
It is widely acknowledged that life has adapted to its environment,
but the precise mechanism remains unknown since Natural Selection,
Descent with Modification and Survival of the Fittest are metaphors
that cannot be scientifically tested. In this unique text,
invertebrate and vertebrate biologists illuminate the effects of
physiologic stress on epigenetic responses in the process of
evolutionary adaptation from unicellular organisms to invertebrates
and vertebrates, respectively. This book offers a novel perspective
on the mechanisms underlying evolution. Capacities for morphologic
alterations and epigenetic adaptations subject to environmental
stresses are demonstrated in both unicellular and multicellular
organisms. Furthermore, the underlying cellular-molecular
mechanisms that mediate stress for adaptation will be elucidated
wherever possible. These include examples of 'reverse evolution' by
Professor Guex for Ammonites and for mammals by Professor Torday
and Dr. Miller. This provides empiric evidence that the
conventional way of thinking about evolution as unidirectional is
incorrect, leaving open the possibility that it is determined by
cell-cell interactions, not sexual selection and reproductive
strategy. Rather, the process of evolution can be productively
traced through the conservation of an identifiable set of First
Principles of Physiology that began with the unicellular form and
have been consistently maintained, as reflected by the return to
the unicellular state over the course of the life cycle.
Australia's varied grasslands have suffered massive losses and
changes since European settlement, and those changes continue under
increasingly intensive human pressures for development and
agricultural production. The values of native grasslands for
conservation of endemic native biodiversity, both flora and fauna,
have led to strong interests in the protection of remaining
fragments, especially near urban centres, and documentation of the
insects and other inhabitants of grasslands spanning tropical to
cool temperate parts of the country. Attention to conservation of
grassland insects in Australia is relatively recent, but it is
increasingly apparent that grasslands harbour many localised and
ecologically specialised endemic species. Their conservation
necessarily advances from very incomplete documentation, and draws
heavily on lessons from the far better-documented grasslands
elsewhere, most notably in the northern hemisphere, and undertaken
over far longer periods. From those cases, and the extensive
background to grassland management to harmonise conservation with
production and amenity values through honing use of processes such
as grazing, mowing and fire, the needs and priorities for Australia
can become clearer, together with needs for grassland restoration
at a variety of scales. This book is a broad overview of
conservation needs of grassland insects in Australia, drawing on
the background provided elsewhere in the world on the responses to
disturbances, and the ecological importance, of some key insect
groups (notably Orthoptera, Hemiptera and Lepidoptera) to suggest
how insect conservation in native, pastoral and urban grasslands
may be advanced. The substantial references given for each chapter
facilitate entry for non-entomologist grassland managers and
stewards to appreciate the diversity and importance of Australia's
grassland insects, their vulnerabilities to changes, and the
possibilities for conserving them and the wider ecological roles in
which they participate.
This book offers the first comprehensive review of parasitic
Crustacea, which are among the most successful and diverse
parasites. Starting with an introductory chapter, followed by an
historic overview and topic-specific chapters, each presenting a
different aspect of parasitic crustacean biology, it enables
readers to gain a better understanding of how these parasites
function and allows direct comparisons between the different
parasitic crustacean groups. The authors also discuss, in depth,
the adaptations and interactions that have made parasitic Crustacea
as successful as they are today, covering topics ranging from the
history of their discovery, their biodiversity, phylogeny,
evolution and life strategies to their role as vectors, or hosts of
other organisms, and their significance in ecological processes.
Consisting of ten chapters from leading international experts in
the field, this volume offers a one-stop resource for all
researchers, lecturers, students and practitioners.
The Evolution of Social Wasps resolves one of evolution's most
intriguing problems - the origin of insect sociality. It also
challenges conceptual approaches that have dominated three decades
of social behaviour research. Hunt's innovative model integrates
life history, nutrition, development and ecology. His broad
synthesis of empirical knowledge on social wasps should interest
evolution biologists, behavioural ecologists, or entomologists
alike.
Orin McMonigle, with contributions by the late Dr. Richard L.
Hoffman, assembles the definitive resource guide with reproductive
and developmental data for those spectacular terrestrial
arthropods, the millipeds (or millipedes). Invertebrate hobbyists
can successfully culture a number of colorful and gigantic
diplopods by following specific methodologies outlined in this
book. From the world's largest African giant millipeds to the most
astoundingly colorful members of the Orders Polydesmida and
Spirobolida, there are plenty of species to attract the beginning
enthusiast or to challenge the advanced keeper.
Advances in Insect Physiology, Volume 56, provides readers with the
latest interdisciplinary reviews on the topic. It is an essential
reference source for invertebrate physiologists, neurobiologists,
entomologists, zoologists, and insect chemists, with this new
release focusing on the Effects of resource limitation on the
strengths of tradeoffs in insect lifecycles, The circadian system
in insects: cellular, molecular, and functional organization,
Molecular Physiology of the Insect Midgut, The Cryptonephridic
system in Lepidoptera, Subsocial insects and the physiology of
parental care, Mechanisms regulating phenotypically plastic traits
in wing polymorphic insects, and more.
Of the 758 species of hard ticks (family Ixodidae) currently known
to science, 137 (18%) are found in the Neotropical Zoogeographic
Region, an area that extends from the eastern and western flanks of
the Mexican Plateau southward to southern Argentina and Chile and
that also includes the Greater and Lesser Antilles and the
Galapagos Islands. This vast and biotically rich region has long
attracted natural scientists, with the result that the literature
on Neotropical ticks, which are second only to mosquitoes as
vectors of human disease and are of paramount veterinary
importance, is enormous, diffuse, and often inaccessible to
non-specialists. In this book, three leading authorities on the
Ixodidae have combined their talents to produce a summary of
essential information for every Neotropical tick species. Under
each species name, readers will find an account of the original
taxonomic description and subsequent redescriptions, followed by an
overview of its geographic distribution and host relationships,
including a discussion of human parasitism. Additional sections
provide detailed analyses of tick distribution by country and
zoogeographic subregion (the Caribbean, southern Mexico and Central
America, South America, and the Galapagos Islands), together with a
review of the phenomenon of invasive tick species and examination
of the many valid and invalid names that have appeared in the
Neotropical tick literature. The text concludes with an
unprecedented tabulation of all known hosts of Neotropical
Ixodidae, including the tick life history stages collected from
each host. This book is an invaluable reference for biologists and
biomedical personnel seeking to familiarize themselves with the
Neotropical tick fauna.
The book reviews key developments in downy mildew research,
including the disease, its distribution, symptomatology, host
range, yield losses, and disease assessment; the pathogen, its
taxonomy, morphology, phylogeny, variability, sporulation, survival
and perpetuation, spore germination, infection, pathogenesis, seed
infection, disease cycle, epidemiology, forecasting, and fine
structures. The book also elaborates the mechanisms of host
resistance (biochemical, histological, genetic, and molecular,
including cloning and the mapping of R-genes), disease resistance
breeding strategies, and the genetics of host-parasite
interactions. It explores disease management based on cultural,
chemical, biological, host resistance, and integrated approaches;
and provides suggestions for future research areas. This book
offers a comprehensive guide to an economically important disease,
reviewing in detail the extant body of literature. Divided into 16
chapters, each of which includes a wealth of photographs, graphs,
histograms, tables, figures, flow charts, micrographs etc., it
represents an invaluable source of information for all researchers,
teachers, students, industrialists, farmers, policymakers, and all
others who are interested in growing healthy and profitable
cruciferous crops all over the world.
This book summarizes the recent advancements in identifying the
mosquito vectors and discusses various strategies for their
control. The book describes various molecular taxonomic methods,
including DNA barcoding and single nucleotide polymorphism-based
machine learning approach, which are used for the identification of
mosquito vectors. It also presents the various mosquito control
methods, namely, phytochemicals, Bacillus thuringiensis toxins,
nanotechnology, biological control agents, and environmental
management strategies. It also highlights the importance of various
repellents that are used for protection from different kinds of
mosquito vectors. Finally, the book offers a comprehensive yet
representative description of challenges associated with mosquito
vector-borne diseases. The book is a useful resource for medical
entomologists, health workers, and researchers working in
mosquito-control and vector-borne diseases.
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David Sharp
Paperback
R729
Discovery Miles 7 290
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