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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Zoology & animal sciences > Vertebrates > Mammals
This volume brings together more than a decade of information collected in the field and lab on the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a northeast African mammal unique for its physical characteristics and eusociality. Nearly blind and virtually hairless, naked mole-rats inhabit large subterranean colonies in which only one female and her one to three mates conceive offspring, while the young from previous litters maintain and defend the group as do workers in colonies of the social insects. In this first major treatise on naked mole-rats an international group of researchers covers such topics as the evolution of eusociality, phylogeny and systematics of the rodent family Bathyergidae, population and behavioral ecology and genetics of naked mole-rats in the field, vocal and nonvocal behaviors, social organization and divisions of labor within colonies, and climatic, social, and physiological factors affecting growth, reproduction, and reproductive suppression. In addition to the editors, the contributors are D. H. Abbott, M. W. Allard, N. C. Bennett, R. A. Brett, S. H. Braude, B. Crespi, S. V. Edwards, C. G. Faulkes, L. M. George, R. L. Honeycutt, E. A. Lacey, C. E. Liddell, E. McDaid, K. Nelson, K. M. Noonan, J. O'Riain, J. W. Pepper, H. K. Reeve, and D. A. Schlitter. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This volume brings together more than a decade of information collected in the field and lab on the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a northeast African mammal unique for its physical characteristics and eusociality. Nearly blind and virtually hairless, naked mole-rats inhabit large subterranean colonies in which only one female and her one to three mates conceive offspring, while the young from previous litters maintain and defend the group as do workers in colonies of the social insects. In this first major treatise on naked mole-rats an international group of researchers covers such topics as the evolution of eusociality, phylogeny and systematics of the rodent family Bathyergidae, population and behavioral ecology and genetics of naked mole-rats in the field, vocal and nonvocal behaviors, social organization and divisions of labor within colonies, and climatic, social, and physiological factors affecting growth, reproduction, and reproductive suppression. In addition to the editors, the contributors are D. H. Abbott, M. W. Allard, N. C. Bennett, R. A. Brett, S. H. Braude, B. Crespi, S. V. Edwards, C. G. Faulkes, L. M. George, R. L. Honeycutt, E. A. Lacey, C. E. Liddell, E. McDaid, K. Nelson, K. M. Noonan, J. O'Riain, J. W. Pepper, H. K. Reeve, and D. A. Schlitter. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Spontaneous Pathology of the Laboratory Non-human Primate serves as a "go to" resource for all pathologists working on primates in safety assessment studies. In addition, it helps diagnostic veterinary pathologists rule out spontaneous non-clinical disease pathologies when assigning cause of death to species in zoological collections. Primate species included are rhesus, cynomolgus macaques and marmosets. Multi-authored chapters are arranged by organ system, thus providing the necessary information for continued research. Pathologists often face a lack of suitable reference materials or historical data to determine if pathologic changes they are observing in monkeys are spontaneous or a consequence of other treatments or factors.
In a tale that begins at a zoo in Zurich and takes us across the deserts of Ethiopia to the Asir Mountains in Saudi Arabia, Hans Kummer recreates the adventure and intellectual thrill of the early days of field research on primates. Just as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey introduced readers to the fascinating lives of chimpanzees and gorillas, Kummer brings us face to face with the Hamadryas baboon. With their furry white mantles and gleaming red hindquarters, the Hamadryas appear frequently in the art of the ancient Egyptians--who may have interpreted the baboons' early morning grooming rituals as sun-worshiping rites. Back then, Hamadryas were thought to be incarnates of Thoth, the god of wisdom; today they are considered to have one of the most highly structured social systems among primates, very close, in some respects, to that of humans. In the 1960s, Kummer, after conflicts with nomadic warriors, managed to track down these elusive baboons near the Danakil Desert, and then followed them from dawn to dusk on their treks from one feeding place to another. His scientific account of this period reads like a travel memoir as he describes his encounters with the Hamadryas and the people with whom they share the desert. Winding his way through cliffs and stubble, Kummer records the baboons' social life, from the development of pair relationships to the way an entire group decides where to march each day. Much like the human nomads who cope with the harsh demands of the desert environment, the Hamadryas maintain a society that is strict and patriarchal in its details but multilayered and flexible in its largest units. We learn, for example, of the Hamadryas' respect for possession that protects family structure and of the cohesion among family leaders that lessens the threat of battle. At the same time, clear-cut personalities emerge from Kummer's account, drawing us into the life stories and power struggles of individual baboons. Whereas this rich detail holds many implications for natural scientists, the colorful way it comes to life makes for a compelling book bound to entertain and educate all readers. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
For a wide spectrum of scientists from biomedical and dental researchers to primatologists and physical anthropologists, Emet Schneiderman offers the most accurate and up-to-date presentation of the normal growth of the lower facial skeleton in a primate species. His study is based on a sample of thirty-five captive rhesus monkeys, whose facial growth was traced over a ten-year period spanning from infancy to adulthood. The author identifies the relative contribution of various sites of growth, quantifies the relative roles of different types of development--such as appositional and condylar--and sheds light on several long-standing controversies as to how the primate face grows. Unlike many of the traditional cephalometric measurements, the ones included in this work were chosen to reflect the positional, dimensional, and localized remodeling changes that occur during ontogeny. Using a new statistical approach designed for longitudinal data, Schneiderman avoids the misleading information that has often resulted from older, cross-sectional statistical methods. This book serves as a foundation for future experimental and normal studies in the rhesus monkey and, from a methodological standpoint, as a general model for future longitudinal growth studies. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This is the only field guide to provide comprehensive coverage of the mammals of Central America and Southeast Mexico. This edition features 21 new species accounts, including nine for bats. Four new full-color maps show parks and protected areas, biomes, elevations, and habitat loss. From Funnel-eared Bats and Spider Monkeys to Climbing Rats and Pocket Mice, Anteaters and Sloths to Sperm Whales and Ocean Dolphins, the guide fully describes every known regional species. Over 150 range maps have been updated along with present conservation status and habitat information. The new book features descriptions and measurements, where and when each species might be found, what type of nests or dens it uses, feeding habits, and reproductive cycles. Highlights include the 49 (previously 48) vibrant full-color animal illustrations, most painted directly from live subjects. Tracks and feet appear on facing-pages. A glossary and updated bibliography round out the usefulness of this indispensable guide.
Biological anthropology is a diverse field, with countless research methods and techniques in different sub-disciplines. This book takes a critical perspective to the current state of the field, exploring theory and practice in paleoanthropology, bioarchaeology, and ecology. Contributors challenge how evidence is discovered, collected and interpreted, and explain that researchers gain insights by de-familiarizing themselves from well-known methods and taking a different perspective - 'making the familiar strange'. The book covers how researchers' biases and assumptions affect the interpretation of topics such as human evolution and population movements; race, health, and disability; bodies and embodiment; and landscapes and ecology. A final chapter includes a critical assessment of new thinking about technology, in addition to the multilayered and complex nature of both research questions and evidence. This is an insightful text for researchers and graduate students in anthropology, biology, ecology, history and philosophy of science.
There is little doubt that the vertebrate brain is the most complex structure we know. As with any complex structure, there is the immediate question about its origins. How could such a complex design develop from the simplest multicellular animals? This problem has pervaded the study of evolutionary biology since its beginnings. Although Darwin (1859, 1871) proposed an impecable mechanism (natural selection) for the gradual transformation of species including human origins, even he sometimes expressed certain doubts about the origin of highly complex structures. This issue has been highly debated both within science and outside it. The authors follow an approach that has been termed "developmental evolutionary genetics," which seeks to establish a correspondence between embryological processes and the phylogenetic history of an organism. Modern understanding of these hypotheses acknowledges that in fact, early embryos are readily distinguishable among them, and that human embryos are human embryos during all development; they do not pass from a jellyfish stage to a fish stage and so on (Garstang 1922; Gould 1977; Richardson et al. 1997). However, it is also recognized that embryos pass through successive stages in which they acquire the characters proper to each of the nested phylogenetic categories to which they belong. Thus, there is a general concordance between embryonic stages and the phylogenetic history.
For a wide spectrum of scientists from biomedical and dental researchers to primatologists and physical anthropologists, Emet Schneiderman offers the most accurate and up-to-date presentation of the normal growth of the lower facial skeleton in a primate species. His study is based on a sample of thirty-five captive rhesus monkeys, whose facial growth was traced over a ten-year period spanning from infancy to adulthood. The author identifies the relative contribution of various sites of growth, quantifies the relative roles of different types of development--such as appositional and condylar--and sheds light on several long-standing controversies as to how the primate face grows. Unlike many of the traditional cephalometric measurements, the ones included in this work were chosen to reflect the positional, dimensional, and localized remodeling changes that occur during ontogeny. Using a new statistical approach designed for longitudinal data, Schneiderman avoids the misleading information that has often resulted from older, cross-sectional statistical methods. This book serves as a foundation for future experimental and normal studies in the rhesus monkey and, from a methodological standpoint, as a general model for future longitudinal growth studies. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, are familiar enough--bright and ornery and promiscuous. But they also kill and eat their kin, in this case the red colobus monkey, which may say something about primate--even hominid--evolution. This book, the first long-term field study of a predator-prey relationship involving two wild primates, documents a six-year investigation into how the risk of predation molds primate society. Taking us to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a place made famous by Jane Goodall's studies, the book offers a close look at how predation by wild chimpanzees--observable in the park as nowhere else--has influenced the behavior, ecology, and demography of a population of red colobus monkeys. As he explores the effects of chimpanzees' hunting, Craig Stanford also asks why these creatures prey on the red colobus. Because chimpanzees are often used as models of how early humans may have lived, Stanford's findings offer insight into the possible role of early hominids as predators, a little understood aspect of human evolution. The first book-length study in a newly emerging genre of primate field study, "Chimpanzee and Red Colobus "expands our understanding of not just these two primate societies, but also the evolutionary ecology of predators and prey in general.
This volume is the first scholarly book on the antelope that dominate the savanna ecosystems of eastern and southern Africa. It presents a synthesis of research conducted over a span of fifty years, mainly on the wildebeests in the Ngorongoro and Serengeti ecosystems, where eighty percent of the world's total wildebeest population lives. Wildebeest and other grazing mammals drive the ecology and evolution of the savanna ecosystem. Estes describes this process as well as detailing the wildebeest's life history, focusing on its social organization and unique reproductive system, which are adapted to the animal's epic annual migrations. He also examines conservation issues that affect wildebeest, including range-wide population declines.
The Fourth Edition of Knobil & Neill will continue to serve
as a reference aid for research, to provide the historical context
to current research, and most importantly as an aid for graduate
teaching on a broad range of topics in human and comparative
reproduction. In the decade since the publication of the last
edition, the study of reproductive physiology has undergone
monumental changes. Chief among these advances are in the areas of
stem cell development, signaling pathways, the role of inflammation
in the regulatory processes in the various tissues, and the
integration of new animal models which have led to a greater
understanding of human disease. This new edition will seek to
synthesize all of this new information at the molecular, cellular,
and organismal levels of organization and present modern physiology
a more understandable and comparative context.
The evolution of high-crowned teeth, hypsodonty, is a defining characteristic of many terrestrial herbivores. To date, the most prominent focus in the study of the teeth of grazing herbivores has been co-evolution with grasses and grasslands. This book develops the idea further and looks at the myriad ways that soil can enter the diet. Madden then expands this analysis to examine the earth surface processes that mobilize sediment in the environment. The text delivers a global perspective on tooth wear and soil erosion, with examples from the islands of New Zealand to the South American Andes, highlighting how similar geological processes worldwide result in convergent evolution. The final chapter includes a review of elodonty in the fossil record and its environmental consequences. Offering new insights into geomorphology and adaptive and evolutionary morphology, this text will be of value to any researcher interested in the evolution of tooth size and shape.
Conflict between males and females over reproduction is ubiquitous in nature due to fundamental differences between the sexes in reproductive rates and investment in offspring. In only a few species, however, do males strategically employ violence to control female sexuality. Why are so many of these primates? Why are females routinely abused in some species, but never in others? And can the study of such unpleasant behavior by our closest relatives help us to understand the evolution of men s violence against women? In the first systematic attempt to assess and understand primate male aggression as an expression of sexual conflict, the contributors to this volume consider coercion in direct and indirect forms: direct, in overcoming female resistance to mating; indirect, in decreasing the chance the female will mate with other males. The book presents extensive field research and analysis to evaluate the form of sexual coercion in a range of species including all of the great apes and humans and to clarify its role in shaping social relationships among males, among females, and between the sexes.
A fascinating natural history of an incredibly curious substance. "Preternaturally hardened whale dung" is not the first image that comes to mind when we think of perfume, otherwise a symbol of glamour and allure. But the key ingredient that makes the sophisticated scent linger on the skin is precisely this bizarre digestive by-product-ambergris. Despite being one of the world's most expensive substances (its value is nearly that of gold and has at times in history been triple it), ambergris is also one of the world's least known. But with this unusual and highly alluring book, Christopher Kemp promises to change that by uncovering the unique history of ambergris. A rare secretion produced only by sperm whales, which have a fondness for squid but an inability to digest their beaks, ambergris is expelled at sea and floats on ocean currents for years, slowly transforming, before it sometimes washes ashore looking like a nondescript waxy pebble. It can appear almost anywhere but is found so rarely, it might as well appear nowhere. Kemp's journey begins with an encounter on a New Zealand beach with a giant lump of faux ambergris-determined after much excitement to nothing more exotic than lard-that inspires a comprehensive quest to seek out ambergris and its story. He takes us from the wild, rocky New Zealand coastline to Stewart Island, a remote, windswept island in the southern seas, to Boston and Cape Cod, and back again. Along the way, he tracks down the secretive collectors and traders who populate the clandestine modern-day ambergris trade. Floating Gold is an entertaining and lively history that covers not only these precious gray lumps and those who covet them, but presents a highly informative account of the natural history of whales, squid, ocean ecology, and even a history of the perfume industry. Kemp's obsessive curiosity is infectious, and eager readers will feel as though they have stumbled upon a precious bounty of this intriguing substance.
What parent hasn't wondered "What do I do now?" as a baby cries or a teenager glares? Making babies may come naturally, but knowing how to raise them doesn't. As primatologist-turned-psychologist Harriet J. Smith shows in this lively safari through the world of primates, parenting by primates isn't instinctive, and that's just as true for monkeys and apes as it is for humans. In this natural history of primate parenting, Smith compares parenting by nonhuman and human primates. In a narrative rich with vivid anecdotes derived from interviews with primatologists, from her own experience breeding cotton-top tamarin monkeys for over thirty years, and from her clinical psychology practice, Smith describes the thousand and one ways that primate mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, and even babysitters care for their offspring, from infancy through young adulthood. Smith learned the hard way that hand-raised cotton-top tamarins often mature into incompetent parents. Her observation of inadequate parenting by cotton-tops plus her clinical work with troubled human families sparked her interest in the process of how primates become "good-enough" parents. The story of how she trained her tamarins to become adequate parents lays the foundation for discussions about the crucial role of early experience on parenting in primates, and how certain types of experiences, such as anxiety and social isolation, can trigger neglectful or abusive parenting. Smith reveals diverse strategies for parenting by primates, but she also identifies parenting behaviors crucial to the survival and development of primate youngsters that have stood the test of time.
For centuries whales have captured our imaginations and ignited our emotions. We have revered and mythologised them, hunted them to the brink of extinction and passionately protected them. But how much do we really know about whales? Based on the hugely popular, internationally touring exhibition Whales Tohora (a.k.a. Whales: Giants of the Deep), this all-new book brings these majestic marine mammals and their underwater world to life, with a special focus on the whales and dolphins of the South Pacific. From the first richly illustrated, entertaining chapter, readers are immersed in the salty sea, the home of the whales, to explore their amazing diversity, biology and adaption to life in the oceans. Throughout the book, literally hundreds of breath-taking photographs, historical pictures, astonishing facts and figures and informative illustrations and diagrams bring the whale world to life. Here, too, are stories from people whose lives have been inextricably linked with whales - from legendary South Pacific whale riders to international whale scientists to conservationists to former whalers and their families.Powerfully, Whales Tohora combines storytelling, science, and culture to tell the story of the relationship between the humans and these fascinating creatures throughout history and into the future. |
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