The 40 or so species of beach-loving plovers (genus Charadrius) comprise a diverse group of shorebirds found around the world. Most of these species are challenged by changing climates and other human-related development activities, yet they provide key insights into basic ecological and evolutionary processes. The expert international contributors take a comparative approach, presenting examples from many worldwide plover studies and synthesizing the group's most pressing and important topics. The book further presents an emphasis on full life-cycle biology, including the importance of examining migratory connectivity issues, even for non-migratory plovers. Color pages were planned and approved for some pages in this volume, but due to a printing error some copies have incorrectly been released with these pages printed in black and white. Replacement copies with the correct color in place can be obtained upon request by contacting [email protected]. CRC Press extends apologies to any customers affected by this error and for the inconvenience caused. Key Features Serves as a fundamental resource for conservation practitioners Detailed overview of a widely distributed group of shorebirds Authored by renowned specialists who present theoretical and applied perspectives Emphasis on comparative and synthetic approach in all chapters Related Titles McComb, B. et al. Monitoring Animal Populations and Their Habitats: A Practitioner's Guide (ISBN 978-0-4291-3827-0). Garvey, J. E. & M. R. Whiles. Trophic Ecology (ISBN 978-1-4987-5846-8). Dewdney, A. K. Stochastic Communities: A Mathematical Theory of Biodiversity (ISBN 978-1-1381-9702-2).

Southeast Asia is highly diversified in terms of socio-ecosystems and biodiversity, but is undergoing dramatic environmental and social changes. These changes characterize the recent period and can be illustrated by the effects of the Green Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s, to the globalization of trade and increasing agronomic intensification over the past decade. Biodiversity Conservation in Southeast Asia provides theoretical overviews and challenges for applied research in living resource management, conservation ecology, health ecology and conservation planning in Southeast Asia. Five key themes are addressed: origin and evolution of Southeast Asian biodiversity; challenges in conservation biology; ecosystem services and biodiversity; managing biodiversity and living resources; policy, economics and governance of biodiversity. Detailed case studies are included from Thailand and the Lower Mekong Basin, while other chapters address cross-cutting themes applicable to the whole Southeast Asia region. This is a valuable resource for academics and students in the areas of ecology, conservation, environmental policy and management, Southeast Asian studies and sustainable development.

The predators that can hunt, kill and eat us occupy a unique place in the human psyche. In this book, Adam Hart looks at our relationship with these animals from a conservation perspective. Whether it's lions in Africa, tigers in India or sharks in the world's oceans, we are fascinated by - and often terrified of - predators. Animals that can hunt, kill, and eat us occupy a unique place in the human psyche, and for good reason. Predation forms a big part of our evolutionary history, but in the modern world there are many people who live alongside animals that can, and sometimes do, make them prey. In The Deadly Balance, biologist Adam Hart explores the complex relationships we have with predators, and investigates what happens when humans become prey. From big cats to army ants, via snakes, bears, wolves, crocodiles, piranhas and more, Hart busts some myths and explores the science behind such encounters. Despite their fearsome and often wildly exaggerated reputations, these animals have far more to fear from us than we do from them. By probing the latest conservation science, Hart explores how we might both conserve the world's predators and live safely alongside them.

Our highly seasonal world restricts insect activity to brief portions of the year. This feature necessitates a sophisticated interpretation of seasonal changes and enactment of mechanisms for bringing development to a halt and then reinitiating it when the inimical season is past. The dormant state of diapause serves to bridge the unfavourable seasons, and its timing provides a powerful mechanism for synchronizing insect development. This book explores how seasonal signals are monitored and used by insects to enact specific molecular pathways that generate the diapause phenotype. The broad perspective offered here scales from the ecological to the molecular and thus provides a comprehensive view of this exciting and vibrant research field, offering insights on topics ranging from pest management, evolution, speciation, climate change and disease transmission, to human health, as well as analogies with other forms of invertebrate dormancy and mammalian hibernation.

This innovative book challenges the perceived view, based largely on long observation of artificially-fed chimpanzees in Gombe and Mahale National Parks, Tanzania, of the typical social behaviour of chimpanzees as aggressive, dominance seeking, and fiercely territorial. In polar opposition, all reports from naturalistic (non-feeding) field studies are of non-aggressive chimpanzees living peacefully in non-hierarchical groups, on home ranges open to all. These reports have been ignored and downgraded by most of the scientific community. By utilising the data from these studies the author is able to construct a model of an egalitarian form of social organisation, based on a fluid role relationship of mutual dependence between many charismatic chimpanzees of both sexes and other more dependent members. This highly and necessarily positive mutual dependence system is characteristic of both (undisturbed) chimpanzees and (undisturbed) humans who live by the 'immediate-return' foraging system.

The RSPB's Book of the Season The distinctive white-tailed sea eagle was driven to extinction in Britain more than 200 years ago, but this immense predator is making a return to our skies, thanks to Roy Dennis, an ornithologist, conservationist and arguably the driving force behind the UK's reintroduction agenda. Roy was instrumental in returning the Osprey, red kite and golden eagle to the British Isles, but the road to reintroduction isn't an easy one. In what will surely be the seminal book on British reintroductions, Roy details the painstaking process of returning the Goldeneye to Scotland, one duckling at a time, the die-hard determination needed to make a dazzling success of the red kite reintroduction and the leap of faith we will all need to make to accept sharing our forests and skies with large carnivores again. He also illustrates all that we have to gain by restoring our ecosystems to balance. Filled with a lifetime's worth of stories from the front lines of conservation, Reintroduction offers an eye-opening insight into the complexities of reintroducing extinct animals to Britain. It's also an intimate portrait of these apex predators and a reminder of why we need them.

Insect-Plant Interactions is a series devoted to reviews across the breadth of the topic from cellular mechanisms to ecology and evolution. Articles are selected from areas of particular current interest or subjects that would especially benefit from a new review. It is hoped that the interdisciplinary selection in each volume will help readers to enter new fields of insect-plant interactions.

The approach to psychology advocated by the radical behaviourists was often misunderstood and frequently gave rise to controversy. Originally published in 1974, this book introduced current research in operant conditioning and explains the attempt to understand behaviour inherent in such experiments at the time. After considering the philosophical context in which behaviouristic psychology developed, the author outlines the basic characteristics of operant research by reviewing single experiments on the effects of reinforcement on behaviour. Chapters on schedules of intermittent reinforcement extend this approach to more complex situations and emphasize that behaviour can be maintained and controlled in many different ways by environmental events. The author then discusses recent work on conditional reinforcement and on the discriminative control of behaviour and shows how operant research has changed our understanding of these important concepts in psychology. Subsequent chapters review research within the operant paradigm on the effects on behaviour of punishment, anxiety, aversive stimuli and drugs, again by emphasising the special contribution to these topics made by operant conditioning techniques and methodology. The final chapters consider the general implications of operant research for educational practice and for clinical psychology, and place this approach within the context of psychology as a whole. Dr Blackman argues that it should be recognized as one important attempt to further the scientific analysis of behaviour. This book, filled a long recognized need for an undergraduate text in this area at the time, and helped students form their own evaluation. Now it should be read in its historical context.

Echinoderms have evolved diverse and disparate morphologies throughout the Phanerozoic. Among them, blastozoans, an extinct group of echinoderms that were an important component of Paleozoic marine ecosystems, are primarily subdivided into groups based on the morphology of respiratory structures. However, systematic and phylogenetic research from the past few decades have shown that respiratory structures in blastozoans are not group-defining and they have re-evolved throughout echinoderm evolution. This Element provides a review of the research involving blastozoan respiratory structures, along with research concerning the morphology, paleoecology, and ontogeny of each of the major groupings of blastozoans as it relates to their corresponding respiratory structures. Areas of future research in these groups are also highlighted.

Of all Africa's wildlife, none has captured the imagination more than those species that have come over the years to be known as the big five. Whether the biggest, the most beautiful, the fiercest or most formidable, these animals are the ones that have the power to remind us of our insignificance in the face of the true kings of the savannas. This is a truly magnificent record of Africa's Big Five.

Volume 5 of "Insect-Plant Interactions" is a volume in a series that presents research in the field. Topics covered include chemical changes in plants as a result of insects feeding on their leaves, dynamic elements of the use and avoidance of host plants by tephritid flies as a result of the presence of other flies, floral volatiles in insect biology, endophytic fungi as mediators of plant insect interactions, the cost of chemical defence against herbivory, and life history traits on insect herbivores in relation to host quality. The book also presents the first available review on physicochemical conditions of the gut lumen from an ecological perspective.

Insect-Plant Interactions is a series devoted to reviews across the breadth of the topic from cellular mechanisms to ecology and evolution. Articles are selected from areas of particular current interest or subjects that would especially benefit from a new review. It is hoped that the interdisciplinary selection in each volume will help readers to enter new fields of insect-plant interactions.

These volumes present the main classes of useful laboratory model systems used to study microbial ecosystems, with emphasis on the practical details for the use of each model. The most commonly used model, the homogeneous fermenter, is featured along with linked homogeneous culture systems, film fermenters, and percolating columns. Additionally, gel-stabilized culture systems which incorporate molecular diffusion as their main solute transfer mechanism and the microbial colony are explained. Chapters comparing model systems with "microcosms" are included, along with discussions of the value of computer models in microbial ecosystem research. Highlighted is a global discussion of the value of laboratory models in microbial ecology.

The purposes of the present dictionary are to define the osteological and taxonomic terms referring to fishes, and to explain the rationale, both anatomical and function, of fish skeletal units, in an evolutionary and biological context. This branch of biology - fish osteology - provides a deeper insight into fish evolution, bone homologies, fish terminology, and fish taxonomy.

Principles of Animal Extrapolation addresses the conceptual basis for animal extrapolation and provides an abundance of documentation that illustrates how these principles may be applied in the selection of the more appropriate models and in the interpretation of toxicological studies. The book analyzes and documents each specific biological cause of interspecies differences in susceptibility to toxic agents, including differences in absorption, gut flora, tissue distribution, metabolism, mechanisms and efficiencies of repair, and excretion. The problem of the heterogenicity of the human population is addressed through several chapters that assess the availability and prospects of developing predictive animal models for normal humans, as well as selected potential high-risk groups. Other topics presented in this book include the biological basis of regulatory actions involving attempts to extrapolate from exceptionally high exposure levels to realistic values, especially carcinogens; an assessment of genotoxicity tests, their ability to predict carcinogenicity in whole animals, and the manner in which they should be used by regulatory agencies; birth defects; and predicting the risk of human teratogenesis. Principle of Animal Extrapolation is essential for environmental toxicologists. It also provides valuable information to biomedical scientists (especially those involved in drug development and testing) and regulatory personnel in agencies such as the EPA, the OSHA, the NIOSH, and the FDA.

This book is a concise informative elucidation of all aspects of reproduction and development in annelids covering from arenicola to tubifex. Annelids flourish between 4,900 m depth to 2,000 m altitude; some of them occur in unusual habitats like hydrothermal vents and subterranean aquatic system (stigobionts). A few have no gut and acquire adequate nutrients through osmotrophism and/or engaging symbiotic microbes. In the absence of exoskeleton to escape predation, the 17,000 speciose annelids have explored bewildering modes of reproduction; not surprisingly, 42-47% of them are brooders. With 13,000 species, polychaetes are gonochores but some 207 species of them are hermaphrodites. Clitellates are all hermaphrodites; of them, 76 species are parthenogens, of which 56 are earthworms. Regenerative potency of annelids ranges from an organ to an entire worm from a single 'seminal' segment. The head, tail and both together can be regenerated 21, 42 and 20 times, respectively. However, the potency is limited to ~1% of polychaetes and < 2% of oligochaetes. In oligochaetes, the chloragogue temporally separates regeneration and reproduction but sedentary polychaetes undertake them together at the reduced reproductive output. Only 79 polychaete and 111 oligochaete species have the potency for clonal reproduction. Within families, the potency ranges from 2% in spionids to 54% in naidids. Epitoky, a spectacular and unique phenomenon, involves the transformation from benthic to meroplanktonic reproductive morphism. It occurs in 106 errant polychaete species. The larger glycerides, nereidids and eunicids use muscular energy to climb < 50 m vertical distance. But the small phyllodocids and cteniodrilids may reduce buoyancy to climb 1,000-4,000 m vertical distance. Heterogamatic sex determination is reported to occur only in six polychaete species, although karyotype is known for 83 annelid species. In temperate polychaetes, a dozen neuroendocrines, arising mostly from the 'brain' regulates reproductive cycle. A complete chapter devoted to vermiculture, (i) recognizes the fast-growing candidate species, (ii) distinguishes 'layers' from 'brooders', (iii) indicates that the harvest of oligochaetes may reduce the input of nitrogenous fertilizer in the ricefield, and (iv) explores the scope for increasing wealth from waste.

A quick fish identification guide for divers and snorkellers in the Maldives and wider Indian Ocean region. A perfect guide to check on those mystery fishes seen during dives. Symbols highlight points of interest and differences between similar species. The Fish Field Guide Maldives is compact, easy to use and is designed to assist in field work and conservation initiatives. A companion guide to the book Fishes of the Maldives, Indian Ocean.

Feed represents the single greatest expense associated with bringing pigs to market weight. Therefore, if you can reduce the cost of feeding without detriment to pig performance, the economics of swine production will improve. The ingredient list for swine rations has become fairly limited, and the majority of diets fed to pigs consist of a few staples, such as corn, wheat, barley, and soybean meal. Non-Traditional Feeds for Use in Swine Production explores over fifty non-traditional feedstuffs in terms of their nutritional content and their viability as alternative, cost effective food sources

The Purpose of this book is to provide a helpful reference for invertebrate pathologist, virologists, and electron microscopists on invertebrate viruses. Investigators from around the world have shared their expertise in order introduce scientists to the exciting advances in invertebrate virology.

A one-of-a-kind book for researchers interested in finfish nutrition Handbook of Nutrient Requirements of Finfish provides a summary of qualitative and quantitative nutrient requirements for almost all cultured finfish for which a significant amount of nutritional information now exists. Information is presented by species and includes how each species is cultured, an index of production, regional locations where each species is being cultured, examples of purified or test diets and special conditions required for laboratory studies, nutrient requirements and practical diet formulation. Discussions of special diets and feeding practices are included for certain species. This book will be a useful guide for students, researchers, practicing nutritionists, aquaculturists, and feed manufacturers interested in fish nutrition.

This is the fourth volume of a series devoted to providing a comprehensive review of the study of plant-eating insects, covering topics ranging from biochemistry to ecology and evolution. Volume IV examines the status of mutualism, using the fig-insect interaction; phytosterols as important components of adaptive syndromes in herbivorous insects; methods utilized by plant-eating insects to detect compounds that deter feeding, including the various codes and how and why they vary; and the nature and significance of extrafloral nectaries in plants. The book also covers the varied roles of quinolizidines in plants, in addition to reviewing the controversial arena of plant stress and insect performance. Insect-Plant Interactions, Volume IV, is an important reference work for entomologists, zoologists, ecologists, and other scientists involved in studies with insect-plant interactions.

The purpose of this book is to provide information which supports the fact that rat hybridomas are no more difficult to develop than mouse hybridomas. This is the first book devoted to the development of rat hybridomas. It includes theories, step-by-step techniques, ingredients and apparatus. The focus of this work is on the antibody repertoire, the unique biological properties of rat immunoglobulins, the one-step purification procedure by immunoaffinity chromatography, the absence of C-type particles, and the easy production of large amounts of ascitic fluid containing rat MAb. This rare publication is an absolute must for all scientists using MAbs and those interested in the fields of immunology, biotechnology, and biochemistry.

Dramatic changes in the environment, including habitat degradation and climate change, have focused attention on how individuals and populations respond to a shifting biotic and abiotic landscape. A critical step toward meeting this goal is a clear understanding of the capacity of individuals to defend themselves against threats. Changes in water quality and temperature have direct and indirect effects on fishes. Defensive responses can occur at many levels, from cellular to behavioral actions. The authors in this volume have attempted to provide a general view of the current state of knowledge of fish defenses with respect to pathogens, parasites, and predators, and to point out gaps where further study is needed.

An updated and comprehensive guide identifying all of the world's sharks Sharks are some of the most misunderstood animals on the planet. We still have a lot to learn about these fascinating creatures, which are more seriously threatened with extinction and in greater need of conservation and management than any other major group of vertebrates. A Pocket Guide to Sharks of the World is the only field guide to identify, illustrate, and describe every known shark species. Its compact format makes it handy for many situations, including recognizing living species, fishery catches, or parts sold at markets. This expanded second edition presents lavish images, details on newly discovered species, and updated text throughout. The book contains useful sections on identifying shark teeth and the shark fins most commonly encountered in the fin trade, and takes a look at shark biology, ecology, and conservation. A Pocket Guide to Sharks of the World will be an essential resource and definitive reference for years to come. An updated guide to all of the world's sharks Each species is illustrated and described Handy, compact format with concise text Useful sections on the identification of shark teeth and fins

It may be surprising to us now, but the taxidermists who filled the museums, zoos, and aquaria of the twentieth century were also among the first to become aware of the devastating effects of careless human interaction with the natural world. Witnessing firsthand the decimation caused by hide hunters, commercial feather collectors, whalers, big game hunters, and poachers, these museum taxidermists recognized the existential threat to critically endangered species and the urgent need to protect them. The compelling exhibits they created-as well as the scientific field work, popular writing, and lobbying they undertook-established a vital leadership role in the early conservation movement for American museums that persists to this day. Through their individual research expeditions and collective efforts to arouse demand for environmental protections, this remarkable cohort-including William T. Hornaday, Carl E. Akeley, and several lesser-known colleagues-created our popular understanding of the animal world and its fragile habitats. For generations of museum visitors, they turned the glass of an exhibition case into a window on nature-and a mirror in which to reflect on our responsibility for its conservation.