The mystique of the rainforest has captured the imaginations of generations of young people, explorers, authors, and biologists. It is a delicate ecosystem whose myriad sounds and smells, whose vibrancy of life, is balanced by constant cycles of death and decay. It is a place of fierce competition where unusual partnerships are forged and creative survival strategies are the norm. In this book, you will meet the scientific pioneers who first attempted to quantify and understand the vast diversity of these tropical forests, as well as their successors, who utilize modern tools and technologies to dissect the chemical nature of rainforest interactions. This book provides a general background on biodiversity and the study of chemical ecology before moving into specific chemical examples of insect defenses and microbial communication. It finishes with first-hand accounts of the trials and tribulations of a canopy biology pioneer and a rainforest research novice, while assessing the state of modern tropical research, its importance to humanity, and the ecological, political, and ethical issues that need to be tackled in order to move the field forward.
Molecular studies reveal highly ordered geographic patterns in plant and animal distributions. The tropics illustrate these patterns of community immobilism leading to allopatric differentiation, as well as other patterns of mobilism, range expansion, and overlap of taxa. Integrating Earth history and biogeography, Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics is an alternative view of distributional history in which groups are older than suggested by fossils and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. The author discusses possible causes for the endemism of high-level taxa in tropical America and Madagascar, and overlapping clades in South America, Africa, and Asia. The book concludes with a critique of adaptation by selection, founded on biogeography and recent work in genetics.
This book analyzes the right pathway to solve the controversial identifications of some Trichoderma species on the basis of sampling procedures, slide culture techniques, macroscopic and microscopic analysis, and molecular tools. Most species of the genus Trichoderma grow rapidly in artificial culture and produce large numbers of small green or white conidia from conidiogenous cells located at the ends of conidiophores. The morphological characters are reported to be variable to a certain degree in their color, shape of conidia, conidiophore, pustules, and phialade. These characteristics allow a comparatively easy means of identification of Trichoderma as a genus but the species concept is difficult to deduce and there is considerable confusion over the application of specific names. This work provides an essential link between data and taxa as a means to verify the taxonomic characters of the strains sequenced, and macroscopic and microscopic characteristics. Otherwise, a species level identification study cannot be corrected or uncorrected, and the user has to rely on the person perhaps making a mis-identification.
Medicinal Chemistry of Neglected and Tropical Diseases: Advances in the Design and Synthesis of Antimicrobial Agents consolidates and describes modern drug discovery and development approaches currently employed to identify effective chemotherapeutic agents for the treatment of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) from a medicinal chemistry perspective. Chapters are designed to cater to the needs of medicinal chemists who work with chemotherapeutic developments for NTDs, as well as serve as a guide to budding medicinal chemists who wish to work in this area. It will introduce rational drug design approaches adopted in designing chemotherapeutics and validated targets available for the purpose.
Insects represent the most abundant and diverse animal group on Earth. The number of described species is more than one million and up to ten million are estimated. Insects have one of the widest distributions in the world because they have adapted to extreme ranges of environments.Molecular ecology studies ecological processes based on the analysi
The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported 14 diseases that are occurring exclusively in tropical areas. Most of these diseases are infectious and mainly affect poor populations. Some of these diseases include malaria, dengue fever, leishmaniasis and Chagas disease. Therefore, an acute need for increasing the arsenal of drugs is required to fight against these neglected diseases for the guaranteed recovery and relief of many patients. This E-book gathers important scientific research performed by scientists worldwide showing the state of the art of Medicinal Chemistry dedicated to the synthesis of compounds that are potentially bioactive against the causative agents of neglected diseases. The contents of this book include chapters on recent advances in synthetic organic compounds for the prevention of Chagas disease, recent advances in the discovery of small organic molecules for the prevention and treatment of dengue fever, leishmaniasis, leprosy, therapeutic arsenal and drug discovery for lymphatic filariasis, therapeutic agents for the treatment of malaria, schistosomiasis and synthetic organic compounds as potential antitubercular drugs. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in institutes, colleges, universities and academies who want to specialize in the field of organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry.This book will also be a valuable resource of information for researchers in this field.
This Encyclopedia of Tropical Biology and Conservation Management is a component of the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. Tropical environments cover the most part of still preserved natural areas of the Earth. The greatest biodiversity, as in terms of animals and plants, as microorganisms, is placed in these hot and rainy ecosystems spread up and below the Equator line. Additionally, the most part of food products, with vegetal or animal origin, that sustain nowadays human beings is direct or undirected dependent of tropical productivity. Biodiversity should be looked at and evaluated not only in terms of numbers of species, but also in terms of the diversity of interactions among distinct organisms that it maintains. In this sense, the complexity of web structure in tropical systems is a promise of future to nature preservation on Earth. In the chemicals of tropical plant and animals, could be the cure to infinite number of diseases, new food sources, and who knows what more. Despite these facts tropical areas have been exploited in an irresponsible way for more than 500 years due the lack of an ecological conscience of men. Exactly in the same way we did with temperate areas and also tropical areas in the north of Equator line. Nowadays, is estimated that due human exploitation, nation conflicts and social problems, less than 8% of tropical nature inside continental areas is still now untouchable. The extension of damage in the tropical areas of oceans is unknown. Thus so, all knowledge we could accumulate about tropical systems will help us, as in the preservations of these important and threatened ecosystems as in a future recuperation, when it was possible. Only knowing the past and developing culture, mainly that directed to peace, to a better relationship among nations and responsible use and preservation of natural resources, human beings will have a long future on Earth. These volumes, Tropical Biology and Natural Resources was divided in sessions to provide the reader the better comprehension possible of issue and also to enable future complementation and improvements in the encyclopedia. Like we work with life, we intended to transform this encyclopedia also in a “life” volume, in what new information could be added in any time. As president of the encyclopedia and main editor I opened the theme with an article titled: “Tropical Biology and Natural resources: Historical Pathways and Perspectives”, providing the reader an initial view of the origins of human knowledge about the tropical life, and what we hope to the future. In the sequence we have more than 100 chapters distributed in tem sessions: Tropical Ecology (TE); Tropical Botany (TB); Tropical Zoology (TZ); Savannah Ecosystems (SE); Desert Ecosystems (DE); Tropical Agriculture (TA); Natural History of Tropical Plants (NH); Human Impact on Tropical Ecosystems (HI); Tropical Phytopathology and Entomology (TPE); Case Studies (CS). This 11-volume set contains several chapters, each of size 5000-30000 words, with perspectives, applications and extensive illustrations. It is the only publication of its kind carrying state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Tropical Biology and Conservation Management and is aimed, by virtue of the several applications, at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs.
Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) afflict more than 1.4 billion people, many of whom live on less than $1.25 a day. While there are effective ways to manage NTDs, policy-makers and funders have only recently begun to recognize the economic and public health importance of controlling NTDs. The IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats held a workshop September 21-22, 2010, to discuss the science of and policy surrounding NTDs.
Tropical Foods: Chemistry and Nutrition, Volume 2 contains the proceedings of an International Conference on Tropical Foods: Chemistry and Nutrition, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 28-30, 1979. The papers explore the chemical and nutritional aspects of tropical foods from around the world, including vegetables, coconut foods, wheat, and soybean foods. This volume is comprised of 19 chapters and begins with an overview of the nutritional aspects of some tropical plant foods by focusing on nutrition, the nutritional composition of some plant foods, and the applications and limitations of food composition tables, along with assessment of nutritional status and some obstacles to nutritional health. The next chapter surveys tropical foods in the Far East, with emphasis on the processing and nutritional evaluation of fermented foods as well as fermentation and other methods of food preservation. Vegetable production in tropical Asian countries such as the Philippines is also considered. Subsequent chapters look at tropical home gardens as a nutrition intervention, tropical foods in Central America, and some aspects of traditional African foods. This book should be a valuable resource for biochemists, nutritionists, and nutritional scientists.
