This beautifully illustrated and scholarly book examines the importance of electric fishes in science and medicine and how three species in particular shaped neurophysiology. Anchored in the philosophy and science of past epochs, it is the story of one of Nature's greatest puzzles. Over a long and tortuous path, it focuses on how some numbing fishes helped to make physiology modern.
This book covers in detail the development and use of the electric sense in fishes. Contents include coverage of taxonomy of the species involved, electric organs and electroreception, hormones and behaviour and the role of other sensory systems in conjunction with the electric sense. The book will be of great value to fish biologists, physiologists, evolutionary scientists, animal behaviourists and aquatic scientists.
How encounters with strongly electric fish informed our grasp of electricity. Spark from the Deep tells the story of how human beings came to understand and use electricity by studying the evolved mechanisms of strongly electric fish. These animals have the ability to shock potential prey or would-be predators with high-powered electrical discharges. William J. Turkel asks completely fresh questions about the evolutionary, environmental, and historical aspects of people’s interest in electric fish. Stimulated by painful encounters with electric catfish, torpedos, and electric eels, people learned to harness the power of electric shock for medical therapies and eventually developed technologies to store, transmit, and control electricity. Now we look to these fish as an inspiration for engineering new sensors, computer interfaces, autonomous undersea robots, and energy-efficient batteries.
Ideal for today's young investigative reader, each A True Book includes lively sidebars, a glossary and index, plus a comprehensive "To Find Out More" section listing books, organizations, and Internet sites. A staple of library collections since the 1950s, the new A True Book series is the definitive nonfiction series for elementary school readers.
As in the bestselling first edition, The Physiology of Fishes, Second Edition is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art review of the major areas of research in modern fish physiology. This Second Edition is entirely revised, with 17 of the 18 chapters written by new authors. It also includes four entirely new chapters:
This booklet, together with the following two,-which are well under way and will succeed it at intervals of, we hope, no more than six months, sets the stage for a new editorial enterprise in the field of brain science. The accent is on the functional aspects of brains rather than on their develop ment, hence the title of the series. The central question being how neural activity is related to behavior, there will be, naturally, a wide scatter of sub jects, and Heiligenberg's monograph on electric fish may be considered typ ical of the expected standard deviation from the mean. Deviations in other directions may go as far as the sensory neuron, or brain theory, or aphasia, or farther. The next contributions planned for the series are: Precht, Neuronal Operations in the Vestibular System, and Movshon, Genes and Environment in the Development of the Visual Cortex. Our aim is to ap proach the central area by means of something like an evolving handbook of brain science. The individual monographs should describe promising and successful approaches, even in areas where the last word is far from being said. Besides originaI monographs and compounds of the author's own published papers, reviews are also we1come if they are more than the sum of the parts. The publisher promises speedy publication, and the editors will see that the manuscripts will be readable as well as interesting. Tübingen, Summer 1977 V.
The fifth edition of The Physiology of Fishes represents a compendium of knowledge across fish physiology, collecting up-to-date research into an easy-to-access single textbook. Written by the leaders in the field, it provides a comprehensive, accessible review of the core topics, integrating physiology with environmental science, ecology, evolution, and molecular cell biology. New chapters address Epigenetics, Biomechanics and Locomotion, and Behaviour and Learning. Each chapter contains an extensive bibliography, providing readers with the best sources from the primary literature. Almost three decades after the publication of the first edition, this book remains the only published single-volume work on fish physiology. The fifth edition provides an important reference for new students of fish biology, marine and freshwater biologists, ichthyologists, fisheries scientists, and comparative physiologists.
“A necessary book for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how, and why.” —Sam Sifton, The New York Times Book Review Acclaimed author of American Catch and The Omega Princple and life-long fisherman, Paul Greenberg takes us on a journey, examining the four fish that dominate our menus: salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg reveals our damaged relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants. Just three decades ago, nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild. Today, rampant overfishing and an unprecedented biotech revolution have brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex marketplace. Four Fish offers a way for us to move toward a future in which healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.
The book is a multi-authored book of 18 chapters comprising the state of the art work of all relevant topics on modern fish histology from 28 authors from ten countries. The topics include Introduction to Histological Techniques, Integument, Fish Skeletal Tissues, Muscular System, Structure and Function of Electric Organs, Digestive System, Glands of the Digestive Tract, Swim Bladder, Kidney, Ovaries and Eggs, Egg Envelopes, Testis Structure, Spermatogenesis, and Spermatozoa in Teleost Fishes, Cardiovascular System and Blood, Immune System of Fish, Gills: Respiration and Ionic-Osmoregulation, Sensory Organs, Morphology and Ecomorphology of the Fish Brain, and Endocrine System. Structural and functional aspects are treated and in a comparative way fish diversity at various taxonomic levels is integrated.
Following the success of the bestselling third edition, this newly updated and completely revised fourth edition of The Physiology of Fishes provides comprehensive coverage of the most important aspects of the form and function of fishes. It covers the most recent advances as well as fundamental subjects such as cardiovascular physiology, intestinal transport, and gill ion uptake. Written by an international group of experts, this book contains fresh approaches, with completely new treatment of the original topics and the addition of new chapters: Muscle plasticity Membranes and Metabolism Oxygen Sensing Endocrine Disruption Pain Perception Cardiac Regeneration Neuronal Regeneration Two decades after the publication of the first edition, this book remains the only published single-volume work on fish physiology. Each chapter contains an extensive bibliography, providing readers with the best sources from the primary literature. The fourth edition provides an important reference for aquatic biologists, ichthyologists, fisheries scientists, and comparative physiologists.
