Addresses the evolutionary ecology of various closely related, well- known mammals. Contributions address issues of habitat selection, species interaction, distribution, abundance, and diversity. Habitats under study include deserts, tropical and boreal forests, heaths, swamps, and savannas. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The book aims to integrate our understanding of mammalian societies into a novel synthesis that is relevant to behavioural ecologists, ecologists, and anthropologists. It adopts a coherent structure that deals initially with the characteristics and strategies of females, before covering those of males, cooperative societies and hominid societies. It reviews our current understanding both of the structure of societies and of the strategies of individuals; it combines coverage of relevant areas of theory with coverage of interspecific comparisons, intraspecific comparisons and experiments; it explores both evolutionary causes of different traits and their ecological consequences; and it integrates research on different groups of mammals with research on primates and humans and attempts to put research on human societies into a broader perspective.
Addresses the evolutionary ecology of various closely related, well- known mammals. Contributions address issues of habitat selection, species interaction, distribution, abundance, and diversity. Habitats under study include deserts, tropical and boreal forests, heaths, swamps, and savannas. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
A completely revised and updated edition of the leading mammalogy textbook, featuring color photographs throughout and a new streamlined structure for enhanced use in courses. There are more than 6,400 species in the class Mammalia, including the blue whale—the largest animal that has ever lived—and the pygmy shrew, which weighs little more than a dime. Such diversity among mammals has allowed them to play critical roles in every ecosystem, whether marine, freshwater, alpine, tundra, forest, or desert. Reflecting the expertise and perspective of five leading mammalogists, the fifth edition of Mammalogy: Adaptation, Diversity, Ecology significantly updates taxonomy, adds a new introductory chapter on the science of mammalogy, and highlights several recently described species. To enhance its appeal to students, textual material has been reduced, consolidated, and streamlined without sacrificing breadth or depth of coverage. The fifth edition includes • for the first time, stunning color photographs throughout • chapters rearranged and grouped to best reflect phylogenetic relationships, with updated numbers of genera and species for each family • updated mammalian structural and functional adaptations, as well as ordinal fossil histories • recent advances in mammalian phylogeny, biogeography, social behavior, and ecology, with 12 new or revised cladograms reflecting current research findings • new breakout boxes on novel or unique aspects of mammals • new work on female post-copulatory mate choice, cooperative behaviors, group defense, and the role of the vomeronasal system • discussions of the current implications of climate change and other anthropogenic factors for mammals Maintaining the accessible, readable style for which Feldhamer and his coauthors are well known, this new edition of Mammalogy is the authoritative textbook on this amazingly diverse class of vertebrates.
We first discussed the possibility of organizing a symposium on helminth communities in June, 1986. At that time, we were engaged in writing a joint paper on potential structuring mechanisms in helminth communities; we disagreed on a number of issues. We felt the reason for such debate was because the discipline was in a great state of flux, with many new concepts and approaches being introduced with increasing frequency. After consider able discussion about the need, scope and the inevitable limitations of such a symposium, we decided that the time was ripe to bring other ecologists, engaged in similar research, face-to-face. There were many individuals from whom to choose; we selected those who were actively publishing on helminth communities or those who had expertise in areas which we felt were particularly appropriate. We compiled a list of potential participants, contacted them and received unanimous support to organize such a symposium. Our intent was to cover several broad areas, fully recognizing that breadth negates depth (at least with a publisher's limitation on the number of pages). We felt it important to consider patterns amongst different kinds of hosts because this is where we had disagreed among ourselves.
Mammalogy is the study of mammals from the diverse biological viewpoints of structure, function, evolutionary history, behavior, ecology, classification, and economics. Thoroughly updated, the Sixth Edition of Mammalogy explains and clarifies the subject as a unified whole. The text begins by defining mammals and summarizing their origins. It moves on to discuss the orders and families of mammals with comprehensive coverage on the fossil history, current distribution, morphological characteristics, and basic behavior and ecology of each family of mammals. The third part of the text progresses to discuss special topics such as mammalian echolocation, physiology, behavior, ecology, and zoogeography. The text concludes with two additional chapters, previously available online, that cover mammalian domestication and mammalian disease and zoonoses.
Extensive scientific study of bats suggests that they are long-lived, slowly reproducing animals adapted to relatively stable environments. As such they might be expected to exist in communities heavily influenced by biotic interactions. This book begins with an overview of bat biology, including their systematic diversity and methodological problems in bat research. This is followed by examples of local bat community surveys from the major biogeographic regions. The evidence bearing upon resource limitation and competition in bats is reviewed. Then patterns in species richness, taxonomic, packing, biomass, numerical density, trophic and morphological diversity are described. The relevance of these to the nature of bat communities is examined. Major habitats and their histories are shown to be powerful predictors of important aspects of bat community structure.
This volume presents an array of different case studies which take as primary material data sourced from the NOW (‘New and Old Worlds’) database of fossil mammals. The NOW database was one of the very first large paleobiological databases, and since 1996 it has been expanded from including mainly Neogene European land mammals to cover the entire Cenozoic at a global scale. In the last two decades the number of works that are based in the use of huge databases to explore ecological and evolutionary questions has increased exponentially, and even though the importance of big data in paleobiological research has been outlined in selected chapters of general works, no volume has appeared before this one which solely focuses on the databases as a primary source in reconstructing the past. The purpose of this book is to provide an illustrative volume showing the importance of big data in paleobiological research, and presenting a broad array of unpublished examples and case studies. The book is mainly aimed to professional palaeobiologists working with Cenozoic land mammals, but the scope of the book is broad enough to fit the interest for evolutionary biologists, paleoclimatologists and paleoecologists. The volume is divided in four parts. The first part includes two chapters on the development of large paleobiological databases, providing a first-hand account on the logic and the functioning of these databases. This is a much-needed perspective which is ignored by most researchers and users of such databases and, even if centered in the NOW database, the lessons that can be learned from this part can be extended to other examples. After this introductory part, the body of the book follows and is divided into three parts: patterns in regional faunas; large scale patterns and processes; and ecological, biogeographical and evolutionary patterns of key taxa. Each chapter is written by well-known specialists in the field, with some participation of members of the NOW advisory board. The array of selected mammal taxa ranges from carnivores, equids, ruminants and rodents to the genus Homo. The topics studied also include the diversification and radiation of major clades, large-scale paleobiogeographical patterns, the evolution of ecomorphological patterns and paleobiological problems such as evolution of body size or species longevity. In most cases the results are discussed in relation to protracted environmental or paleogeographic changes.
