Regulation: Digestion, Nutrition, Excretion
Regulation: Digestion, Nutrition, Excretion

Author: G. A. Kerkut

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 656

ISBN-13: 1483286207

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In this volume, seven of the chapters deal with feeding and diet, which is reasonable since insects consume an estimated l5-20% of all the world's planted crops. Many insects even have a specialized larval feeding stage that usually occupies a different ecological niche to the adult and so does not compete for the adult's food stock. Other chapters describe the means by which insects maintain their water balance, nitrogen balance and temperature balance under a range of conditions. These involve regulation by hormonal and behavioural systems that are also described here. The l4 chapters are all extensively illustrated and referenced and therefore provide excellent summaries of current knowledge. They will be of great value to entomologists, zoologists and biologists in general.

Ecology and Management of the Mourning Dove
Ecology and Management of the Mourning Dove

Author: Thomas S. Baskett

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780811719407

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Nicely published (apparently with subsidy) by the Wildlife Management Institute, Washington, D.C. Comprehensively deals with the most numerous, widespread, and heavily hunted of North American gamebirds. Among the topics covered in 29 contributions: classification and distributions, migration, nesting, reproductive strategy, growth and maturation, feeding habits, diseases, survey procedures, population trends, care of captive mourning doves, and hunting. The final chapter identifies research and management needs. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Greenshanks
Greenshanks

Author: Desmond Nethersole-Thompson

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-11-30

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1408137356

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Desmond Nethersole-Thompson has been studying his favourite bird, the greenshank Tringa nebularia, since May 1932. This book, published in 1976, owes much to the interest, almost an obsession, of the Nethersole-Thompson family. The two girls and four boys, as well as both parents, now work as a team in the wild and beautiful north-west Highlands of Scotland. Greenshanks has drawn heavily on the team's field notebooks. In the gneiss country of Sutherland, so different from the forest bogs of Spey Valley, Fennoscandia and the Soviet Union, they have particularly concentrated on the greenshank's displays and breeding, food and feeding behaviour and its remarkable voice. There can be few long-term projects on waders to equal this made by the Nethersole-Thompsons, and there are valuable specialist contributions by other eminent ornithologists. Greenshanks is a major contribution to bird studies and takes its place beside Desmond Nethersole-Thompson's four earlier monographs. The illustrations in colour and monochrome by Donald Watson have all the veracity and atmosphere that one has come to expect of this gifted artist.

Sperm Competition and Its Evolutionary Consequences in the Insects
Sperm Competition and Its Evolutionary Consequences in the Insects

Author: Leigh W. Simmons

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-12-31

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0691207038

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One hundred years after Darwin considered how sexual selection shapes the behavioral and morphological characteristics of males for acquiring mates, Parker realized that sexual selection continues after mating through sperm competition. Because females often mate with multiple males before producing offspring, selection favors adaptations that allow males to preempt sperm from previous males and to prevent their own sperm from preemption by future males. Since the 1970s, this area of research has seen exponential growth, and biologists now recognize sperm competition as an evolutionary force that drives such adaptations as mate guarding, genital morphology, and ejaculate chemistry across all animal taxa. The insects have been critical to this research, and they still offer the greatest potential to reveal fully the evolutionary consequences of sperm competition. This book analyzes and extends thirty years of theoretical and empirical work on insect sperm competition. It considers both male and female interests in sperm utilization and the sexual conflict that can arise when these differ. It covers the mechanics of sperm transfer and utilization, morphology, physiology, and behavior. Sperm competition is shown to have dramatic effects on adaptation in the context of reproduction as well as far-reaching ramifications on life-history evolution and speciation. Written by a top researcher in the field, this comprehensive, up-to-date review of the evolutionary causes and consequences of sperm competition in the insects will prove an invaluable reference for students and established researchers in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology.