Annotation. A major concern for biological control has always been the risk of indirect unwanted effects on the ecology of other organisms. Our understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes underlying these effects has until now been limited, and experimental methods are sometimes lacking.This book presents the key papers form the first International Organization for Biological Control global symposium, held in Montpellier, France in October 1999. It addresses the issues and concerns involved in biological control, and assesses the current status of evaluation of the ecologicaleffects.
Two groups of animals, bats and odontocetes (toothed whales), have independently developed the ability to orient and detect prey by biosonar (echolocation). This active mechanism of orientation allows these animals to operate under low light conditions. Biosonar is a conceptual overview of what is known about biosonar in bats and odontocetes. Chapters are written by bat and odontocetes experts, resulting in collaborations that not only examine data on both animals, but also compare and contrast mechanisms. This book provides a unique insight that will help improve our understanding of biosonar in both animal groups.
This volume integrates theory and experiment to place the study of vision within the context of the action systems which use visual information. This theme is developed by stressing: (a) The importance of situating anyone part of the brain in the context of its interactions with other parts of the brain in subserving animal behavior. The title of this volume emphasizes that visual function is to be be viewed in the context of the integrated functions of the organism. (b) Both the intrinsic interest of frog and toad as animals in which to study the neural mechanisms of visuomotor coordination, and the importance of comparative studies with other organisms so that we may learn from an analysis of both similarities and differences. The present volume thus supplements our studies of frog and toad with papers on salamander, bird and reptile, turtle, rat, gerbil, rabbit, and monkey. (c) Perhaps most distinctively, the interaction between theory and experiment.
Gabriel Waksman Institute of Structural Molecular Biology, Birkbeck and University College London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, United Kingdom Address for correspondence: Professor Gabriel Waksman Institute of Structural Molecular Biology Birkbeck and University College London Malet Street London WC1E 7H United Kingdom Email: g. waksman@bbk. ac. uk and g. waksman@ucl. ac. uk Phone: (+44) (0) 207 631 6833 Fax: (+44) (0) 207 631 6833 URL: http://people. cryst. bbk. ac. uk/?ubcg54a Gabriel Waksman is Professor of Structural Molecular Biology at the Institute of Structural Molecular Biology at UCL/Birkbeck, of which he is also the director. Before joining the faculty of UCL and Birkbeck, he was the Roy and Diana Vagelos Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis (USA). The rapidly evolving ?eld of protein science has now come to realize the ubiquity and importance of protein–protein interactions. It had been known for some time that proteins may interact with each other to form functional complexes, but it was thought to be the property of only a handful of key proteins. However, with the advent of hi- throughput proteomics to monitor protein–protein interactions at an organism level, we can now safely state that protein–protein interactions are the norm and not the exception.
This volume details the different ways that nocturnal primates avoid predators. It is a first of its kind within primatology, and is therefore the only work giving a broad overview of predation – nocturnal primate predation theory in particular – in the field Additionally, the book incorporates several chapters on the theoretical advances that researchers studying nocturnal primates need to make.
This latest volume in this series contains articles on Arachnid Physiology and Behaviour. The papers in this special issue give rise to key themes for the future. Contributions from the leading researchers in entomology Discusses Arachnid physiology and behavior Includes in-depth reviews with valuable information for a variety of entomology disciplines
Pet behavior problems are a leading cause of pet abandonment, relinquishment, abuse and neglect. As a reliable and educated source, veterinarians must help guide their clients in the right direction. Blackwell's Five-Minute Veterinary Consult Clinical Companion: Canine and Feline Behavior facilitates veterinarians in counseling clients and treating small animal behavior problems. As part of the popular Blackwell's Five-Minute Veterinary Consult series, this unique manual is designed as a quick reference for veterinarians and students alike. Information is readily available in a practical and easy-to-use format, with topics organized alphabetically for easy reference. Coverage includes typical problem behaviors in dogs and cats, such as various types of aggression, anxiety, fear, soiling and marking, vocalizing, and destructive behaviors. Appendices provide additional resources on psychopharmacology, learning and behavior modification, and client handouts, which can be downloaded electronically for easy use.
The alarm calls of birds make them difficult for predators to locate, while the howl of wolves and the croak of bullfrogs are designed to carry across long distances. From an engineer's perspective, how do such specialized adaptations among living things really work? And how does physics constrain evolution, channeling it in particular directions? Writing with wit and a richly informed sense of wonder, Denny and McFadzean offer an expert look at animals as works of engineering, each exquisitely adapted to a specific manner of survival, whether that means spinning webs or flying across continents or hunting in the dark-or writing books. This particular book, containing more than a hundred illustrations, conveys clearly, for engineers and nonengineers alike, the physical principles underlying animal structure and behavior. Pigeons, for instance-when understood as marvels of engineering-are flying remote sensors: they have wideband acoustical receivers, hi-res optics, magnetic sensing, and celestial navigation. Albatrosses expend little energy while traveling across vast southern oceans, by exploiting a technique known to glider pilots as dynamic soaring. Among insects, one species of fly can locate the source of a sound precisely, even though the fly itself is much smaller than the wavelength of the sound it hears. And that big-brained, upright Great Ape? Evolution has equipped us to figure out an important fact about the natural world: that there is more to life than engineering, but no life at all without it.
Many consider Lewis Binford to be the single most influential figure in archaeology in the last half-century. His contributions to the "New Archaeology" changed the course of the field, as he argued for the development of a scientifically rigorous framework to guide the excavation and interpretation of the archaeological record. This book, the culmination of Binford's intellectual legacy thus far, presents a detailed description of his methodology and its significance for understanding hunter-gatherer cultures on a global basis. This landmark publication will be an important step in understanding the great process of cultural evolution and will change the way archaeology proceeds as a scientific enterprise. This work provides a major synthesis of an enormous body of cultural and environmental information and offers many original insights into the past. Binford helped pioneer what is now called "ethnoarchaeology"—the study of living societies to help explain cultural patterns in the archaeological record—and this book is grounded on a detailed analysis of ethnographic data from about 340 historically known hunter-gatherer populations. The methodological framework based on this data will reshape the paradigms through which we understand human culture for years to come.
Although bats and dolphins live in very different environments, are vastly different in size, and hunt different kinds of prey, both groups have evolved similar sonar systems, known as echolocation, to locate food and navigate the skies and seas. While much research has been conducted over the past thirty years on echolocation in bats and dolphins, this volume is the first to compare what is known about echolocation in each group, to point out what information is missing, and to identify future areas of research. Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins consists of six sections: mechanisms of echolocation signal production; the anatomy and physiology of signal reception and interpretation; performance and cognition; ecological and evolutionary aspects of echolocation mammals; theoretical and methodological topics; and possible echolocation capabilities in other mammals, including shrews, seals, and baleen whales. Animal behaviorists, ecologists, physiologists, and both scientists and engineers who work in the field of bioacoustics will benefit from this book.
