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This book provides a critical summary of the major advances in insect ecology and evolution, discussing the advantages of using dragonflies as model organisms for studies in such areas.
Primary sexual traits, those structures and processes directly involved in reproduction, are some of the most diverse, specialized, and bizarre in the animal kingdom. Moreover, reproductive traits are often species-specific, suggesting that they evolved very rapidly. This diversity, long the province of taxonomists, has recently attracted broader interest from evolutionary biologists, especially those interested in sexual selection and the evolution of reproductive strategies.Primary sexual characters were long assumed to be the product of natural selection, exclusively. A recent alternative suggests that sexual selection explains much of the diversity of "primary" sexual characters. A third...
Insects display a staggering diversity of behaviors. Studying these systems provides insights into a wide range of ecological, evolutionary, and behavioral questions including the genetics of behavior, phenotypic plasticity, chemical communication, and the evolution of life-history traits. This accessible text offers a new approach that provides the reader with the necessary theoretical and conceptual foundations, at different hierarchical levels, to understand insect behavior. The book is divided into three main sections: mechanisms, ecological and evolutionary consequences, and applied issues. The final section places the preceding chapters within a framework of current threats to human survival - climate change, disease, and food security - before providing suggestions and insights as to how we can utilize an understanding of insect behavior to control and/or ameliorate them. Each chapter provides a concise, authoritative review of the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological foundations of each topic.
Mythology is a subject that has entertained people for thousands of years. These stories of gods and supernatural beings of the distant past are important in explaining how things came to be and are an integral part of societies. Insect myths are numerous and widespread in mythology, but have received little attention. This is the first book dedicated specifically to showing the important roles insects have played in mythology. This is a comprehensive and readable survey of insect myths from around the world. The book ranges from older, better-known insect myths such as sacred scarabs to new unpublished subjects such as insects as examples of parallel mythology. Numerous black and white figures are found in the book including new figures not previously seen in entomological literature. How insects are related to larger themes of mythology such as symbols and parallel mythology is discussed. Insects in Old World mythology (Egypt, China, etc.) and New World mythology (Native American, Mayan, etc.) are featured. This book brings to light the fascinating role that insects played in mythology and is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference on the subject.
This timely book revisits cryptic female choice in arthropods, gathering detailed contributions from around the world to address key behavioral, ecological and evolutionary questions. The reader will find a critical summary of major breakthroughs in taxon-oriented chapters that offer many new perspectives and cases to explore and in many cases unpublished data. Many groups of arthropods such as spiders, harvestmen, flies, moths, crickets, earwigs, beetles, eusocial insects, shrimp and crabs are discussed. Sexual selection is currently the focus of numerous and controversial theoretical and experimental studies. Selection in mating and post-mating patterns can be shaped by several different m...
An advanced textbook that reviews the conceptual approaches and the most important advances in our current understanding of insect physiology, ecology, evolution and conservation, in the ongoing and rapidly developing context of global anthropogenic climate change.
The Routledge Handbook of Environmental History presents a cutting-edge overview of the dynamic and ever-expanding field of environmental history. It addresses recent transformations in the field and responses to shifting scholarly, political, and environmental landscapes. The handbook fully and critically engages with recent exciting changes, contextualizes them within longer-term shifts in the field, and charts potential new directions for study. It focuses on five key areas: Theories and concepts related to changing considerations of social justice, including postcolonial, antiracist, and feminist approaches, and the field’s growing emphasis on multiple human voices and agencies. The ro...
Physiology of Molluscs: A Collection of Selected Reviews is an informative two-volume sent that brings together some of the most important recent and unique developments in molluscan physiology. Volume One focuses on shell structure, mineralization, the dynamics of calcium transport, shell drilling, byssus proteins, locomotion, and reproduction. Volume Two includes reviews on the neural mechanisms of learning, reproductive behavior, responses to environmental stress and hormones, and neurotransmitters. With the rapid development of cutting-edge proteomic, molecular biological, and cellular imaging techniques, our understanding of molluscan physiology, specifically in the areas of neurobiolog...
This research level text documents the latest advances in odonate biology and relates these to a broader ecological and evolutionary research agenda. Despite being one of the smallest insect orders, dragonflies offer a number of advantages for both laboratory and field studies. In fact, they continue to make a crucial contribution to the advancement of our broader understanding of insect ecology and evolution. This new edition provides a critical summary of the major advances in these fields. The editors have carefully assembled a fresh set of contributions from a diverse geographic mix of both junior and senior researchers in dragonfly biology to offer new perspectives and paradigms as well...