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In this lavishly illustrated, first-ever book on how spider webs are built, function, and evolved, William Eberhard provides a comprehensive overview of spider functional morphology and behavior related to web building, and of the surprising physical agility and mental abilities of orb weavers. For instance, one spider spins more than three precisely spaced, morphologically complex spiral attachments per second for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Spiders even adjust the mechanical properties of their famously strong silken lines to different parts of their webs and different environments, and make dramatic modifications in orb designs to adapt to available spaces. This extensive adaptive fl...
A growing body of evidence has begun to reveal flaws in the traditional assumption of female passivity and lack of discrimination after copulation has begun. William Eberhard has compiled an impressive array of research on the ability of females to shape the outcome of mating. He describes studies of many different cryptic mechanisms by which a female can accept a male for copulation but nevertheless reject him as a father. Evidence from various fields indicates that such selectivity by females may be the norm rather than the exception. Because most post-copulatory competition between males for paternity is played out within the bodies of females, female behavior, morphology, and physiology ...
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major breakthroughs in taxon-oriented chapters that offer many new perspectives and cases to explore and in many cases unpublished data.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...
Insects and arachnids display the most impressive diversity of mating and social behaviour among all animals. This book investigates sexual competition in these groups, and the variety of ways in which males and females pursue, persuade, manipulate, control and help one another, enabling us to gain a better understanding of how conflicts and confluences of interest evolve together. Each chapter provides a comprehensive review of mating systems in particular insect and arachnid groups, discusses intrinsic and extrinsic factors responsible for observed mating strategies, and suggests fruitful avenues for further research. The book culminates in a synthesis, reviewing the date in terms of the theory of sexual conflict. This broad-based book will be of immense value to students and researchers interested in reproductive strategies, behavioural ecology, entomology and arachnology.
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...
Sexual Selection and Reproductive Competition in Insects ...
The primary purpose of Drawn to Freedom is not to understand the Heidelberg Catechism, Eberhard Busch explains, but rather through it to understand what it means for us to believe in the merciful and just triune God. This is our God today, who always was our God, and will be our God tomorrow. This book, then, is a carefully developed, wide-ranging exploration of what it means to be a Christian in today s world. God is so committed to freedom, writes Busch, that he wants to give humans their own freedom. To unfold what this proposition means for Christians, Busch reexamines the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 from a modern perspective and uses its question-and-answer format to propose an understanding of God s ways that still holds true for the twenty-first century. Busch also invites into the conversation past and present theologians, philosophers, musicians, and scientists with significant questions, objections, and alternative views. He probes such issues as self-understanding, personal worth, sin and forgiveness, hope and despair, and faith and love all in relation to the freedom and deliverance that he believes God desires to afford us.
Presented for the first time in English, the huge archive of secret Nazi reports reveals what life was like for German Jews and the extent to which the German population supported their social exclusion and the measures that led to their annihilation.