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Cambridge, MA 2005 Hard cover New in new dust jacket. Gift Quality. Pristine. Brand New. Fast Arrival. Collectors item. Carefuly packaged & shipped in bubble wrap. Sewn binding.
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Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 372 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade. Gift Quality. Pristine. Brand New. Fast Arrival. Collector s item. Carefully packaged & shipped in bubble wrap. Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. "Charles Darwin story is so incredible in the "Life and Lessons" 1874 notation it is priceless". Wonderfully written and insightful.
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Mostly tiny, infinitely delicate, and short-lived, insects and their relatives—arthropods—nonetheless outnumber all their fellow creatures on earth. How lowly arthropods achieved this unlikely preeminence is a story deftly and colorfully told in this follow-up to the award-winning For Love of Insects. Part handbook, part field guide, part photo album, Secret Weapons chronicles the diverse and often astonishing defensive strategies that have allowed insects, spiders, scorpions, and other many-legged creatures not just to survive, but to thrive.
In sixty-nine chapters, each brilliantly illustrated with photographs culled from Thomas Eisner's legendary collection, we meet a largely North American cast of arthropods—as well as a few of their kin from Australia, Europe, and Asia—and observe at firsthand the nature and extent of the defenses that lie at the root of their evolutionary success. Here are the cockroaches and termites, the carpenter ants and honeybees, and all the miniature creatures in between, deploying their sprays and venom, froth and feces, camouflage and sticky coatings. And along with a marvelous bug's-eye view of how these secret weapons actually work, here is a close-up look at the science behind them, from taxonomy to chemical formulas, as well as an appendix with instructions for studying chemical defenses at home. Whether dipped into here and there or read cover to cover, Secret Weapons will prove invaluable to hands-on researchers and amateur naturalists alike, and will captivate any reader for whom nature is a source of wonder.
Editorial Reviews
Library Journal
Close on the heels of Eisner's (chemical ecology, Cornell Univ.) jewel of a book, For Love of Insects, an account of his own extraordinary research, the present volume is a beautifully illustrated guide to the defense systems of mainly North American arthropods, especially insects. Written with Maria Eisner (biology, Cornell Univ.) and Melody V.S. Siegler (biology, Emory Univ.), it draws on examples not only from Eisner's own investigations but also from various works of entomological literature. Each of the 69 chapters is devoted to an arthropod or arthropod group and provides a clear, concise (on average four to five pages long) introduction to its general features and special characteristics. Included are classification; scientific name; common name; description of defense system, whether behavioral, morphological, or chemical; defensive chemical formula(e) when applicable; and key references. An epilog speculating on future directions, a final chapter on how to study insects, a general index, and a chemical index round out this remarkable volume. The first of its kind, this primer will prove indispensable to a broad audience, from lay naturalists to students, teachers, specialists-even medical doctors.-Annette Aiello, Smithsonian Tropical Research Inst., Panama Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.Product Details
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Meet the Author
Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University. In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. His film Secret Weapons won the Grand Award at the New York Film Festival and was named Best Science Film by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Maria Eisner is Research Associate of Biology at Cornell University.
Melody Siegler is Associate Professor of Biology at Emory University.
Table of Contents