Search

Caterpillars are excellent model organisms for understanding how multiple selective forces shape the ecology and evolution of insects, and organisms in general. Recent research using the tools of modern molecular biology, genetics, metabolomics, microbial ecology, experiments conducted at a global level, network analysis, and statistical analyses of global data sets, combined with basic natural history, are yielding exciting new insights into caterpillar adaptations and ecology. The best way to view these research advances is within a framework of tri-trophic interactions. This is a timely topic for research given the central role of caterpillars and plants in the ecology and trophic structure of terrestrial communities. This book is unique in that it contains chapters from a team of experts on a diversity of key topics within caterpillar-plant interactions. This volume brings together contributions by researchers from around the globe, working in both tropical and temperate habitats,and in human-managed and more natural habitats. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of insect biology, and the role that insects, as represented by caterpillars, play in a world increasingly dominated by humans and one in which threats to insect biodiversity are mounting.Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.The Natural History of Caterpillar-Ant Associations'is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This handbook in two volumes offers a heretofore unavailable compilation of detailed information on foraminifera of the Caspian-Black Sea-Mediterranean Corridors (“CORRIDORS”), including their taxonomy, ecology, and applications in the study of Quaternary stratigraphy, paleogeographic reconstruction, and environmental stress. This subject is significant in light of the ongoing debates regarding the Flood Hypotheses because foraminifera can provide more information about many of the disputed questions. Foraminifera are highly reliable paleoenvironmental indicators, ubiquitous in marine environments, and taxonomically diverse, which gives them the potential for a wide range of biological responses to varied environmental factors. Their tests are readily preserved and can record evidence of environmental change through time, thus providing historical baseline data even in the absence of background studies. This book presents taxonomic descriptions for about 500 species and subspecies from the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, Sea of Marmara, and the Eastern Mediterranean. This catalogue is supplemented by ecological remarks, stratigraphic distributions, paleogeography, and environmental/paleoenvironmental applications, including responses to environmental stress, e.g., river discharge, pollution by different contaminants, etc. The book will be useful to specialists in Quaternary history of the “CORRIDORS” as well as those in environmental monitoring and risk assessment. This handbook offers detailed taxonomic descriptions of foraminifera from the Black Sea, Caspian Sea, Sea of Azov, Aral Sea (in Volume 1) and Eastern Mediterranean and Sea of Marmara (in Volume 2).

The Inductive Brain in Development and Evolution provides readers with a substantial biological education on animal nervous systems and their role in the development, adaptation, homeostasis, and evolution of species. The book begins by delving into the embryonic development of the brain and then discusses epigenetic information and neural activity post-birth. It then analyzes the inductive brain's neural and brain control of such factors like myogenesis, bone development, sensory organs, metamorphosis in vertebrates and invertebrates, and wing development in insects. The book closes with an examination of phenotypic evolution in neural control, mechanisms, and drivers of animal brains. The Inductive Brain in Development and Evolution will offer evolutionary biologists, specifically those researching development, adaptation, and evolution of animals, a comprehensive text that covers a variety of valuable topics. - Presents the first book devoted to the inductive role of the brain in development, in adaptation, and in the evolution processes in animals - Examines the central nervous system (CNS) from embryonic to adult life stages - Provides detailed evidence to investigate the role of the CNS in molding animal morphology and life histories

This novel text provides a concise synthesis of how the interactions between mitochondrial and nuclear genes have played a major role in shaping the ecology and evolution of eukaryotes. The foundation for this new focus on mitonuclear interactions originated from research in biochemistry and cell biology laboratories, although the broader ecological and evolutionary implications have yet to be fully explored. The imperative for mitonuclear coadaptation is proposed to be a major selective force in the evolution of sexual reproduction and two mating types in eukaryotes, in the formation of species, in the evolution of ornaments and sexual selection, in the process of adaptation, and in the evolution of senescence. The book highlights the importance of mitonuclear coadaptation to the evolution of complex life and champions mitonuclear ecology as an important subdiscipline in ecology and evolution.

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 mechanisms, including sperm competition, extreme sexual conflict and cryptic female choice. Discrimination among males during or after copulation is called cryptic female choice because it occurs after intromission, the event that was formerly used as the definitive criterion of male reproductive success and is therefore usually difficult to detect and confirm. Because it sequentially follows intra- and intersexual interactions that occur before copulation, cryptic female choice has the power to alter or negate precopulatory sexual selection. However, though female roles in biasing male paternity after copulation have been proposed for a number of species distributed in many animal groups, cryptic female choice continues to be often underestimated. Furthermore, in recent years the concept of sexual conflict has been frequently misused, linking sexual selection by female choice irrevocably and exclusively with sexually antagonistic co-evolution, without exploring other alternatives.The book offers an essential source of information on how two fields, selective cooperation and individual sex interests, work together in the context of cryptic female choice in nature, using arthropods as model organisms. It is bound to spark valuable discussions among scientists working in evolutionary biology across the world, motivating new generations to unveil the astonishing secrets of sexual biology throughout the animal kingdom.

PART 1: GERMLINE TRANSFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 1 Transposons for Insect Transformation David A. O'Brochta, Kasim George and Hanfu Xu 2 Transposon-Based Technologies for Insects David A. O'Brochta, Kasim George and Hanfu Xu 3 Sex-, Tissue- and Stage-Specific Transgene Expression Andrew Marc Hammond and Tony Nolan 4 Docking Systems for Site-Directed Transgene Integration Paul Eggleston and Janet M. Meredith 5 Inducible and Repressible Systems for Transgene Expression Rosemary S. Lees, Rocco D'Amato and Mark Q. Benedict 6 Sex Ratio Manipulation for Insect Population Control Philippos A. Papathanos, Nikolai Windbichler and Omar S. Akbari 7 Conditional Dominant Lethals – RIDL Luke Alphey, Martha Koukidou and Neil I. Morrison PART 2: APPLICATIONS OF TRANSGENIC INSECTS 8 Tephritid Fruit Fly Transgenesis and Applications Alfred M. Handler and Marc F. Schetelig 9 Silkworm Transgenesis and Applications Hideki Sezutsu and Toshiki Tamura 10 Transgenic Approaches for Sterile Insect Control of Dipteran Livestock Pests and Lepidopteran Crop Pests Maxwell J. Scott, Neil I. Morrison and Gregory S. Simmons 11 Antipathogen Effector Molecules: Current and Future Strategies Michael A. Riehle and Shirley Luckhart 12 Sexual Sterilization of Mosquitoes Paolo Gabrieli, Eric Marois and Flaminia Catteruccia PART 3: ALTERNATIVE TRANSGENIC APPROACHES TO MODIFYING INSECT PHENOTYPES 13 Paratransgenesis in Mosquitoes and Other Insects: Microbial Ecology and Bacterial Genetic Considerations David J. Lampe and Nicholas J. Bongio 14 Asaia Paratransgenesis in Mosquitoes Guido Favia 15 Paratransgenic Control of Chagas Disease Ivy Hurwitz, Nicole Klein, Adam P. Forshaw and Ravi V. Durvasula 16 Tsetse Paratransgenesis: a Novel Strategy for Reducing the Spread of African Trypanosomiasis Brian L. Weiss and Serap Aksoy PART 4: CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE RELEASE OF TRANSGENIC INSECTS 17 RIDL: Modelling Release of Insects Carrying a Dominant Lethal Nina Alphey and Michael B. Bonsall 18 Assessing Risk of Transgenic Insects M.M. Quinlan 19 Economics of Transgenic Insects for Field Release John D. Mumford and L. Roman Carrasco 20 Risk Analysis and the Regulation of Transgenic Insects Camilla Beech and Tom Miller 21 Public Acceptability of New Insect Vector Control Technologies Katherine F. King, Pamela Kolopack, Lara Zahabi-Bekdash and James V. Lavery 22 The Cartagena Protocol on the Transboundary Movement of Living Modified Organisms: The Regulation of Trade in Transgenic Organisms under International and European Environmental Law Ricardo Pereira

A major synthesis of homology, written by a top researcher in the fieldHomology—a similar trait shared by different species and derived from common ancestry, such as a seal's fin and a bird's wing—is one of the most fundamental yet challenging concepts in evolutionary biology. This groundbreaking book provides the first mechanistically based theory of what homology is and how it arises in evolution.Günter Wagner, one of the preeminent researchers in the field, argues that homology, or character identity, can be explained through the historical continuity of character identity networks—that is, the gene regulatory networks that enable differential gene expression. He shows how character identity is independent of the form and function of the character itself because the same network can activate different effector genes and thus control the development of different shapes, sizes, and qualities of the character. Demonstrating how this theoretical model can provide a foundation for understanding the evolutionary origin of novel characters, Wagner applies it to the origin and evolution of specific systems, such as cell types; skin, hair, and feathers; limbs and digits; and flowers.The first major synthesis of homology to be published in decades, Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation reveals how a mechanistically based theory can serve as a unifying concept for any branch of science concerned with the structure and development of organisms, and how it can help explain major transitions in evolution and broad patterns of biological diversity.

Chapter 1 - Biological Classification Chapter 2 - Linnaean Taxonomy Chapter 3 - Taxonomic Rank Chapter 4 - Species Chapter 5 - Genus Chapter 6 - Family (Biology) and Order (Biology) Chapter 7 - Class (Biology) and Kingdom (Biology) Chapter 8 - Life Chapter 9 - Type (Biology) Chapter 10 - Evolutionary Taxonomy and Phylogenetic Nomenclature

Bioinformatics is the field of science in which computer science, information technology and biology, merge to form a single discipline. It is the application of information technology and computer science to the field of biology and biological systems. It is a new science which is very helpful in understanding most of the biological processes. Bioinformatics, which is the melding of molecular biology with computer science, is essential to the use of genomic information in understanding human diseases and in the identification of new molecular targets for drug discovery. This book describes current research from around the world on studies involving bioinformatics and computational biology tools. This book describes the use of bioinformatics and computational biology in a variety of processes. Some of these are biobanking, application of next-generation DNA sequencing in medical discovery, microRNA profiling involved in human tumorigenesis and cancer phylogenetics.

James A. Shapiro proposes an important new paradigm for understanding biological evolution, the core organizing principle of biology. Shapiro introduces crucial new molecular evidence that tests the conventional scientific view of evolution based on the neo-Darwinian synthesis, shows why this view is inadequate to today's evidence, and presents a compelling alternative view of the evolutionary process that reflects the shift in life sciences towards a more information- and systems-based approach in Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring. Evolution marshals extensive evidence in support of a fundamental reinterpretation of evolutionary processes, including more than 1,100 references to the scientific literature. Shapiro's work will generate extensive discussion throughout the biological community, and may significantly change your own thinking about how life has evolved. It also has major implications for evolutionary computation, information science, and the growing synthesis of the physical and biological sciences.

The annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseille aim to bring together leading scientists, promoting an exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge and the formation of inter-group collaborations. This book presents the most representative contributions to the 13th meeting, which was held in September 2009. It comprises 21 chapters, which are organized into the following three categories: •Evolutionary Biology Concepts •Genome/Molecular Evolution •Morphological Evolution/Speciation This book offers an up-to-date overview of evolutionary biology concepts and their use in the biology of the 21st century.

Since 1997, scientists of different disciplines sharing a deep interest in concepts and knowledge related to evolutionary biology have held the annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseille in order to discuss their research and promote collaboration. Lately scientists especially focusing on applications have also joined the group. This book starts with the report of the'12th Evolutionary Biology Meeting', which gives a general idea of the meeting's epistemological stance. This is followed by 22 chapters, a selection of the most representative contributions, which are grouped under the following four themes: Part I Concepts and Knowledge - Part II Modelization - Part III Applied Evolutionary Biology - Part IV Applications in Other Fields -Part IV transcends the field of biology, presenting applications of evolutionary biology in economics and astronomy.

Adaptive radiation, which results when a single ancestral species gives rise to many descendants, each adapted to a different part of the environment, is possibly the single most important source of biological diversity in the living world. One of the best-studied examples involves Caribbean Anolis lizards. With about 400 species, Anolis has played an important role in the development of ecological theory and has become a model system exemplifying the integration of ecological, evolutionary, and behavioral studies to understand evolutionary diversification. This major work, written by one of the best-known investigators of Anolis, reviews and synthesizes an immense literature. Jonathan B. Losos illustrates how different scientific approaches to the questions of adaptation and diversification can be integrated and examines evolutionary and ecological questions of interest to a broad range of biologists.

Concerns about global biodiversity are rising dramatically, yet we are lagging behind in the most basic prerequisite for its understanding and conservation: the inventory. Insect species may make up five or ten times the number of all other plant and animal species combined, and as such they represent one of the major challenges in biosystematic science. World Catalogue of Insects is an initiative aiming at compiling worldscale, authoritative catalogues of monophyletic insect taxa. Volumes in this series contain standard nomenclatoral information on all names pertaining to the taxon treated, including type locality and distribution to the extent this is relevant. Additional information is optional, e.g., location, status and condition of types; biology; bibliographical information; pest status; vector status; etc. This volume nine focuses on Drosophilidae (Diptera). (Series: World Catalogue of Insects)

It is the task of computational biology to help elucidate the unique characteristics of biological systems. This process has barely begun, and many researchers are testing computational tools that have been used successfully in other fields. Mathematical and statistical network modeling is an important step toward uncovering the organizational principles and dynamic behavior of biological networks. Undoubtedly, new mathematical tools will be needed, however, to meet this challenge. The workhorse of this effort at present comprises the standard tools from applied mathematics, which have proven to be successful for many problems. But new areas of mathematics not traditionally considered applicable are contributing other powerful tools. This volume is intended to introduce this topic to a broad mathematical audience. The aim is to explain some of the biology and the computational and mathematical challenges we are facing. The different chapters provide examples of how these challenges are met, with particular emphasis on nontraditional mathematical approaches. The volume features a broad spectrum of networks across scales, ranging from biochemical networks within a single cell to epidemiological networks encompassing whole cities. Chapter topics include phylogenetics and gene finding using tools from statistics and algebraic geometry, biochemical network inference using tools from computational algebra, control-theoretic approaches to drug delivery using differential equations, and interaction-based modeling and discrete mathematics applied to problems in population dynamics and epidemiology.

Flies (Dipteria) have had an important role in deepening scientists'understanding of modern biology and evolution. The study of flies has figured prominently in major advances in the fields of molecular evolution, physiology, genetics, phylogenetics, and ecology over the last century. This volume, with contributions from top scientists and scholars in the field, brings together diverse aspects of research and will be essential reading for entomologists and fly researchers.

In July 2001 experts from all around the world met in Reykjavik, Iceland to discuss various issues of polychaete biology. In particular the latest developments in cladistic inference of polychaete phylogeny were presented. Some studies applied recent molecular techniques, revealing unknown genetic relationships between the different families of polychaetous annelids. This volume is of interest to specialists and students seeking an introduction to the latest developments in the field of systematics and ecology of polychaetous annelids. This book is one in a series presenting results from the International Polychaete conferences.

The Mycoplasmas,Volume V: Spiroplasmas, Acholeplasmas,and Mycoplasmas of Plants and Arthropods focuses on existing knowledge and recent development in research on spiroplasmas, acholeplasmas, and other mollicutes of plants and arthropods. Organized into 11 chapters, this volume discusses the nutrition, cultivation, ecology, and molecular and cellular biology of spiroplasmas. Because the occurrence of other mollicutes (mycoplasma and acholeplasma) in plant and arthropod environments is not extensively discussed in other volumes, this volume shows the rapid progress in describing the new mollicutes from arthropods and plant surface that they contaminate. Molecular studies of mollicute phylogeny and plant infections incited by the so-called mycoplasma-like organisms are also presented. This book will provide a comprehensive reference source for all mycoplasmologists and a relevant and exhaustive summary of recent advances in the study of spiroplasmas, acholeplasmas, and mycoplasmas in plant and arthropod hosts for microbiologists, cellular and molecular biologists, plant pathologists, and entomologists.

This book focuses on drosophila as an especially useful model organism for exploring questions of evolutionary biology in the full range of evolutionary studies: population genetics, ecology, ecological genetics, speciation, phylogenetics, genome evolution, molecular evolution, and development. The author presents an integrated view of evolutionary biology as elucidated in this single organism. Special effort is made to point out holes in our knowledge and areas particularly ripe for new investigation.

The Recombination of Genetic Material aims to introduce the elementary properties of recombinational phenomena. Genetic recombination is a favorite research topic in biology due to its significance. In fact, a simple recombination event can have a profound effect and sometimes can mean the difference between the survival and the demise of an organism. Examples of this are provided in this book. This work also describes numerous recombination systems, mechanisms of the major types of recombination, and the macroscopic products of this biological process. Molecular analyses of recombination enzymes and substrates that have been identified or implicated are also shown. This book will be valuable as a reference material to those interested in this field of study.