Author: Graham Martin Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199694532 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
This is the first integrated synthesis of avian sensory ecology, explaining the broad principles and taking the reader into the sensory world of birds from an evolutionary and ecological perspective.
Author: Graham R. Martin Publisher: Pelagic Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1784272175 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 474
Book Description
Graham Martin takes the reader deep into the world of birds from a new perspective, with a ‘through birds’ eyes’ approach to ornithology that goes beyond the traditional habitat or ecological point of view. There is a lot more to a bird’s world than what it receives through its eyes. This book shows how all of the senses complement one another to provide each species with a unique suite of information that guides their daily activities. The senses of each bird have been fine-tuned by natural selection to meet the challenges of its environment and optimise its behaviour: from spotting a carcase on a hillside, to pecking at minute insects, from catching fish in murky waters, to navigating around the globe. The reader is also introduced to the challenges posed to birds by the obstacles with which humans have cluttered their worlds, from power lines to windowpanes. All of these challenges need explaining from the birds’ sensory perspectives so that effective mitigations can be put in place. The book leads the reader through a wealth of diverse information presented in accessible text, with over 100 colour illustrations and photographs. The result is a highly readable and authoritative account, which will appeal to birdwatchers and other naturalists, as well as researchers in avian biology. The author has researched the senses of birds throughout a 50-year career in ornithology and sensory science. He has always attempted to understand birds from the perspective of how sensory information helps them to carry out different tasks in different environments. He has published papers on more than 60 bird species, from Albatrosses and Penguins, to Spoonbills and Kiwi. His first fascination was with owls and night time, and owls have remained special to him throughout his career. He has collaborated and travelled widely and pondered diverse sensory challenges that birds face in the conduct of different tasks in different habitats, from mudflats and murky waters, to forests, deserts and caves. In recent years he has focused on how understanding bird senses can help to reduce the very high levels of bird deaths that are caused by human artefacts; particularly, wind turbines, power lines, and gill nets.
Author: Martin Stevens Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191651478 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 674
Book Description
Throughout their lives animals must complete many tasks, including finding food, avoiding predators, attracting mates, and navigating through a complex and dynamic environment. Consequently, they have evolved a staggering array of sensory organs that are fundamental to survival and reproduction and shape much of their evolution and behaviour. Sensory ecology deals with how animals acquire, process, and use information in their lives, and the sensory systems involved. It investigates the type of information that is gathered by animals, how it is used in a range of behaviours, and the evolution of such traits. It deals with both mechanistic questions (e.g. how sensory receptors capture information from the environment, and how the physical attributes of the environment affect information transmission) and functional questions (e.g. the adaptive significance of the information used by the animal to make a decision). Recent research has dealt more explicitly with how sensory systems are involved with and even drive evolutionary change, including the formation of new species. Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution provides a broad introduction to sensory ecology across a wide range of taxonomic groups, covering all the various sensory modalities (e.g. sound, visual, chemical, magnetic, and electric) relating to diverse areas spanning anti-predator strategies, foraging, mate choice, navigation and more, with the aim being to illustrate key principles and differences. This accessible textbook is suitable for senior undergraduates, graduate students, and professional academics taking courses or conducting research in sensory ecology/biology, neuroethology, behavioural and evolutionary ecology, communication, and signalling. It will also be of relevance and use to psychologists interested in sensory information and behaviour.
Author: André A. Dhondt Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199589011 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
Provides a current, critical review of the importance of interspecific competition, considering the evolutionary effects of interspecific competition, its importance in structuring communities, and influence on the traits of individual species.
Author: Jelle 1987 Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1461237149 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 956
Book Description
This volume constitutes a series of invited chapters based on presentations given at an International Conference on the Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals held June 24-28, 1985 at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. The immediate purpose of the conference was to spark an exchange of ideas, concepts, and techniques among investigators concerned with the different sensory modalities employed by a wide variety of animal species in extracting information from the aquatic environment. By necessity, most investigators of sensory biology are specialists in one sensory system: different stimulus modalities require different methods of stimulus control and, generally, different animal models. Yet, it is clear that all sensory systems have principles in common, such as stimulus filtering by peripheral structures, tuning of receptor cells, signal-to-noise ratios, adaption and disadaptation, and effective dynamic range. Other features, such as hormonal and efferent neural control, circadian reorganization, and receptor recycling are known in some and not in other senses. The conference afforded an increased awareness of new discoveries in other sensory systems that has effectively inspired a fresh look by the various participants at their own area of specialization to see whether or not similar principles apply. This inspiration was found not only in theoretical issues, but equally in techniques and methods of approach. The myopy of sensory specialization was broken in one unexpected way by showing limitations of individual sense organs and their integration within each organism. For instance, studying vision, one generally chooses a visual animal as a model.
Author: Etienne Danchin Publisher: American Chemical Society ISBN: Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 920
Book Description
Behavioural Ecology gives a fresh, contemporary account of the evolutionary and ecological processes that underpin animal behaviour. Contributions from subject experts and meticulous editing yield a text with all the qualities of a multi-author book, but without the potential drawbacks.
Author: Yegor B. Malashichev Publisher: CRC Press ISBN: 1498713378 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 210
Book Description
This volume grew out of the 2nd International Symposium on Behavioral and Morphological Asymmetries, which took place in St. Petersburg (Russia) in September 2004 at the St. Petersburg State University under the patronage of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists. The Symposium is the descendant of a satellite event with a similar name of the 4t
Author: J. G. M. Thewissen Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520252780 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Ranging from crocodiles and penguins to seals and whales, this synthesis explores the function and evolution of sensory systems in animals whose ancestors lived on land. It explores the dramatic transformation of smell, taste, sight, hearing, and balance that occurred as lineages of reptiles, birds, and mammals returned to aquatic environments.
Author: Tim Birkhead Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 140883054X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
What is it like to be a swift, flying at over one hundred kilometres an hour? Or a kiwi, plodding flightlessly among the humid undergrowth in the pitch dark of a New Zealand night? And what is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise?Bird Sense addresses questions like these and many more, by describing the senses of birds that enable them to interpret their environment and to interact with each other. Our affinity for birds is often said to be the result of shared senses - vision and hearing - but how exactly do their senses compare with our own? And what about a birds' sense of taste, or smell, or touch or the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field? Or the extraordinary ability of desert birds to detect rain hundreds of kilometres away - how do they do it?Bird Sense is based on a conviction that we have consistently underestimated what goes on in a bird's head. Our understanding of bird behaviour is simultaneously informed and constrained by the way we watch and study them. By drawing attention to the way these frameworks both facilitate and inhibit discovery, it identifies ways we can escape from them to seek new horizons in bird behaviour.There has never been a popular book about the senses of birds. No one has previously looked at how birds interpret the world or the way the behaviour of birds is shaped by their senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of observation and an understanding of birds and their behaviour that is firmly grounded in science.
Author: Danielle J. Whittaker Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421443481 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 195
Book Description
The untold story of a stunning discovery: not only can birds smell, but their scents may be the secret to understanding their world. The puzzling lack of evidence for the peculiar but widespread belief that birds have no sense of smell irked evolutionary biologist Danielle Whittaker. Exploring the science behind the myth led her on an unexpected quest investigating mysteries from how juncos win a fight to why cowbirds smell like cookies. In The Secret Perfume of Birds—part science, part intellectual history, and part memoir—Whittaker blends humor, clear writing, and a compelling narrative to describe how scent is important not just for birds but for all animals, including humans. Whittaker engagingly describes how emerging research has uncovered birds' ability to produce complex chemical signals that influence their behavior, including where they build nests, when they pick a fight, and why they fly away. Mate choice, or sexual selection—a still enigmatic aspect of many animals' lives—appears to be particularly influenced by smell. Whittaker's pioneering studies suggest that birds' sexy (and scary) signals are produced by symbiotic bacteria that manufacture scents in the oil that birds stroke on their feathers when preening. From tangerine-scented auklets to her beloved juncos, redolent of moss, birds from across the world feature in Whittaker's stories, but she also examines the smelly chemicals of all kinds of creatures, from iguanas and bees to monkeys and humans. Readers will enjoy a rare opportunity to witness the twisting roads scientific research can take, especially the challenging, hilarious, and occasionally dangerous realities of ornithology in the wild. The Secret Perfume of Birds will interest anyone looking to learn more about birds, about how animals and humans use our senses, and about why it can sometimes take a rebel scientist to change what we think we know for sure about the world—and ourselves.
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Author: Graham Martin
Author: Graham R. Martin
Author: Martin Stevens
Author: André A. Dhondt
Author: Jelle 1987
Author: Etienne Danchin
Author: Yegor B. Malashichev
Author: J. G. M. Thewissen
Author: Tim Birkhead
Author: Danielle J. Whittaker