front cover of Ecology and the Environment
Ecology and the Environment
The Mechanisms, Marrings, and Maintenance of Nature
R. J. Berry
Templeton Press, 2011

Ecology and the Environment: The Mechanisms, Marring, and Maintenance of Nature is the ninth title published in the Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this volume, R. J. Berry, a well-known leader in the field of ecology, describes the basic concepts of ecology and seeks to put them into a general context for a reader who lacks any scientific background.

Berry explores the implications of these basic concepts and how they affect human life and the decisions we have to make, both as individuals and as members of a species that has colonized and influenced every part of the globe. He points out that we are a part of the animal world, but at the same time, we are apart from it, and he makes it clear that how we relate to our environment affects the quality of our life—indeed, it may affect our very survival. Going beyond a simple introduction of concepts, the book explores wider questions about the nature of humanity and how human ecology relates to humanness. Berry proposes that we are more than machines or even advanced apes—we are Homo divinus, transformed from an organism descended from the same stock as the apes but qualitatively different and able to relate to a creator God. The book argues that those who conclude otherwise are neglecting relevant data.
 
Berry offers the perfect introduction to these philosophical and theological issues, but his work never loses sight of the practical issues either—the kind that is increasingly being addressed by national and international environmental agencies. In order to grasp the full scope of these issues and to more fully understand the ubiquitous news headlines concerning environmental matters, a reader would do well to start with Ecology and the Environment.
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From Origin to Destination
Trends and Mechanisms in Social Stratification Research
Edited by Stefani Scherer, Reinhard Pollak, Gunnar Otte, and Markus Gangl
Campus Verlag, 2007
Despite the momentous social and economic change of recent decades, patterns of social stratification have proven to be remarkably stable. In From Origin to Destination, an expert team analyzes the current state of social stratification research from a comparative, international perspective. This volume presents theoretical knowledge as well as empirical evidence on questions such as intergenerational social mobility; inequalities of educational opportunity, gender and ethnicity; and the role of education in the labor market.
 
 
 
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The Gerbil in Behavioral Investigations
Mechanisms of Territoriality and Olfactory Communication
By Del Thiessen and Pauline Yahr
University of Texas Press, 1977

In this comprehensive account of olfactory communication and territorial behavior in the Mongolian gerbil, Del Thiessen and PaulineYahr provide the first detailed study of the neurological and physiological mechanisms that control these basic functions. In addition to explaining the links between hormones, genes, olfactory cues, and territorial acts, they also offer a more general picture of gerbil behavior, as well as a brief look at other mammalian species that communicate social status by way of olfactory messages.

Territorial behavior, as defined by the authors, includes all acts that are restricted to a particular area and are crucial for successful reproduction. In the Mongolian gerbil, and probably in other mammals as well, territoriality is controlled by sex hormones acting on specific areas of the central nervous system. Hormones from the gonads apparently act in the brain by altering the genetic apparatus controlling biochemicals used in neural communication. Without these hormones, the animal is socially inert and unable to transmit genes to the next generation. The authors conclude from the results of over ten years of investigation that the most complex social interactions depend on the integrity of the hormone system and its constant tuning by olfactory stimuli.

The book incorporates a review of all previously known studies of gerbil behavior and representative data for many other scent-marking species. A stereotaxic brain atlas for the gerbil is a feature that will be especially helpful to other researchers. The book's eclectic nature should make it valuable to anyone concerned with territorial behavior, hormones and behavior, or brain processes, as well as to those who are specifically interested in the Mongolian gerbil.

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The Hot-Blooded Insects
Strategies and Mechanisms of Thermoregulation
Bernd Heinrich
Harvard University Press, 1993

Bernd Heinrich's widely praised Bumblebee Economics set a high standard for scientifically accurate yet gracefully articulate writing about nature's ingenious patterns, specifically thermoregulation. Hot-Blooded Insects takes a giant step forward by presenting an overview of what is now known about thermoregulation in all of the major insect groups, offering new insights on physiology, ecology, and evolution.

The book is richly illustrated by the author's exquisite sketches. By describing the environmental opportunities and challenges faced by moths and butterflies, grasshoppers and locusts, dungball rollers and other beetles, a wide range of bees, and other insects, Heinrich explains their dazzling variety of physiological and behavioral adaptations to what, for them, is a world of violent extremes of temperature. These mechanisms are apparent only through precise observations, but the small body size of insects poses large technical difficulties in whole-animal experiments, engendering controversy about the reliability of the data thus derived. Emphasizing an experimental approach, Heinrich pinpoints where he believes studies have gone astray, describing in detail both groundbreaking experiments and those which leave a reasonable doubt about the mechanism being interpreted. He reviews relevant work on the major taxa to show the underlying patterns that draw diversity together, opines on current controversies, and identifies questions that call for further study.

Physiologists, ecologists, entomologists, and zoologists—in fact, all biologists—will be stimulated and challenged to further research by this masterly synthesis of a new field; it will also appeal to informed readers interested in general science.

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In Search of Mechanisms
Discoveries across the Life Sciences
Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Neuroscientists investigate the mechanisms of spatial memory. Molecular biologists study the mechanisms of protein synthesis and the myriad mechanisms of gene regulation. Ecologists study nutrient cycling mechanisms and their devastating imbalances in estuaries such as the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, much of biology and its history involves biologists constructing, evaluating, and revising their understanding of mechanisms.
           
With In Search of Mechanisms, Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden offer both a descriptive and an instructional account of how biologists discover mechanisms. Drawing on examples from across the life sciences and through the centuries, Craver and Darden compile an impressive toolbox of strategies that biologists have used and will use again to reveal the mechanisms that produce, underlie, or maintain the phenomena characteristic of living things. They discuss the questions that figure in the search for mechanisms, characterizing the experimental, observational, and conceptual considerations used to answer them, all the while providing examples from the history of biology to highlight the kinds of evidence and reasoning strategies employed to assess mechanisms. At a deeper level, Craver and Darden pose a systematic view of what biology is, of how biology makes progress, of how biological discoveries are and might be made, and of why knowledge of biological mechanisms is important for the future of the human species.
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Insects on Plants
Community Patterns and Mechanisms
D. R. Strong, J. H. Lawton, and Sir Richard Southwood
Harvard University Press, 1984
Much community theory has ignored insects on plants, although they comprise a large proportion of extant organisms. In this text the authors review the evolution and recent history of phytophagous insects and consider the structure of phytophage communities, with the aim of bringing the study of such communities into the mainstream of ecological thought. They combine the synthetic, pattern-searching approach to community ecology with reductionist methods which isolate single mechanisms for study in a stimulating text will interest senior undergraduates and research workers in the fields of entomology, ecology, agriculture and botany.
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front cover of An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology, Volume 3
An Introduction to the History of Chronobiology, Volume 3
The Search for Biological Clocks: Metaphors, Models, and Mechanisms
Jole Shackelford
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022

In three volumes, historian Jole Shackelford delineates the history of the study of biological rhythms—now widely known as chronobiology—from antiquity into the twentieth century. Perhaps the most well-known biological rhythm is the circadian rhythm, tied to the cycles of day and night and often referred to as the “body clock.” But there are many other biological rhythms, and although scientists and the natural philosophers who preceded them have long known about them, only in the past thirty years have a handful of pioneering scientists begun to study such rhythms in plants and animals seriously. Tracing the intellectual and institutional development of biological rhythm studies, Shackelford offers a meaningful, evidence-based account of a field that today holds great promise for applications in agriculture, health care, and public health. Volume 1 follows early biological observations and research, chiefly on plants; volume 2 turns to animal and human rhythms and the disciplinary contexts for chronobiological investigation; and volume 3 focuses primarily on twentieth-century researchers who modeled biological clocks and sought them out, including three molecular biologists whose work in determining clock mechanisms earned them a Nobel Prize in 2017.

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Mechanisms of Syntactic Change
Edited by Charles N. Li
University of Texas Press, 1977

Historical linguistics, the oldest field in linguistics, has been traditionally dominated by phonological and etymological investigations. Only in the late twentieth century have linguists begun to focus their interest and research on the area of syntactic change and the insight it provides on the nature of language. This volume represents the first major contribution on the mechanisms of syntactic change.

The fourteen articles that make up this volume were selected from the Symposium on the Mechanisms of Syntactic Change held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1976, one of a series of three conferences sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

These papers clearly demonstrate that the generative approach to the study of language does not explain diachronic processes in syntax. This collection is enlightening, provocative, and carefully documented with data drawn from a great variety of language families.

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