Behavioral Adaptations to Life in the City

Behavioral Adaptations to Life in the City PDF Author: David Andrew Luther
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889713156
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description

Behavioral Adaptations to Life in the City

Behavioral Adaptations to Life in the City PDF Author: David Andrew Luther
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889713156
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description


Darwin Comes to Town

Darwin Comes to Town PDF Author: Menno Schilthuizen
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250127831
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
*Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts. *Lizards in Puerto Rico are evolving feet that better grip surfaces like concrete. *Europe’s urban blackbirds sing at a higher pitch than their rural cousins, to be heardover the din of traffic. How is this happening? Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating and changing the evolution of the animals and plants around us. In Darwin Comes to Town, he takes us around the world for an up-close look at just how stunningly flexible and swift-moving natural selection can be. With human populations growing, we’re having an increasing impact on global ecosystems, and nowhere do these impacts overlap as much as they do in cities. The urban environment is about as extreme as it gets, and the wild animals and plants that live side-by-side with us need to adapt to a whole suite of challenging conditions: they must manage in the city’s hotter climate (the “urban heat island”); they need to be able to live either in the semidesert of the tall, rocky, and cavernous structures we call buildings or in the pocket-like oases of city parks (which pose their own dangers, including smog and free-rangingdogs and cats); traffic causes continuous noise, a mist of fine dust particles, and barriers to movement for any animal that cannot fly or burrow; food sources are mainly human-derived. And yet, as Schilthuizen shows, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is not just surviving, but evolving ways of thriving. Darwin Comes toTown draws on eye-popping examples of adaptation to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward over population might not take the rest of nature down with us.

Introduction to Urban Science

Introduction to Urban Science PDF Author: Luis M. A. Bettencourt
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262046008
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
A novel, integrative approach to cities as complex adaptive systems, applicable to issues ranging from innovation to economic prosperity to settlement patterns. Human beings around the world increasingly live in urban environments. In Introduction to Urban Science, Luis Bettencourt takes a novel, integrative approach to understanding cities as complex adaptive systems, claiming that they require us to frame the field of urban science in a way that goes beyond existing theory in such traditional disciplines as sociology, geography, and economics. He explores the processes facilitated by and, in many cases, unleashed for the first time by urban life through the lenses of social heterogeneity, complex networks, scaling, circular causality, and information. Though the idea that cities are complex adaptive systems has become mainstream, until now those who study cities have lacked a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding cities and urbanization, for generating useful and falsifiable predictions, and for constructing a solid body of empirical evidence so that the discipline of urban science can continue to develop. Bettencourt applies his framework to such issues as innovation and development across scales, human reasoning and strategic decision-making, patterns of settlement and mobility and their influence on socioeconomic life and resource use, inequality and inequity, biodiversity, and the challenges of sustainable development in both high- and low-income nations. It is crucial, says Bettencourt, to realize that cities are not "zero-sum games" and that knowledge, human cooperation, and collective action can build a better future.

Philosophy of Behavioral Biology

Philosophy of Behavioral Biology PDF Author: Kathryn S. Plaisance
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400719515
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This volume provides a broad overview of issues in the philosophy of behavioral biology, covering four main themes: genetic, developmental, evolutionary, and neurobiological explanations of behavior. It is both interdisciplinary and empirically informed in its approach, addressing philosophical issues that arise from recent scientific findings in biological research on human and non-human animal behavior. Accordingly, it includes papers by professional philosophers and philosophers of science, as well as practicing scientists. Much of the work in this volume builds on presentations given at the international conference, “Biological Explanations of Behavior: Philosophical Perspectives”, held in 2008 at the Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany. The volume is intended to be of interest to a broad range of audiences, which includes philosophers (e.g., philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, and metaethicists), as well as practicing scientists, such as biologists or psychologists whose interests relate to biological explanations of behavior.

Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior

Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior PDF Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128132523
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 3052

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Book Description
Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior, Second Edition, Four Volume Set the latest update since the 2010 release, builds upon the solid foundation established in the first edition. Updated sections include Host-parasite interactions, Vertebrate social behavior, and the introduction of ‘overview essays’ that boost the book's comprehensive detail. The structure for the work is modified to accommodate a better grouping of subjects. Some chapters have been reshuffled, with section headings combined or modified. Represents a one-stop resource for scientifically reliable information on animal behavior Provides comparative approaches, including the perspective of evolutionary biologists, physiologists, endocrinologists, neuroscientists and psychologists Includes multimedia features in the online version that offer accessible tools to readers looking to deepen their understanding

Urban Ecology

Urban Ecology PDF Author: Richard T. T. Forman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107007003
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Book Description
The first richly illustrated worldwide portrayal of urban ecology, tying together organisms, built structures, and the physical environment around cities.

Urban Biodiversity and Equity

Urban Biodiversity and Equity PDF Author: Max Lambert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198877293
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This advanced textbook moves beyond a basic scientific comprehension of urban ecosystems to understand the essential details of how scientists, policy makers, and practitioners develop solutions to effectively manage urban biodiversity. Such efforts necessitate unravelling the complex components that bolster or constrain biodiversity including human-wildlife interactions, resource availability, climate fluctuations, novel species relationships, and landscape heterogeneity. However, key to an understanding of these processes is also recognizing the tremendous social variation inherent within and across urban areas. The diversity of urban human communities fundamentally shapes how society designs, builds, and manages urban landscapes. This means that urban environmental management unavoidably must account for human social variation. Unfortunately, urban systems have a history and continued legacy of social inequality (e.g., systemic racism and classism) that govern how cities are both built and managed. This novel text not only highlights these connections, but also illustrates the interdisciplinary approaches needed for advancing a new, justice-centred approach to nature conservation. Urban Biodiversity and Equity is suitable for graduate level students and professional researchers from both natural and social science disciplines studying the ecology, conservation, and management of urban environments and their biodiversity. It will also be of relevance and use to a broader audience of urban ecologists, urban planners, and urban wildlife practitioners.

Adaptation to Life

Adaptation to Life PDF Author: George E. Vaillant
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674004140
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Between 1939 and 1942, one of America's leading universities recruited 268 of its healthiest and most promising undergraduates to participate in a revolutionary new study of the human life cycle. The originators of the program, which came to be known as the Grant Study, felt that medical research was too heavily weighted in the direction of disease, and their intent was to chart the ways in which a group of promising individuals coped with their lives over the course of many years. Nearly forty years later, George E. Vaillant, director of the Study, took the measure of the Grant Study men. The result was the compelling, provocative classic, Adaptation to Life, which poses fundamental questions about the individual differences in confronting life's stresses. Why do some of us cope so well with the portion life offers us, while others, who have had similar advantages (or disadvantages), cope badly or not at all? Are there ways we can effectively alter those patterns of behavior that make us unhappy, unhealthy, and unwise? George Vaillant discusses these and other questions in terms of a clearly defined scheme of "adaptive mechanisms" that are rated mature, neurotic, immature, or psychotic, and illustrates, with case histories, each method of coping.

Primate Adaptation and Evolution

Primate Adaptation and Evolution PDF Author: John Fleagle
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0123786339
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Primate Adaptation and Evolution, Third Edition, is a thorough revision of the text of choice for courses in primate evolution. The book retains its grounding in the extant primate groups as the best way to understand the fossil trail and the evolution of these modern forms. However, this coverage is now streamlined, making reference to the many new and excellent books on living primate ecology and adaptation – a field that has burgeoned since the first edition of Primate Adaptation and Evolution. By drawing out the key features of the extant families and referring to more detailed texts, the author sets the scene and also creates space for a thorough updating of the exciting developments in primate palaeontology – and the reconstruction through early hominid species – of our own human origins. This updated version covers recent developments in primate paleontology and the latest taxonomy, and includes over 200 new illustrations and revised evolutionary trees. This text is ideal for undergraduate and post-graduate students studying the evolution and functional ecology of primates and early fossil hominids. Long-awaited revision of the standard student text on primate evolution Full coverage of newly discovered fossils and the latest taxonomy Over 200 new illustrations and revised evolutionary trees

The Urban World

The Urban World PDF Author: J. John Palen
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
This text presents a cross-cultural look at cities and suburbs around the world. It offers an overview of the changing urban scene, covering evolving patterns and the changing nature of urban life. It provides coverage of women in metropolitan areas.