Exploring animal social networks
By Darren P. Croft, Richard James, and Jens Krause
Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2008.

Call# QL775 .C764 2008

From Princeton University Press:

“Social network analysis is used widely in the social sciences to study interactions among people, groups, and organizations, yet until now there has been no book that shows behavioral biologists how to apply it to their work on animal populations. Exploring Animal Social Networks provides a practical guide for researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students in ecology, evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and zoology.

Existing methods for studying animal social structure focus either on one animal and its interactions or on the average properties of a whole population. This book enables researchers to probe animal social structure at all levels, from the individual to the population. No prior knowledge of network theory is assumed. The authors give a step-by-step introduction to the different procedures and offer ideas for designing studies, collecting data, and interpreting results. They examine some of today’s most sophisticated statistical tools for social network analysis and show how they can be used to study social interactions in animals, including cetaceans, ungulates, primates, insects, and fish. Drawing from an array of techniques, the authors explore how network structures influence individual behavior and how this in turn influences, and is influenced by, behavior at the population level. Throughout, the authors use two software packages–UCINET and NETDRAW–to illustrate how these powerful analytical tools can be applied to different animal social organizations.”

The paradise of all these parts : a natural history of Boston

By John Hanson Mitchell

Boston : Beacon Press, c2008.

Call# QH105 .M4 M58 2008

From Beacon Press:

”

In 1614, explorer John Smith sailed into what was to become Boston Harbor and referred to the wild lands and waters around him as “the Paradise of all these parts.” Within fifteen years, the Puritans were developing the tadpole-shaped Shawmut Peninsula, as members of the Massachusett tribe fled. Now, nearly four hundred years later, one must wonder what remains of John Smith’s “Paradise.”

Equipped with wit, intellect, and an innate curiosity about people and places, John Hanson Mitchell strolls through Boston’s streets, chronicling the nonhuman inhabitants and surprisingly diverse plant life, as well as the eccentric characters he meets at various turns. Using his modern observations as a starting point, he tells the fascinating stories of the tribal leaders, naturalists, community activists, and organizations who worked to preserve nature in the city over generations, from the Victory Gardens of the Fenway to the expansive woods of Franklin Park.

But much of the history is in the land itself. As he battles traffic on notorious Route 128, Mitchell considers the ancient origins of the rocks that line the highway and those that form the city’s foundation. A walk across Boston Common calls to mind the Tremount Hills, flattened by seventeenth-century newcomers; only Beacon Hill remains. A stroll through the Back Bay allows Mitchell to imagine the Charles River, so polluted by sewage that it became a public nuisance and was partially covered over with a massive nineteenth-century landfill. With this natural history in mind, Mitchell explores both ancient and new green space from Chelsea to South Boston, including the greenway formed by the Big Dig.

Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America’s oldest cities.”

Handbook of membrane separations : chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and biotechnological applications

By Anil Kumar Pabby

Boca Raton : CRC Press, c2009.

Call# TP248.25 .M46 H35 2009

From CRC Press:

Lichen biology 2nd ed.

Ed. by Thomas H. Nash III

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Call# QK581 .L47 2008

From Cambridge University Press:
“Lichens are symbiotic organisms in which fungi and algae and/or cyanobacteria form an intimate biological union. This diverse group is found in almost all terrestrial habitats from the tropics to polar regions. In this second edition, four completely new chapters cover recent developments in the study of these fascinating organisms, including lichen genetics and sexual reproduction, stress physiology and symbiosis, and the carbon economy and environmental role of lichens. The whole text has been fully updated, with chapters covering anatomical, morphological and developmental aspects; the contribution of the unique secondary metabolites produced by lichens to medicine and the pharmaceutical industry; patterns of lichen photosynthesis and respiration in relation to different environmental conditions; the role of lichens in nitrogen fixation and mineral cycling; and the use of lichens as indicators of air pollution. This is a valuable reference for both students and researchers interested in lichenology.

• Contains new chapters on sexual reproduction; stress physiology and symbiosis; the carbon economy of lichens; and the environmental role of lichens

• Carefully selected team of chapter authors ensures authoritative and even coverage

• Comprehensive coverage (including anatomy, morphology, physiology, ecology, systematics), and fully updated throughout”

Global pesticide resistance in arthropods

By Mark Edward Whalon

Wallingford, UK ; Cambridge, MA : CABI, c2008.

Call# SB951.5 .G585 2008

From CABI:

“Pesticide resistance has had a substantial impact on crop production and has been an important driver of change in modern agriculture, animal production and human health. Focusing specifically on arthropods, this book provides a comprehensive review of relevant issues in pesticide resistance. Detailed listings and references to all documented reports of resistance from around the world are included.”

Biology and evolution of ferns and lycophytes
Ed. by Tom A. Ranker and Christopher H. Haufler

Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Call# QK522 .B56 2008

From Cambridge University Press:

”

With their team of contemporary scholars, the editors present a thorough coverage of fundamental topics necessary for obtaining an up-to-date understanding of the biology of ferns and lycophytes. The book is organized into major topics that build from the individual and its biochemistry and structure, to genetics and populations, to interactions among individuals and the conservation of species, and concludes with perspectives on evolutionary history and classification. Each chapter is organized to review past work, explore current questions, and suggest productive directions for continued discoveries about these fascinating groups of organisms. Written for upper undergraduates, graduates and academic researchers, Biology and Evolution of Ferns and Lycophytes fills a major gap in biological, organism-level, evolutionary literature by providing a review of the biology and evolution of this important group of vascular land plants.

• The editors are both eminent authorities with a strong history in research and publication in fern biology

• Provides a comprehensive overview of this important group of vascular land plants, differing from other books in this area which are more specifically focused

• Each chapter is organized to review past work, explore current questions, and suggest productive directions for interested investigators”

Wild plants of the Burren and the Aran Islands

by E. Charles Nelson

Cork [Ireland] : Collins, 2008

Call# QK307 .N464 2008

From Collins Press:

“The Burren and the Aran Islands are renowned worldwide for their beautiful wild flowers and plants. Charles Nelson has selected 136, the most widely occurring plus a number of special plants. Each plant is illustrated by a colour photograph. Plants are described using the common English name, followed by Irish and Latin (botanical) names. Flowering periods and each plant’s distribution are given. “

The tragic sense of life : Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought

by Robert J. Richards

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Call#QH31 .H2 R53 2008

From The University of Chicago Press:

“Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin’s foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), than through any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself. Haeckel’s books vastly outsold Darwin’s in their own time, and today, his extraordinary scientific illustrations adorn books, posters, and coffee mugs.  Haeckel gave currency to the idea of the “missing link” between apes and man, formulated the concept of ecology, and promulgated the “biogenetic law”—the idea that the embryo of an advanced species recapitulates the stages the species went through in its evolutionary descent. But, with detractors ranging from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to modern-day creationists and advocates of Intelligent Design, Haeckel is better known as a divisive figure than as a pioneering biologist. Robert J. Richards’s intellectual biography rehabilitates Haeckel, providing the most accurate measure of his science and art yet written, as well as a moving account of Haeckel’s eventful life.
The Tragic Sense of Life examines the intellectual context as well as the intimate experiences and profound convictions that allowed Darwin’s message to become almost a religious calling for Haeckel. Far from shying away from the many controversies that marked Haeckel’s life and career, Richards engages Haeckel’s many challengers and dissenters, whose accusations against him range from the charge that he falsified some of his famous drawings to the supposedly proto-Nazi quality of his biological theories. Reappraising Haeckel’s accomplishments, artistic endeavors, many battles, personal relationships, and searing loves, Richards convincingly demonstrates the enormous impact Haeckel had on biology and larger scientific affairs during the last half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries.
The definitive account of Darwin’s greatest intellectual heir, The Tragic Sense of Life book is a sweeping reevaluation of the Romantic ideas and calamitous biography of a man whose vision of evolutionary theory is still influential today.”