Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2015 - Science & Technology — Astronautics & Astronomy

The work of three Thailand-based herpetologists, this is the first authoritative, all-inclusive guide to the turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodilians of the authors' ecologically diverse country.  All 352 known reptilian species are covered.  The front matter includes an explanation of the use of the book, a lengthy glossary, and identification of major groups and distinguishing characteristics of reptilians.  A substantial introduction covers Thailand's herpetological history, physiography, climate, habitats, forests, wetlands, zoogeography, and conservation.  The remainder of the book comprises units on turtles, lizards and snakes, and crocodilians.  The unit on turtles includes taxonomic definitions, dichotomous family and lesser taxa keys, and family-ordered individual species accounts.  Each account includes common and scientific names, carapace length, descriptions, behavior, habitat, Thailand and regional ranges, and international conservation status.  Color illustrations of adults and small marginal distribution maps are included for each species.  The other two units have a similar format.  Snout-vent lengths are provided for each species.  A selective bibliography and indexes of scientific and common names complete the volume.  Accurate, well written, and user-friendly, this guide will be an invaluable resource for anyone with interests in the rich and diverse reptilian fauna of Thailand.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

An award-winning ecologist, Safina (Stony Brook Univ.) has written a delightful, thought-provoking book on animal thoughts and feelings.  Traditionally, animal behaviorists have not "allowed" animals to have the human attributes; through a multitude of examples, mostly from field observations, Safina destroys that idea.  The book is divided into four sections (each with numerous brief chapters): these deal with elephants (primarily), wolves, general concepts (such as mind, conceit, and the neuronal bases of behaviors), and marine mammals (particularly killer whales).  Safina describes how animals behave, and also relates patterns of human behavior to those of animals.  He takes the viewpoint that since humans are animals, one can look at nonhuman animals to explain human patterns of behavior.  The book includes a few black-and-white visuals: maps and, in a center section, plates of elephants, wolves, and killer whales.  There is a notes chapter at the end; Safina lists by page numbers the sources associated with the ideas presented on a page.  He also includes a general bibliographic chapter and a well-developed index.  This is fascinating reading for all audiences.  It joins the classic book on the topic, Donald Griffin'sAnimal Minds (CH, Dec'01, 39-2199), and many more recent works on the topic.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

The best-publicized behavioral research on African elephants features the lives and interactions of matriarch-led extended families.  The solitary or small-group-affiliation behavior of bulls, though often reported, has pushed them to the wings.  After decades of research on the elephants of northwestern Namibia, OConnell (Stanford Univ. School of Medicine) brings the boys to center stage.  Amid the arid grasslands of Etosha National Park is an intricate and dynamic hierarchy of bull elephants.  In an area of scarce resources such as Etosha, male elephant social interactions are particularly complex and, as the author reveals, often tenuous.  Elephant Don is a dramatic account of how affection and aggression, deference and deceit, and alliances and power plays continuously shape the relationships in the bull hierarchy.  The book is written in an accessible style with minimal technical terminology.  OConnell does an exceptional job of conveying the rich complexity of elephant societies in a manner that will appeal to a broad audience without sacrificing the scientific perspective with accounts of behavioral research methodologies.  This is a worthwhile resource for anyone interested in African wildlife or animal behavior in general.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

This handsome volume represents the beginning of an ambitious project.  If volume 1 is any indication, it will be a thorough compendium of worthwhile knowledge about all species of domestic freshwater fishes in the US, Canada, and Mexico.  This area supports 50 families and 1,200-plus species, the world's largest temperate fish fauna.  The freshwater category includes many marine species that occasionally venture into low-salinity habitats.  The preface contains a phylogenetic table of all the clades, orders, and families; a second table contains a classification of all the ray-finned (Actinopterygii) species based on DNA sequence data.  Chapter 1 is a comprehensive account of the evolution and ecology of the fish assemblages.  Chapter 2 contains detailed descriptions and illustrations of mating behavior.  The following 11 chapters are each devoted to a family, appearing in systematic order.  Family discussions include sections on diversity and distribution, phylogeny, fossil record, genetics, physiology, behavior, reproduction, ecology, conservation, and literature.  The book is beautifully illustrated with colored plates, photographs, drawings, and range maps. The literature-cited section, with about 100 pages, comprises a good reference library.  A scientific names index and a general index support the text.  When completed, the three-volume set will be the most authoritative work on freshwater fishes in North America.Summing Up: Essential. All academic biology collections.

Moore, famed for his leadership in global amphibian conservation efforts, played a major role in the worldwide searches during 2010 for frogs and salamanders thought to be near extinction.  He coordinated 26 search teams on five continents and led expeditions in Colombia and Haiti.  This book presents the results, successful and less so, of these searches in an informative, entertaining, and colorfully illustrated manner.  The book is organized into 17 chapters and three parts.  Part 1 details the authors interest and accounts of researchers seeking reasons for worldwide anuran declines.  Part 2 provides intriguing details of searches for rare frogs in countries such as Colombia, Haiti, India, Israel, and Costa Rica.  Part 3 closes the narrative with chapters focusing on the authors thoughts on field results, anuran conservation, and the future survival of amphibian populations.  A list of world expeditions to uncover rare frogs completes the book.  This is a superb resource for general readers and for specialists with advanced training in herpetology.  It not only makes fascinating reading but also provides numerous, excellent color photos of rare frogs and salamanders.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels and libraries.

This book, second of three in the series "The Natural History of the Crustacea," focuses on lifestyle and feeding biology.  It is thorough, dense, informative, and very, very useful.  The editors point out that "good natural history is a source of timeless, priceless information for the biological sciences," and so it is.  There is no substitute for knowing what an animal does in its own natural environment, and there are instances in which what researchers thought animals' behavior or ecology was turned out not to be true when they observed their subjects "at home."  Collecting this information is difficult, however; natural history was the first approach to understanding behavior, and the crustaceans are a huge and diverse phylum.  The editors have wisely focused chapters on modes of life or ecological niches, such as burrow dwellings, mobile homes, or deposit feeding or, alternately, on locations, such as freshwater, terrestrial, or extreme environments.  Though each chapter is succinct, the book is huge567 pages.  Nevertheless, it will be a priceless reference, not only for crustacean specialists but also for anyone interested in the adaptations of higher invertebrates.Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers/faculty

The primates, including lemurs, tarsiers, monkeys, and apes, are humans' closest zoological relatives.  In this volume, Gebo (Northern Illinois) has drawn together a summary of knowledge about the anatomical structures of primates in a comparative and evolutionary framework.  The first three chapters provide a background to evolutionary biology and a survey of the major groups and lifeways of modern primates.  Chapter 4 is an excellent review of the structure and function of bones and the muscles that connect and flex them, with special emphasis on the ways primates use the musculoskeletal system in distinctive modes of locomotion.  The next six chapters cover specific regions of the skeleton, using the anatomy of selected primates to exemplify their groups and facilitate comparisons of structure and function.  The head (skull) comes first, with short sections on the brain, eyes and vision, and smell.  Later chapters cover teeth (with chewing and diet), the trunk and backbone, the forelimb and hind limb (especially their myriad uses in locomotion), and a comparison of great apes (strangely still called Pongidae) to humans.  Hundreds of individual drawings, combined into comparative figures to show details of anatomy, complement the clear and restrained text.  This is a nearly perfect introduction to a complex and fascinating subject.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.

The last comprehensive work on salamanders of Europe, North Africa, and Asia was published in French in 1968 by Robert Thorn.  Thus, this authoritative, up-to-date volume on those regions' 160-plus salamander species by famed amphibian specialist Sparreboom (Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands) is a welcome addition.  The preface explains the author's inspiration for the book and his criteria for the family, genus, and species accounts.  A lengthy introduction addresses salamander biology, life cycles, population threats, conservation, and taxonomic groupings.  Species accounts alphabetically arranged by genera within the five families known to occur within the territories covered follow.  The uniform accounts contain nomenclature information and categories, including "Description," "Diagnosis," "Eggs and Larvae," "Distribution," "Habitat," "Behaviour," "Threats and Conservation," and "Observations in Captivity."  Colorful topographic range maps and superb color photos and/or drawings provide unusual glimpses into the lives of each salamander species, their eggs, their young, and their habitats.  Some accounts include monochrome and/or color drawings of courtship sequences, body patterns, and shape variation, etc.  An extensive reference section, recommended readings and websites, a glossary, a scientific names index, and color maps support the text.  This is the finest book available on Old World salamanders for amateur naturalists and professional herpetologists worldwide.  No library should be without it.Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries.

This extremely well-written book is an exemplary attempt at peacemaking in the so-called culture wars.  Whitehead (Dalhousie Univ., Nova Scotia) and Rendell (Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland) provide a clear historical perspective on the study of animal culture, up-to-date literature reviews on behavioral innovations and traditions in non-human animals, comprehensive classifications of social mechanisms (i.e., the building blocks of culture), and careful critical analyses of the similarities and differences between human and animal cultures.  The title of the book does not give a full appreciation of the long-term and fascinating research by Whitehead and Rendell.  The authors insight and open-mindedness allow them to successfully address key definitional issues (e.g., ethnic markers, social norms); discuss the strengths and weaknesses of several methodological approaches to studying culture (e.g., method of elimination, experimental designs); link brain size, cognition, communication, and sociability; and explain the (mal)adaptive consequences and evolutionary implications of cultural transmission (e.g., gene-culture coevolution).  The authors emphasize the role of the aquatic environment in driving cultural evolution.  Spiced up with excellent quotations, this book will resonate well with a broad readership, from cetacean lovers to students of animal behavior to the general public.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.

Wildlife biologists have waited 30 years for this book, the story of Estes's 50 years of research on the wildebeest,Connochaetes taurinus.  Estes (Smithsonian; Harvard Museum of Natural History), an accomplished author, e.g., The Behavior Guide to African Mammals (CH, Dec'91, 29-1854), The Safari Companion, 1993, scholar, safari guide, and probably the worlds greatest expert on the wildebeest, provides a comprehensive, compassionate view of the ungainly keystone of the East African savannas.  In the style of George SchallersThe Serengeti Lion (1972), this account is part natural history and part personal memoir, supplementing the author's own decades of research with that of other scientists.  Estes includes anatomical, physiological, and behavioral adaptations of the wildebeest, the ecology of African savannas, comparisons with the different species of wildebeest relatives, and the challenges facing the Serengeti ecosystem.  The heart of the book, though, is five chapters on wildebeest social organization, life history, and behavior, including wildebeests' iconic migration through the Serengeti ecosystem.  The chapter findings are well cited, though the citations lean toward papers from the 1970s and 1980s.  This is an important resource for all interested in wildlife conservation, ecology, and behavior.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers.

Marzluff (Univ. of Washington) has hit a winner with this new release.  This easily read but engrossing account offers something for everyone.  The setting is familiar: suburban areas that fringe cities across the globe.  Yet the story quickly begins to veer into unexpected, unexplored territory, and soon readers find themselves looking at their future on the planet.  This future is tied, more than people may wish to acknowledge, to the bird species valiantly adapting to the huge changes that humans have made to the landscape.  Writing with the sure hand of an inveterate observera crack scientist with the soul of a nice guy next doorMarzluff takes readers into his life in Seattle, working with teams of his graduate students and some admirable neighbors.  Readers visit ten cities around the world and marvel at the simplicity of the author's ten rules for saving the situation.  And readers are left with an optimistic list of deeply rewarding projects accessible to anyone.  This is therapy for people who worry.  Beautifully illustrated in black-and-white by Jack Delap, with accuracy and touches of humor.  For scientists, bird lovers, philosophersand everyone else.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.