SECRET WEAPONS. Defenses Of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, And Other Many-Legged Creatures.

Eisner, Thomas, Maria Eisner and Melody Siegler.

ISBN 10: 0674018826 / ISBN 13: 9780674018822

Published by Belknap Press of Harvard University:, 2005

About this Item

372 pages, illustrated in color. "This book is intended as an illustrated guide to the defenses of insects and their kin, to the strategies that enabled present-day arthropods- insects and their relatives such as spiders, scorpions, and centipedes- to achieve preeminence on land." FINE HARDCOVER, FINE DUST JACKET. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 034902

Bibliographic Details

• Title: SECRET WEAPONS. Defenses Of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, And Other Many-Legged Creatures.
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University:
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674018826
• ISBN 13: 9780674018822
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • INSECTS AND ARACHNIDS

About this title

Synopsis

Mostly tiny, infinitely delicate, and short-lived, insects and their relatives - arthropods - nonetheless outnumber all their fellow creatures on earth. How lowly arthropods achieved this unlikely pre-eminence is a story deftly and colourfully told in this follow-up to the award-winning For Love of Insects. Part handbook, part field guide, part photo album, Secret Weapons chronicles the diverse and often astonishing defensive strategies that have allowed insects, spiders, scorpions, and other many-legged creatures not just to survive, but to thrive. In sixty-nine chapters, each brilliantly illustrated with photographs culled from Thomas Eisner's legendary collection, we meet a largely North American cast of arthropods - as well as a few of their kin from Australia, Europe, and Asia - and observe at firsthand the nature and extent of the defences that lie at the root of their evolutionary success. Here are the cockroaches and termites, the carpenter ants and honeybees, and all the miniature creatures in between, deploying their sprays and venom, froth and faeces, camouflage and sticky coatings. And along with a marvellous bug's-eye view of how these secret weapons actually work, here is a close-up look at the science behind them, from taxonomy to chemical formulas, as well as an appendix with instructions for studying chemical defences at home. Whether dipped into here and there or read cover to cover, Secret Weapons will prove invaluable to hands-on researchers and amateur naturalists alike, and will captivate any reader for whom nature is a source of wonder.

About the Author

Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University. In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science, and in 2005 he received the Rockefeller University Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. Maria Eisner is Research Associate of Biology at Cornell University. Melody Siegler is Associate Professor of Biology at Emory University.