100 Butterflies and Moths
Jeffrey C. Miller
Daniel H. Janzen
Winifred Hallwachs
Large-format photographs of 100 tropical butterflies and moths gathered in the forests of northwestern Costa Rica document the dazzling variety of the butterflies and moths unique to this region. The authors recount these insects' feats of mimicry and migration, lift the veil on their courtship, and show how the new technology of DNA barcoding is changing the picture of Lepidopteran biodiversity.
Hardcover 2007
American Warblers
Douglass H. Morse
Hardcover 1989
Animal Cognition
Jacques Vauclair
Animal Cognition presents a lucid and comprehensive overview of cognitive processes in animals--bees and wasps, cats and dogs, dolphins and sea otters, pigeons, titmice, and chimpanzees--and offers a novel discussion of the ways in which Piagetian concepts may be used to develop models for the study of animal cognition.
Hardcover 1996
Animal Social Complexity
Edited by Frans B. M. de Waal
Edited by Peter L. Tyack
Contributions by Christophe Boesch
Contributions by Jack W. Bradbury
Contributions by Richard Connor
Contributions by Scott Creel
Contributions by Christine Drea
Contributions by Anne Engh
Contributions by Laurence Frank
Contributions by Karen I. Hallberg
Contributions by Stephanie Jaffee
Contributions by Hans Kummer
Contributions by Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Contributions by W.C. McGrew
Contributions by Sarah L. Mesnick
Contributions by Toshisada Nishida
Contributions by Charles L. Nunn
Contributions by Eduardo B. Ottoni
Contributions by Lisa A. Parr
Contributions by Katherine B. Payne
Contributions by Susan Perry
Contributions by Ronald Schusterman
Contributions by Robert Seyfarth
Contributions by Jan A.R.A.M. van Hooff
Contributions by Carel van Schaik
Contributions by Bernhard Voelkl
Contributions by Sofia Wahaj
Contributions by Randall S. Wells
Contributions by Meredith West
Contributions by Hal Whitehead
Contributions by Gerald S. Wilkinson
Contributions by Harald Yurk
Contributions by Klaus Zuberbuehler
The editors of this volume argue that future research into complex animal societies and intelligence will change the perception of animals as gene machines, programmed to act in particular ways and perhaps elevate them to a status much closer to our own. At a time when humans are perceived more biologically than ever before, and animals as more cultural, are we about to witness the dawn of a truly unified social science, one with a distinctly cross-specific perspective?
Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
The Ants
Bert Hölldobler
Edward O. Wilson

View a collection of videos on Professor Wilson entitled "On the Relation of Science and the Humanities"

This landmark work, the distillation of a lifetime of research by the world's leading myrmecologists, is a thoroughgoing survey of one of the largest and most diverse groups of animals on the planet. Hölldobler and Wilson review in exhaustive detail virtually all topics in the anatomy, physiology, social organization, ecology, and natural history of the ants. In large format, with almost a thousand line drawings, photographs, and paintings, it is one of the most visually rich and all-encompassing views of any group of organisms on earth. It will be welcomed both as an introduction to the subject and as an encyclopedia reference for researchers in entomology, ecology, and sociobiology.

Hardcover 1990
Asian Honey Bees
with a foreword by Thomas D. Seeley
Benjamin P. Oldroyd
Siriwat Wongsiri
Foreword by Thomas D. Seeley
Benjamin Oldroyd has teamed with Siriwat Wongsiri to provide a comparative work synthesizing the rapidly expanding Asian honey bee literature. The authors underscore the pressures colonies face and detail the long and amazing history of the honey hunt. This book provides a cornerstone for future investigations on these species, insights into the evolution across species, and a direction for conservation efforts to protect these keystone species of Asia's tropical forests.
Hardcover 2006
Beautiful Minds
Maddalena Bearzi
Craig B. Stanford
Beautiful Minds explains how and why apes and dolphins are so distantly related yet so cognitively alike and what this teaches us about another large-brained mammal: Homo sapiens. Noting that apes and dolphins have had no common ancestor in nearly 100 million years, Bearzi and Stanford describe the parallel evolution that gave rise to their intelligence.
Hardcover 2008
Bolton's Catalogue of Ants of the World
Barry Bolton
Gary Alpert
Philip S. Ward
Piotr Naskrecki
Barry Bolton's New General Catalogue of the Ants of the World, published in 1995, was the first attempt in more than one hundred years to collect all taxonomic decisions for ants worldwide, including extinct as well as extant taxa. The new edition incorporates all taxonomic papers--from 1758 through 2005--on 14,550 species and subspecies of ants.
CD-ROM 2007
Bumblebee Economics
with a new preface
Bernd Heinrich
In his new preface Bernd Heinrich ranges from Maine to Alaska and north to the Arctic as he summarizes findings from continuing investigations over the past twenty-five years--by him and others--into the wondrous "energy economy" of bumblebees.
Paperback 2004
Chimpanzee Cultures
Edited by Richard Wrangham
Edited by W.C. McGrew
Edited by Frans B. M. de Waal
Edited by Paul Heltne
Foreword by Jane Goodall
The world's leading authorities on chimpanzees and bonobos chronicle the animals' behaviors from one study site to the next, in both captive and wild groups, in laboratory and field settings.
Hardcover 1994 / Paperback 1996
Coding and Redundancy
Jack P. Hailman
This book explores the strikingly similar ways in which information is encoded in nonverbal man-made signals (e.g., traffic lights and tornado sirens) and animal-evolved signals (e.g., color patterns and vocalizations). Appealing not only to specialists in semiotics, animal behavior, psychology, and allied fields but also to general readers, it serves as an introduction to animal signaling and to an important class of human communication.
Hardcover 2008
A Desert Calling
Michael A. Mares
Foreword by Stephen Jay Gould
For most of us the word "desert" conjures up images of barren wasteland, vast, dry stretches inimical to life. But for a great array of creatures, the desert is a haven and a home. Travel with Mares into the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and the American Southwest to encounter a rich and memorable variety of small, tenacious animals.
Hardcover 2002
A Dictionary of Ethology
Klaus Immelmann
Colin Beer
Paperback / Hardcover
The Fire Ants
Walter R. Tschinkel
In The Fire Ants, Walter Tschinkel provides not just an encyclopedic overview of Solenopsis invicta but a lively account of how research is done, how science establishes facts, and the pleasures and problems of a scientific career. The reader learns much about ants, the practice of science, and humans' role in the fire ant's North American success.
Hardcover 2006
A Fly for the Prosecution
M. Lee Goff
To Lee Goff and his fellow forensic entomologists, each body recovered at a crime scene is an ecosystem, a unique microenvironment colonized in succession by a diverse array of flies, beetles, mites, spiders, and other arthropods. Using actual cases on which he has consulted, Goff shows how knowledge of these insects and their habits allows forensic entomologists to furnish investigators with crucial evidence about crimes.
Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
For Love of Insects
Thomas Eisner
Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers--and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, For Love of Insects celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triumphant on the planet, the beneficiaries of extraordinary evolutionary inventiveness and unparalleled reproductive capacity.
Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2005
Good Natured
Frans B. M. de Waal
Frans de Waal takes on those who have declared ethics uniquely human. Making a compelling case for a morality grounded in biology, he shows that ethical behavior, in humans and animals alike, is as much a matter of evolution as any other trait.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1997
Harvestmen
Edited by Ricardo Pinto-da-Rocha
Edited by Glauco Machado
Edited by Gonzalo Giribet
This is the first comprehensive treatment of a major order of arachnids featuring more than 6,000 species worldwide, familiar in North America as daddy-longlegs but known scientifically as the Opiliones, or harvestmen. The 25 authors provide a broad taxonomic and ecological background for understanding this major arachnid group, the book should give field biologists worldwide the means to identify specimens and provide an invaluable reference for understanding harvestmen diversity and biology.
Hardcover 2007
Horse Power
Juliet Clutton-Brock
Hardcover
Identification Guide to the Ant Genera of the World
Barry Bolton
This book, by the world's leading ant taxonomist, offers a definitive guide for identifying these ubiquitous insects. Barry Bolton provides identification keys to all the living ant subfamilies and genera, presented in alphabetical order and separated by zoogeographical region. Designed for professional and amateur myrmecologists alike, this guide is a accessible as it is comprehensive, including information on the function and use of identification keys, instructions for preparing specimens for examination, and an illustrated glossary of morphological terms. Over 500 scanning electron microscope photographs illustrate the taxonomic keys.
Hardcover
Insects on Plants
D. R. Strong
J. H. Lawton
Richard Southwood
Paperback
Insects through the Seasons
Gilbert Waldbauer
The unparalleled success of insects is the story told in this highly entertaining book. How do these often tiny but indefatigable creatures do it? Gilbert Waldbauer pursues this question from hot springs and Himalayan slopes to roadsides and forests, scrutinizing insect life in its many manifestations.
Hardcover 1996 / Paperback 1998
Journey to the Ants
Bert Hölldobler
Edward O. Wilson
Richly illustrated and delightfully written, Journey to the Ants combines autobiography and scientific lore to convey the excitement and pleasure the study of ants can offer. The authors interweave their personal adventures with the social lives of ants, building a remarkable account of these abundant insects' evolutionary achievement.
Hardcover 1994 / Paperback 1998
Manipulative Monkeys
Susan Perry
Joseph H. Manson, With
This book takes us into a Costa Rican forest teeming with simian drama, where since 1990 primatologists Perry and Manson have followed four generations of capuchins. The authors describe behavior as entertaining--and occasionally as alarming--as it is recognizable: competition and cooperation, jockeying for position and status, peaceful years under an alpha male devolving into bloody chaos, and complex traditions passed from one generation to the next. Interspersed with their observations are the authors' colorful tales of the challenges of tropical fieldwork.
Hardcover 2008
Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles
Gilbert Waldbauer
Insects that are the least bit social may gather in modest groups, like the dozen or so sawfly larvae feeding on a pine needle, or they may form huge masses, like a swarm of migratory locusts in Africa or a cloud of mayflies at the edge of a midwestern lake. Why these insects get together and what they get out of their associations are questions finely and fully considered in this learned and entertaining look at the group behavior and social lives of a wide array of bugs.
Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2001
The North American Grasshoppers, Volume II, Acrididae
Daniel Otte
Having received such lavish praise for the first volume of his definitive taxonomic handbook, Daniel Otte now turns his attention to the bandwing grasshoppers. Like its predecessor, this volume will be useful to scientists in agriculture, environmental assessment, biogeography, grassland ecology, and insect taxonomy. It will also appeal to amateur naturalists.
Hardcover 1985
Organization of Insect Societies
Edited by Jürgen Gadau
Edited by Jennifer Fewell
Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
In this volume, an international group of scientists has synthesized their collective expertise and insight into a newly unified vision of insect societies and what they can reveal about how sociality has arisen as an evolutionary strategy.
Hardcover 2009
The Other Insect Societies
With a Foreword by Bert Hölldobler and a Commentary by Edward O. Wilson
James T. Costa
Foreword by Bert Hölldobler
Commentaries by Edward O. Wilson
In his exploration of insect societies that don't fit the eusocial schema, James T. Costa gives these interesting phenomena their due. He synthesizes the scattered literature about social phenomena across the arthropod phylum: beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches, mantids and membracids, sawflies and spiders. This wide-ranging tour takes a rich narrative approach that interweaves theory and data analysis with the behavior and ecology of these remarkable groups. This book is likely to inspire a new generation of naturalists to take a closer look.
Hardcover 2006
Prairie Dogs
Constantine N. Slobodchikoff
Bianca S. Perla
Jennifer L. Verdolin
Slobodchikoff and colleagues synthesize the results of their long-running study of Gunnison’s prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni), one of the keystone species of the short-grass prairie ecosystem. By examining the complex factors behind prairie dog decline, we can begin to understand the problems inherent in our adversarial relationship with the natural world.
Hardcover 2009
Predator upon a Flower
Douglass H. Morse
In the crab spider, Misumena vatia, Morse and his colleagues found an ideal species on which to test basic questions of lifetime fitness. Ecologists had previously identified variables shaping populations, but lacked the experimental data needed to comprehensively test individuals making foraging decisions. Predator upon a Flower recounts Morse's influential experimental discoveries, moving from individuals to communities to ecosystems, and suggests directions for future research in spider biology.
Hardcover 2007
Primeval Kinship
Bernard Chapais
In this account of the dawn of human society, Chapais shows that our knowledge about kinship and society in nonhuman primates supports, and informs, ideas first put forward by the distinguished social anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Chapais contends that only a few evolutionary steps were required to bridge the gap between the kinship structures of our closest relatives—chimpanzees and bonobos—and the human kinship configuration.
Hardcover 2008
The Question of Animal Culture
Edited by Kevin N. Laland
Edited by Bennett G. Galef
The issue of animal culture is hotly debated. Laland and Galef have gathered key voices in the often rancorous debate to summarize the views along the continuum from “Culture? Of course!” to “Culture? Of course not!” The result is essential reading for anyone interested in the validity of animal culture, and what it might say about our own.
Hardcover 2009
The Sand Wasps
Howard E. Evans
Kevin M. O'Neill
Foreword by Mary Alice Evans
Howard Evans was a brilliant ethologist and systematist, describing over 900 species in over a dozen entomology and natural history books. Upon his death in 2002, he left behind an unfinished manuscript, intended as an update of his classic 1966 work, The Comparative Ethology and Evolution of the Sand Wasps. O'Neill, Evans's former student and coauthor, has completed and enlarged this work into a tribe-by-tribe, species-by-species review of Bembicinae studies from the last four decades.
Hardcover 2007
Secret Weapons
Thomas Eisner
Maria Eisner
Melody Siegler
Part handbook, part field guide, part photo album, Secret Weapons, the follow-up to the award-winning For Love of Insects, 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.
Hardcover 2005 / Paperback 2007
The Social Biology of Ropalidia marginata
Raghavendra Gadagkar
Hardcover 2001
Songs, Roars, and Rituals
Lesley J. Rogers
Gisela Kaplan
From the calling macaw and the roaring lion to the dancing lyrebird, animals all around us can be heard and seen communicating with each other and, occasionally, with us. Why they do so, what their utterances mean, and how much we know about them are the subject of Songs, Roars, and Rituals. This is a concise and very readable, yet comprehensive, introduction to the complexities of communication in animals.
Hardcover 2000 / Paperback 2002
Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr is perhaps the most distinguished biologist of the twentieth century, and Systematics and the Origin of Species may be one of his greatest and most influential books. This classic study, first published in 1942, helped to revolutionize evolutionary biology by offering a new approach to taxonomic principles and correlating the ideas and findings of modern systematics with those of other life science disciplines. This book is one of the foundational documents of the "Evolutionary Synthesis." It is the book in which Mayr pioneered his new concept of species based chiefly on such biological factors as interbreeding and reproductive isolation, taking into account ecology, geography, and life history. In his new introduction for this edition, Mayr reflects on the place of this enduring work in the subsequent history of his field.
Paperback 1999
Understanding Chimpanzees
Edited by Paul Heltne
Edited by Linda A. Marquardt
Jane Goodall
Understanding Chimpanzees examines a wide range of topics, including social behavior and ecology in the field, the rich variety of cultural traditions between one population and another in Africa and elsewhere, behavior in captivity, and the incredible cognitive abilities of chimpanzees in language acquisition laboratories.
Hardcover 1989
Vibrational Communication in Animals
Peggy S. M. Hill
In creatures as different as crickets and scorpions, mole rats and elephants, there exists an overlooked channel of communication: signals transmitted as vibrations through a solid substrate. In this book, Hill summarizes a generation of groundbreaking work by scientists around the world on this long understudied form of animal communication.
Hardcover 2008