Secret Weapons: Defenses of Insects, Spiders, Scorpions, and Other Many-Legged Creatures - Hardcover

Eisner, Thomas; Eisner, Maria; Siegler, Melody

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674018826 ISBN 13: 9780674018822

Publisher: Belknap Press, 2005

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 preeminence is a story deftly and colorfully 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 defenses 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 feces, camouflage and sticky coatings. And along with a marvelous 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 defenses 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 this title

About the Authors

Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University. In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. His film Secret Weapons won the Grand Award at the New York Film Festival and was named Best Science Film by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Maria Eisner is Research Associate of Biology at Cornell University.

Melody Siegler is Associate Professor of Biology at Emory University.

Reviews

"Defense is at the root of the evolutionary success of arthropods." And what a panoply of defenses they display. The authors—Thomas Eisner is J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at Cornell University; his wife, Maria Eisner, a research associate of biology at Cornell; and Melody Siegler, an associate professor of biology at Emory University—present 69 examples. They range from Mastigoproctus giganteus (the vinegaroon, which ejects a spray with an acetic acid content of 84 percent when it is physically disturbed) to Apis mellifera (the honeybee, whose stinger produces a chemically complex venom made up of about half mellitin, which is largely responsible for the pain associated with a bee sting). Yet with all that is known on this subject, much must remain to be discovered because millions of arthropod species are thought to be undiscovered. "Think of what this means," the authors say, "in terms of biological wonders lying in wait, in terms of new bugs and bug adaptations awaiting discovery."

Editors of Scientific American

The arthropods--those multilegged, lowly denizens of the planet that most of us would probably like to forget--are masters at the art of defense. Outnumbering all of the other animals put together, the arthropods have survived through their mastery of a multitude of chemical weapons. In their fascinating new book, the authors, all of whom study the defensive strategies of arthropods (insects, scorpions, centipedes, etc.), provide an overview of their different methods of chemical defense. The book is divided into short chapters, each of which tells the story of one species or group of related species. Color photographs, mostly from Eisner's collection, illustrate each chapter, and the chemical formulae for each species' defensive substance is provided. A list of the major references from the scientific literature appends each chapter. This unique guide to froth, venom, sprays, sticky coatings, and so forth will satisfy both the casual reader and the serious student and is a very worthy addition to any natural history collection. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/pdf/EISSEC_excerpt.pdf

Edition details

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674018826
• ISBN 13: 9780674018822
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384