Proceedings Of The Academy Of Natural Sciences Vol 154 2005

"Publications of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia": v. 53, 1901, p. 788-794.

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

The first professionally researched miscellany guide to the animal kingdom, packed with fascinating and bizarre facts_ Did you know that the male flour beetle is the only animal which can mate and impregnate a female he has never met?_ That virgin male butterflies make better lovers than more experienced ones?_ Or that rats can learn the difference between Dutch and Japanese?Why Do Moths Drink Elephants' Tears? is an entertaining and addictive collection of eclectic insights and unusual facts, detailing the wondrous diversity of animal life that surrounds us.

A comprehensive review of the hundreds of bird species that have become extinct over the last 1,000 years of habitat degradation, over-hunting and rat introduction. Extinct Birds has become the standard text on this subject, covering both familiar icons of extinction as well as more obscure birds, some known from just one specimen or from travellers' tales. This second edition is expanded to include dozens of new species, as more are constantly added to the list, either through extinction or through new subfossil discoveries. The book is the result of decades of research into literature and museum drawers, as well as caves and subfossil deposits, which often reveal birds long-gone that disappeared without ever being recorded by scientists while they lived. From Great Auks, Carolina Parakeets and Dodos to the amazing yet almost completely vanished bird radiations of Hawaii and New Zealand via rafts of extinction in the Pacific and elsewhere, this book is both a sumptuous reference and astounding testament to humanity's devastating impact on wildlife.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Recent Developments in Science, Engineering and Technology, REDSET 2017, held in Gurgaon, India, in October 2017. The 66 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 329 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on big data analysis, data centric programming, next generation computing, social and web analytics, security in data science analytics.

Rivers of Europe, Second Edition, presents the latest update on the only primary source of complete and comparative baseline data on the biological and hydrological characteristics of more than 180 of the highest profile rivers in Europe. With even more full-color photographs and maps, the book includes conservation information on current patterns of river use and the extent to which human society has exploited and impacted them. Each chapter includes up to 10 featured rivers, with detailed information on their physiography, hydrology, ecology/biodiversity and human impacts. Rivers selected for specific coverage include the largest, the most natural, and those most affected by humans. This book provides the most comprehensive information ecologists and conservation managers need to better assess their management and meet the EU legislative good governance targets. Includes comparison photos of rivers, along with information on the history and management of each river Presents summary information on hydrological, ecological and freshwater biodiversity patterns and trends of each river Highlights environmental issues of great importance to citizens and governments, including fragmentation by dams, pollution, introduction of nonnative species and reductions in biodiversity