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Water Willows to Wax Myrtles
Veteran botanist, scientific author, and professor Robert H. Mohlenbrock brings the full depth of his expertise and scholarship to his latest book, Acanthaceae to Myricaceae: Water Willows to Wax Myrtles, the third of four volumes in the Aquatic and Standing Water Plants of the Central Midwest series. This easy-to-use illustrated reference guide covers aquatic and standing water plants for the states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kentucky (excluding the biologically distinct Cumberland Mountain region of eastern Kentucky), from spearmint to wintergreen, from aster to waterwort.
The volume identifies, describes, and organizes species in three groups, including truly aquatic plants, which spend their entire life with their vegetative parts either completely submerged or floating on the water’s surface; emergents, which are usually rooted under water with their vegetative parts standing above the water’s surface; and wetland plants, which live most or all of their lives out of water, but which can live at least three months in water.
Mohlenbrock lists the taxa alphabetically, and within each taxon, he describes the species with the scientific names he deems most appropriate (indicating if his opinion differs from that of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), common names, identification criteria, line drawings, geographical distribution, habitat description, and official U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wetlands designation as described by the National Wetland Inventory Section in 1988.
Acanthaceae to Myricaceae is an essential reference for state and federal employees who deal with environmental conservation and mitigation issues in aquatic and wetland plants. It is also a useful guide for students and instructors in college and university courses focusing on the identification of aquatic and wetland plants.
Six Big Questions about Evolution
Despite the ongoing cultural controversy in America, evolution remains a cornerstone of science. In this book, Francisco J. Ayala—an evolutionary biologist, member of the National Academy of Sciences, and winner of the National Medal of Science and the Templeton Prize—cuts to the chase in a daring attempt to address, in nontechnical language, six perennial questions about evolution: • Am I a Monkey? • Why Is Evolution a Theory? • What Is DNA? • Do All Scientists Accept Evolution? • How Did Life Begin? • Can One Believe in Evolution and God? This to-the-point book answers each of these questions with force. Ayala's occasionally biting essays refuse to lend credence to disingenuous ideas and arguments. He lays out the basic science that underlies evolutionary theory, explains how the process works, and soundly makes the case for why evolution is not a threat to religion. Brief, incisive, topical, authoritative, Am I a Monkey? will take you a day to read and a lifetime to ponder.
A World View through History
Drawing on the latest research in archaeozoology, archaeology, and molecular biology, Animals as Domesticates traces the history of the domestication of animals around the world. From the llamas of South America and the turkeys of North America, to the cattle of India and the Australian dingo, this fascinating book explores the history of the complex relationships between humans and their domestic animals. With expert insight into the biological and cultural processes of domestication, Clutton-Brock suggests how the human instinct for nurturing may have transformed relationships between predator and prey, and she explains how animals have become companions, livestock, and laborers. The changing face of domestication is traced from the spread of the earliest livestock around the Neolithic Old World through ancient Egypt, the Greek and Roman empires, South East Asia, and up to the modern industrial age.
A Revised and Enlarged Edition of Norman C. Fassett's A Manual of Aquatic Plants, Volume I: Pteridophytes, Gymnosperms, and Angiosperms: Dicotyledons
This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful.
Features include:
* coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families
* more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa
* keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations
* habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy
* a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds
* glossaries of botanical and habitat terms
* a full index for each volume
Wetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.
A Revised and Enlarged Edition of Norman C. Fassett's A Manual of Aquatic Plants, Volume II: Angiosperms: Monocotyledons
This is by far the best and most comprehensive manual and illustrated guide to native and naturalized vascular plants—ferns, conifers, and flowering plants—growing in aquatic and wetland habitats in northeastern North America, from Newfoundland west to Minnesota and south to Virginia and Missouri. Published in two volumes, this long-awaited work completely revises and greatly expands Norman Fassett’s 1940 classic A Manual of Aquatic Plants, yet retains the features that made Fassett’s book so useful.
Features include:
* coverage of 1139 plant species, 1186 taxa, 295 genera, 109 families
* more than 600 pages of illustrations, and illustrations for more than 90% of the taxa
* keys for each species include references to corresponding illustrations
* habitat information, geographical ranges, and synonomy
* a chapter on nuisance aquatic weeds
* glossaries of botanical and habitat terms
* a full index for each volume
Wetland ecologists, botanists, resource managers, public naturalists, and environmentalists concerned with the preservation of wetland areas, which are increasingly threatened, will welcome this clear, workable, and comprehensive guide.
Monocotyledons
Robert K. Godfrey and Jean W. Wooten provide well-written, concise descriptions and keys for the identification of seven hundred species. The text for each species includes both a statement indicating the habitats in which the plant is usually found and information about its geographical distribution. Approximately four hundred drawings supplement the text and provide additional information for proper identification. The authors use nontechnical language whenever possible and include a glossary of technical terms.
The first comprehensive survey of the aquatic and wetland monocotyledons of the Southeast, this book will prove invaluable for ecologists, botanists, and nonspecialists interested in the plant life and ecology of the region.
Dicotyledons
The first comprehensive survey of the aquatic and wetland plants of the Southeast, the Godfrey and Wooten volumes will prove invaluable to botanists, ecologists, college students, government agencies involved in land-use management, and nonspecialists interested in the plant life and ecology of the region.
A Complete Reference Guide
From the Delaware River to the shores of Lake Erie, Pennsylvania's diverse watery habitats are home to more than 200 species of aquatic plants. In Aquatic Plants of Pennsylvania: A Complete Reference Guide, botanists Timothy A. Block and Ann Fowler Rhoads have assembled the first identification guide specific to the Keystone State yet useful throughout the Mid Atlantic region. Organized and written in a way that will make information easily accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike, the book highlights the diversity and vital ecological importance of this group of plants, providing photographs, illustrations, descriptions, and identification keys for all emergent, floating-leaved, and submergent aquatic plants found in the Commonwealth.
An introductory chapter on aquatic plant ecology covers topics such as evolution, form, and reproduction of aquatic plants, vegetation zones, types of aquatic ecosystems, and rare and endangered species. Information on invasive plants, such as Eurasian water-milfoil and curly pondweed, that threaten Pennsylvania's aquatic ecosystems will be especially useful to watershed organizations, citizen monitoring projects, lake managers, and natural resource agency personnel. An illustrated identification key guides the reader through a series of steps to properly identify a specimen based on its characteristics. Each of the more than 200 listings provides a plant's taxonomy, detailed description, distribution map, and expert botanical illustrations. Many also include color photographs of the plants in their natural habitats.
Conservation and Management
Although bats are often thought of as cave dwellers, many species depend on forests for all or part of the year. Of the 45 species of bats in North America, more than half depend on forests, using the bark of trees, tree cavities, or canopy foliage as roosting sites. Over the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that bat conservation and management are strongly linked to the health of forests within their range. Initially driven by concern for endangered species—the Indiana bat, for example—forest ecologists, timber managers, government agencies, and conservation organizations have been altering management plans and silvicultural practices to better accommodate bat species. Bats in Forests presents the work of a variety of experts who address many aspects of the ecology and conservation of bats. The chapter authors describe bat behavior, including the selection of roosts, foraging patterns, and seasonal migration as they relate to forests. They also discuss forest management and its influence on bat habitat. Both public lands and privately owned forests are considered, as well as techniques for monitoring bat populations and activity. The important role bats play in the ecology of forests—from control of insects to nutrient recycling—is revealed by a number of authors. Bat ecologists, bat conservationists, forest ecologists, and forest managers will find in this book an indispensable synthesis of the topics that concern them.
With all new illustrations, color photographs, revised species accounts, updated maps, and a sturdy flexible binding, this new edition of the authoritative guide to bats in Texas will serve as the field guide and all-around reference of choice for amateur naturalists as well as mammalogists, wildlife biologists, and professional conservationists. Texas is home to all four families of bats that occur in the United States, including thirty-three species of these important yet increasingly threatened mammals. Although five species, each represented by a single specimen, may be regarded as vagrants, no other state has a bat fauna more diverse, from the state’s most common species, the Brazilian free-tailed bat, to the rare hairy-legged vampire. The introductory chapter of this new edition of Bats of Texas surveys bats in general—their appearance, distribution, classification, evolution, biology, and life history—and discusses public health and bat conservation. An updated account for each species follows, with pictures by an outstanding nature photographer, distribution maps, and a thorough bibliography. Bats of Texas also features revised and illustrated dichotomous keys accompanied by gracefully detailed line drawings to aid in identification. A list of specimens examined is located at batsoftexas.com.
