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This Week’s Book Giveaway

July 9, 2012 by

Garden Insects of North America:
The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs
by Whitney Cranshaw

Garden Insects of North America is the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to the common insects and mites affecting yard and garden plants in North America. In a manner no previous book has come close to achieving, through full-color photos and concise, clear, scientifically accurate text, it describes the vast majority of species associated with shade trees and shrubs, turfgrass, flowers and ornamental plants, vegetables, and fruits—1,420 of them, including crickets, katydids, fruit flies, mealybugs, moths, maggots, borers, aphids, ants, bees, and many, many more. For particularly abundant bugs adept at damaging garden plants, management tips are also included. Covering all of the continental United States and Canada, this is the definitive one-volume resource for amateur gardeners, insect lovers, and professional entomologists alike.

To ease identification, the book is organized by plant area affected (e.g., foliage, flowers, stems) and within that, by taxa. Close to a third of the species are primarily leaf chewers, with about the same number of sap suckers. Multiple photos of various life stages and typical plant symptoms are included for key species. The text, on the facing page, provides basic information on host plants, characteristic damage caused to plants, distribution, life history, habits, and, where necessary, how to keep “pests” in check—in short, the essentials to better understanding, appreciating, and tolerating these creatures.

“Know thine enemy,’ a time-worn caveat lifted from Sun-tzu’s treatise, The Art of War, is sage advice for the organic gardener hoping to emerge victorious in the battle of the bugs. Acquiring such knowledge has just become easier with the release of Garden Insects of North America. . . . [Cranshaw] has packed his book with concise, organized information on all the common and not-so-common insect pests of turf, orchards and gardens in North America. The overwhelming emphasis is on recognizing and categorizing the insects themselves, using appearance, type of destructive damage encountered and target food hosts as clues. . . . With detailed, high-quality photographic plates conveniently adjacent to the standardized insect descriptions, identification of suspected insect enemies is straightforward.”—Jack Aldridge, San Francisco Chronicle

The random draw for this book with be Friday 7/13 at 11 am EST. Be sure to like us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Birds and Natural History, Book Giveaway, Reference

Animal Navigation Fun Facts — Part 3

July 2, 2012 by

Think humans are good at navigation? Think again. Compared to some of the mesmerizing navigational abilities of birds and other species, human navigation is actually quite primitive. Here is our third and final part of our facts series about animal navigation from Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould. Click here to read part 1 and click here to read part 2 of our fun facts series.

Honeybee fact: The sun is a very important navigational tool for bees both in communicating the direction of a food resource and in finding the way home. As vital as the sun is, bees have trouble seeing it. It is hard for them to actually identify the sun in the sky because their visual resolution does not allow them to identify the sun as a unique shape. As a rule of thumb for bees, if a bright spot contains no more than 20% ultraviolet light and is no larger than 15° across, then it is the sun.

Bird fact: In unfamiliar territory, birds must be able to estimate the amount of distance traveled. Early sailors threw logs overboard and counted the number of knots on an attached line that were carried out in 30 or 60 seconds in order to measure speed. Each knot was 50 feet apart and this now corresponds with one nautical mile per hour. Birds come fully equipped with special circuits in their eyes to judge the rate at which the terrain below is moving and they can time how fast they are moving in intervals.

Bonus fact: Birds are migrating and nesting sooner because of climate change. They believe the planet is getting warmer and are betting their lives on it.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Facts & Figures, Popular Science, Twitter

Animal Navigation Fun Facts — Part 2

June 25, 2012 by

Think humans are good at navigation? Think again. Compared to some of the mesmerizing navigational abilities of birds and other species, human navigation is actually quite primitive. Here is part two of our facts series about animal navigation from Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould.

Honeybee fact: Bees “dance” to communicate the location of a food source. What are bees actually doing during their dance? Trigonometry of course. They draw accurate maps to food by generating distance and direction components in their dances. When bees waggle while they dance, the direction of their waggling encodes the direction of the food. Pointing up refers to the direction of the sun and then the dancer reveals the relative azimuth of the sun by waggling left or right. Depending on the subspecies of bee, each waggle can correspond to a distance of 5-50 yards.

Bird fact: Many birds travel at night, and while they are unable to see shapes, they use starlight to help them navigate. They memorize star patterns, particularly the poles, and update their celestial snapshot depending on which constellations are visible during the season. When it’s overcast, birds resort to using their secondary magnetic compass and navigate by following magnetic fields.

Bonus fact: Even plankton have navigational abilities. Zooplankton, the organism that nearly all fish feed on, migrate down daily and up at night to follow their prey—phytoplankton.

We’ll be back next Monday for the third and final part to our animal navigation facts series.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Facts & Figures, Popular Science, Twitter

New Biology Catalog

June 22, 2012 by

We invite you to download and browse our 2012-2013 Biology catalog:
http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/bio12.pdf

Be on the lookout for these new and forthcoming titles (just to name a few):

Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation
by James L. Gould & Carol Grant Gould

Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life
by Enrico Coen

Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture
by R. Ford Denison

Solid Biomechanics
by Roland Ennos

How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin’s Finches
by Peter R. Grant & B. Rosemary Grant

Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate
 by David Randall

The World’s Rarest Birds
by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swash & Robert Still

and more. There are too many great titles to list here. You’re just going to have to check it out online: http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/bio12.pdf

If you are attending the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology in Ottawa, stop by and visit us at booth #105!

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Climate Science, Ecology, Events, New Catalog, Princeton Field Guides, Textbooks, Twitter

Animal Navigation Fun Facts — Part 1

June 18, 2012 by

Think humans are good at navigation? Think again. Compared to some of the mesmerizing navigational abilities of birds and other species, human navigation is actually quite primitive. Each Monday for the next few weeks we will be posting facts about animal navigation from Nature’s Compass: The Mystery of Animal Navigation by James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould.

Bird Fact: Many birds are able to navigate back to their nests after a few preliminary first flights. James and Carol Gould explain, “Taken to a new home after just one or two brief outings and confined for up to several years, pigeons will nevertheless generally return to their natal loft at the first opportunity.” Could any of you make your way home as a toddler? It turns out that many creatures can cover thousands of miles in mental maps using landmarks, and not just those they see but those that they hear. For example, birds use the noise of the winds passing over the Rocky Mountains as an auditory landmark.

Bonus fact: Ants can navigate the Sahara desert by measuring their visual flow. They count their footsteps and make it back to their homes despite the uniform appearance of their surroundings and their small size.

Check back next Monday for some cool facts about honeybees.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Facts & Figures, Popular Science, Twitter

New YouTube video for popular science title, ‘Cells to Civilizations’

June 12, 2012 by

Cells to Civilizations

Award winning scientist Enrico Coen’s new book, ‘Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life‘ , is published this month. He talks here about the ideas behind the book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urDhZkCtkvM

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, history of science, Philosophy of Science, Trailer, Twitter

Another Google+ Giveaway!

June 11, 2012 by

Are you following PUP on Google+ yet? If not, today’s the day to add us to your circle—we’re hosting another giveaway this week! Follow us by Friday to win.

The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds
by Richard Crossley

This stunningly illustrated book from acclaimed birder and photographer Richard Crossley revolutionizes field guide design by providing the first real-life approach to identification. Whether you are a beginner, expert, or anywhere in between, The Crossley ID Guide will vastly improve your ability to identify birds.

Unlike other guides, which provide isolated individual photographs or illustrations, this is the first book to feature large, lifelike scenes for each species. These scenes—640 in all—are composed from more than 10,000 of the author’s images showing birds in a wide range of views—near and far, from different angles, in various plumages and behaviors, including flight, and in the habitat in which they live. These beautiful compositions show how a bird’s appearance changes with distance, and give equal emphasis to characteristics experts use to identify birds: size, structure and shape, behavior, probability, and color. This is the first book to convey all of these features visually—in a single image—and to reinforce them with accurate, concise text. Each scene provides a wealth of detailed visual information that invites and rewards careful study, but the most important identification features can be grasped instantly by anyone.

By making identification easier, more accurate, and more fun than ever before, The Crossley ID Guide will completely redefine how its users look at birds. Essential for all birders, it also promises to make new birders of many people who have despaired of using traditional guides.

  • Revolutionary. This book changes field guide design to make you a better birder
  • A picture says a thousand words. The most comprehensive guide: 640 stunning scenes created from 10,000 of the author’s photographs
  • Reality birding. Lifelike in-focus scenes show birds in their habitats, from near and far, and in all plumages and behaviors
  • Teaching and reference. The first book to accurately portray all the key identification characteristics: size, shape, behavior, probability, and color
  • Practice makes perfect. An interactive learning experience to sharpen and test field identification skills
  • Bird like the experts. The first book to simplify birding and help you understand how to bird like the best
  • An interactive website—www.crossleybirds.com—includes expanded captions for the plates and species updates

 

We invite you to read the Introduction here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9384.pdf

The random draw for this book with be Friday 6/15 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to check out our Google+ page and add us to your circle to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Birds and Natural History, Book Giveaway, The Crossley ID Guide

Paul Seabright in the UK

June 1, 2012 by

Seabright RSA photo

Paul Seabright, author of ‘The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present‘ was in the UK in May.  He spoke at the RSA and recorded an interview with VoxEU.

Please follow the attached links to listen again to any of these.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Cultural Studies, Economics, Sociology, Twitter, United Kingdom

This Week’s Book Giveaway

May 21, 2012 by

The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present
by Paul Seabright

As countless love songs, movies, and self-help books attest, men and women have long sought different things. The result? Seemingly inevitable conflict. Yet we belong to the most cooperative species on the planet. Isn’t there a way we can use this capacity to achieve greater harmony and equality between the sexes? In The War of the Sexes, Paul Seabright argues that there is—but first we must understand how the tension between conflict and cooperation developed in our remote evolutionary past, how it shaped the modern world, and how it still holds us back, both at home and at work.

Drawing on biology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, Seabright shows that conflict between the sexes is, paradoxically, the product of cooperation. The evolutionary niche—the long dependent childhood—carved out by our ancestors requires the highest level of cooperative talent. But it also gives couples more to fight about. Men and women became experts at influencing one another to achieve their cooperative ends, but also became trapped in strategies of manipulation and deception in pursuit of sex and partnership. In early societies, economic conditions moved the balance of power in favor of men, as they cornered scarce resources for use in the sexual bargain. Today, conditions have changed beyond recognition, yet inequalities between men and women persist, as the brains, talents, and preferences we inherited from our ancestors struggle to deal with the unpredictable forces unleashed by the modern information economy.

Men and women today have an unprecedented opportunity to achieve equal power and respect. But we need to understand the mixed inheritance of conflict and cooperation left to us by our primate ancestors if we are finally to escape their legacy.

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9654.pdf

The random draw for this book with be Thursday 5/17 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to like us on Facebook if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Book Giveaway, Economics, Sociology

BOOK FACT FRIDAY

May 4, 2012 by

FACT: “The largest species of spiders, South American tarantulas or bird-eating spiders, reach a body length of 10cm and may have a leg span of up to 27cm. But the smallest species are really tiny—less than one millimeter body length when adult. Nevertheless all are predators. And all, with the exception of one family, use venom to paralyze their prey. Biting in self defense appears to be only a secondary purpose.”

The Private Life of Spiders
by Paul Hillyard

With more than 100 different families and 40,000 individual species, spiders are among the most successful creatures on Earth. Highly adaptable, they live almost everywhere, from equatorial rainforest to Arctic tundra. And they come in a huge range of shapes and sizes, from the tiny Patu digua, measuring less than half a millimeter, to the immense bird-eating tarantula, which can reach a span of eleven inches. In The Private Life of Spiders, spider expert Paul Hillyard takes the reader on a fascinating and richly illustrated tour of the lives of some of the world’s most remarkable spiders.

The Private Life of Spiders reveals the intriguing behaviors of these complex creatures, from their extraordinary web-spinning skills and hunting strategies to their courtship displays and devoted care for their young. The book also describes other surprising skills of some spiders, such as the ability to cross vast stretches of open water.

Written in an engaging style, The Private Life of Spiders also looks at why people are scared of spiders, explains why such fear is generally misplaced, and shows why more needs to be done to protect endangered spiders.

–Features spiders from a vast range of habitats around the world

–Includes more than 100 stunning color photographs that capture the beauty and diversity of spiders

–Covers spider anatomy, behavior, reproduction, social organization, and hunting and web construction techniques

“Hillyard is a true spider devotee, and he cheerfully informs us that there is no escape from his subject. . . . The Private Life of Spiders is a stroll through their largely hidden world, highlighting the most spectacular, unusual, and instructive of the eight-legged brethren. After a brief overview of spider evolution and biology, Hillyard launches into the meat of his subject-a sweeping overview of spider diversity, commencing with those species whose habits and bodies are the most primitive, and culminating with those paragons of arachnid evolution, the elegant orb-weavers.”—Tim Flannery, New York Review of Books

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Birds and Natural History, Book Fact Friday

This Week’s Book Giveaway

April 30, 2012 by

This week’s book giveaway is for our loyal fans on our Princeton Birds and Natural History Facebook page. One lucky winner will receive a copy of Parrots of the World by Joseph M. Forshaw.

From the macaws of South America to the cockatoos of Australia, parrots are among the most beautiful and exotic birds in the world—and also among the most endangered. This stunningly illustrated, easy-to-use field guide covers all 356 species and well-differentiated subspecies of parrots, and is the only guide organized by geographical distribution—Australasian, Afro-Asian, and neotropical. It features 146 superb color plates depicting every kind of parrot, as well as detailed, facing-page species accounts that describe key identification features, distribution, subspeciation, habitat, and status. Color distribution maps show ranges of all subspecies, and field identification is further aided by relevant upperside and underside flight images. This premier field guide also shows where to observe each species in the wild, helping make this the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to the parrots of the world.

-The only parrot guide to focus on geographical distribution

-Covers all 356 species

-Features 146 color plates depicting all species and well-differentiated subspecies

-Provides detailed facing-page species accounts that describe key identification features, distribution, subspeciation, habitat, and status

-Includes color distribution maps

-Shows where to observe each species in the wild

“Provides an interesting look into the diversity of one of the most well-known families of birds and also some of the most rare and beautiful species on the planet.”—Birdfreak.com

“This guide is a must-have for any parrot lover or bird enthusiast.”—Eva Matthews, Flying Mullet

The random draw for this book with be Friday 4/27 at 3 pm EST. Be sure to like our Princeton Birds and Natural History Facebook page if you haven’t already to be entered to win!

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Birds and Natural History, Book Giveaway

Paul Seabright, author of The War of the Sexes, will be in the UK in May

April 30, 2012 by

Paul Seabright, whose book ‘The War of the Sexes’ is published on 10 May, will be in the UK on 14th and 15th May.  He will be talking at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on 14 May and at the RSA on 15 May.  Please follow links to sign up for either of these events or contact Caroline Priday cpriday@pupress.co.uk
for further information regarding his trip.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Cultural Studies, Economics, Sociology, Twitter, United Kingdom
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