Termites

Download or read book Underbug written by Lisa Margonelli and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature’s most misunderstood insects. Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually—and yet, in Margonelli’s telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we’re building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite’s properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others—unearthing disquieting answers about the world’s most underrated insect and what it means to be human.

Download or read book Biology of Termites: a Modern Synthesis written by David Edward Bignell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biology of Termites, a Modern Synthesis brings together the major advances in termite biology, phylogenetics, social evolution and biogeography. In this new volume, David Bignell, Yves Roisin and Nathan Lo have brought together leading experts on termite taxonomy, behaviour, genetics, caste differentiation, physiology, microbiology, mound architecture, biogeography and control. Very strong evolutionary and developmental themes run through the individual chapters, fed by new data streams from molecular sequencing, and for the first time it is possible to compare the social organisation of termites with that of the social Hymenoptera, focusing on caste determination, population genetics, cooperative behaviour, nest hygiene and symbioses with microorganisms. New chapters have been added on termite pheromones, termites as pests of agriculture and on destructive invasive species.

Download or read book Biology of Termites written by Kumar Krishna and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-02 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biology of Termites, Volume I presents the anatomical, physiological, biochemical, and behavioral laboratory and field studies of termite species. Although termites have been associated mainly with damage, only less than 10% of the species have actually been recorded as pests, obscuring their important ecological role in the breakdown of vegetative matter and their variety and complexity of structure, physiology, social behavior, caste differentiation and regulation, and other aspects of their biology. After briefly describing the social organization, classification, and research history of termites, the book discusses the external morphology of these species and the similarities and differences between the various groups and the different castes. The subsequent chapters cover the internal anatomy of termites, including their digestive physiology, exocrine and endocrine glands, reproductive and nervous systems, and sense organs. Other chapters deal with the social behavior and communication in the termites and the termite colonizing flights and associated activities. The book also examines caste differentiation in the three lower termite families, namely, Hodotermitidae, Kalotermitidae, and Rhinotermitidae. This volume includes discussions on the rearing, feeding, and biochemistry of termites; the radioisotopes for feeding studies; and the moisture requirements for termite survival. The concluding chapters deal with the introduction or interception of termites by humans and their association with fungi, as well as the relationships of termite hosts with termitophiles. Termite biologists, zoologists, botanists, ecologists, behaviorists, biochemists, endocrinologists, and economic entomologists will find this volume invaluable.

Download or read book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams written by Mitchel Resnick and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1997-01-22 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized? Most people assume that the bird in front leads and the others follow. In fact, bird flocks don't have leaders: they are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. And a surprising number of other systems, from termite colonies to traffic jams to economic systems, work the same decentralized way. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams describes innovative new computational tools that can qhelp people (even young children) explore the workings of such systems—and help them move beyond the centralized mindset.

Download or read book Termites written by M. J. Pearce and published by CAB International. This book was released on 1997 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text provides a scientific introduction to termites, including their behaviour, pest status and control.

Download or read book Termites: Evolution, Sociality, Symbioses, Ecology written by Y. Abe and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-14 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a new compendium in which leading termite scientists review the advances of the last 30 years in our understanding of phylogeny, fossil records, relationships with cockroaches, social evolution, nesting, behaviour, mutualisms with archaea, protists, bacteria and fungi, nutrition, energy metabolism,population and community ecology, soil conditioning, greenhouse gas production and pest status.

Download or read book Termites in the Trading System written by Jagdish Bhagwati and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jagdish Bhagwati, the internationally renowned economist who uniquely combines a reputation as the leading scholar of international trade with a substantial presence in public policy on the important issues of the day, shines here a critical light on Preferential Trade Agreements, revealing how the rapid spread of PTAs endangers the world trading system. Numbering by now well over 300, and rapidly increasing, these preferential trade agreements, many taking the form of Free Trade Agreements, have re-created the unhappy situation of the 1930s, when world trade was undermined by discriminatory practices. Whereas this was the result of protectionism in those days, ironically it is a result of misdirected pursuit of free trade via PTAs today. The world trading system is at risk again, the author argues, and the danger is palpable. Writing with his customary wit, panache and elegance, Bhagwati documents the growth of these PTAs, the reasons for their proliferation, and their deplorable consequences which include the near-destruction of the non-discrimination which was at the heart of the postwar trade architecture and its replacement by what he has called the spaghetti bowl of a maze of preferences. Bhagwati also documents how PTAs have undermined the prospects for multilateral freeing of trade, serving as stumbling blocks, instead of building blocks, for the objective of reaching multilateral free trade. In short, Bhagwati cogently demonstrates why PTAs are Termites in the Trading System.