The importance of chemical communication is illustrated in this study with examples from a diverse range of animals including humans, marine copepods, Drosophila, Caenorhabditis elegans, moths, snakes, goldfish, elephants and mice. For students of ecology, evolution and behavior, Tristram Wyatt provides an introduction to the rapid progress in the understanding of olfaction at the molecular and neurological level. In addition, he offers chemists, molecular biologists and neurobiologists insights into the ecological, evolutionary and behavioral context of olfactory communication.
Contents
1. Animals in a chemical world; 2. Discovering pheromones; 3. Sex pheromones: finding and choosing mates; 4. Coming together and keeping apart: aggregation and host-marking pheromones; 5. Scent marking and territorial behaviour; 6. Pheromones and social organization; 7. Pheromones and recruitment communication; 8. Fight-or-flight: alarm pheromones; 9. Perception and action of pheromones: from receptor molecules to brains and behaviour; 10. Finding the source: pheromones and orientation behaviour; 11. Breaking the code: illicit signallers and receivers of semiochemical signals; 12. Using pheromones: applications; 13. On the scent of human attraction: human pheromones?; Appendix A: An introduction to pheromones for non-chemists; References.
Reviews
"Wyatt demonstrates an impressive grasp of the literature and has written a most enjoyable and informative textbook (one that I read non-stop)." Nature Neuroscience
"...an accessible textbook that offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students a data-based, integrative, and broadly comparative synthesis of this field...it's readable and engaging style will launch many productive arguments along the way." Ethology
"...as an accessible and intelligent general work on pheromones, this book is invaluable. It is also rare and welcome in its capacity for easy and readable explanation of both the proximate and the ultimate roles of pheromones in animal behavior." International Journal of Primatology
"The text is sufficiently referenced and well indexed. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this book for its contribution to the understanding of animal behavior." Human Nature Review
"Pheromones are by far the most important signals used by organisms of all kinds. Wyatt's book is an excellent text and review: up-to-date, comprehensive, balanced, detailed, clearly written, and nicely illustrated." Edward O. Wilson
"This fascinating book...is an advance over previous monographs in that it is truly interdisciplinary, including as it does studies through the disciplines of chemistry, behavior, neurobiology, endocrinology, ecology and evolution...A highly recommended source of inspiration and information for all interested in behavior and ecology." Bulletin of the British Ecological Society
"Enjoyable reading and a highly successful endeavor that can serve as a course text, and update on the field, or a reference book." American Entomologist
"This well-illustrated, thoroughly referenced work is admirably accessible and lucid. It offers much both as a textbook and as an introduction to this remarkable field for new investigators. Tristram Wyatt has given us a gem!" Quarterly Review of Biology, John G. Hildebrand
"Recommended." Choice
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