Summary of Ashley Ward's The Social Lives of Animals

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I visited the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart, Tasmania. The complex is impressive, and the food is themed to commemorate the giants of early expeditions.
#2 The krill were collected at sea and then mollycoddled for weeks on board the Aurora before the ship returned to port with its precious cargo.
#3 The return trip to Hobart was also filled with challenges, from collecting live krill to babysitting the krill once they were in aquaria on board. You have to understand the bigger picture to understand why people go to so much trouble for such measly shrimp-like creatures.
#4 The keystone species in the Southern Ocean are the Antarctic krill, which are not only important to the animals that eat them, but also to the entire ecosystem. If krill disappeared, it would take the most important species with them.

Sujets

• Ecology

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 26 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669366751
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ashley Ward's The Social Lives of Animals
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I visited the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart, Tasmania. The complex is impressive, and the food is themed to commemorate the giants of early expeditions.

#2

The krill were collected at sea and then mollycoddled for weeks on board the Aurora before the ship returned to port with its precious cargo.

#3

The return trip to Hobart was also filled with challenges, from collecting live krill to babysitting the krill once they were in aquaria on board. You have to understand the bigger picture to understand why people go to so much trouble for such measly shrimp-like creatures.

#4

The keystone species in the Southern Ocean are the Antarctic krill, which are not only important to the animals that eat them, but also to the entire ecosystem. If krill disappeared, it would take the most important species with them.

#5

The krill are a key component in the diet of whales. They are difficult to catch, and even the largest whales have a hard time eating them all. They are extremely fast escapologists, and they swarm in large numbers to defend themselves against predators.

#6

The interactions between whales and krill are similar to a predator–prey relationship, but not entirely one-way. whales kill many krill, but they also help support the krill by producing waste that is full of nutrients for the krill to eat.

#7

Krill are partial to Newcastle Brown Ale, which was chosen as an easily available source of dissolved minerals. The point of this experiment was to test precisely what the animals find particularly attractive and how nutrient gradients in the ocean affect krill movement patterns.

#8

Krill are the main players in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, and they are rich in protein and oils. They are also nutritious, and their potential for human consumption and as feed in aquaculture is attracting interest.

#9

The difficulties involved in fishing for krill are considerable, yet the riches on offer to anyone who can solve these problems remain a powerful incentive. Without accurate data, quota setting is a lottery.

#10

The krill lab is a modest series of small rooms. There are thousands of them, milling around in a collection of huge bowls. The progress of each through the water is stately – they adapt to their polar habitat by moving at a slower pace.

#11

The krill are a sensitive species that need to be kept at a certain temperature and fed specific food to thrive. They are also extremely fussy about their water quality, which means that every part of the system must be non-toxic.

#12

The krill swarming in the Southern Ocean are delivering up the secrets of their life cycle and their incredible swarming behavior. They are allowing us to predict how life will fare in the seas of tomorrow.

#13

The grasshopper is the second largest species on Earth, and they are capable of devastating human populations on a large scale. They are largely powerless to counter them, as they can’t be controlled.

#14

The first question we need to answer about locusts is why they swarm. We have made significant progress towards answering this question. The two phases of desert locusts are the same species, but they behave and look radically different from one another. They are drawn together, a necessary precursor to swarming behavior.

#15

The Damascene conversion to social behavior is most obvious in the locusts, but it’s followed by a large-scale remodeling of the insect into a fully-fledged, insatiable crop-destroyer.

#16

The locust is a forced march driven by fear. It begins to eat other locusts, and as more join in, all must march in the same direction. It’s no time to be individualistic – falling out of step or changing direction within the surrounding mass of hungry cannibals essentially means volunteering to be a snack.

#17

The most commonly used method to control locusts is to spray them with pesticides, which is expensive and often ineffective. More sophisticated methods are being tried, such as using the locusts’ natural enemies against them.

#18

We have a deep-rooted disgust for cockroaches, and for good reason. They carry pathogens on their cuticles and can potentially contaminate food by walking on it. They are also tough to eradicate.

#19

There are nearly 5,000 species of cockroach, and only about thirty cause us any problems. They are hard to eradicate because they can breed rapidly and their conditions favor them.

#20

The cockroach is a social animal that spends its life within arm’s reach of others of its kind. It uses its olfactory sense to identify members of its group and outsiders, and it learns who’s been eating what.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The queen bee is on a mission to build her nest. She will gather nectar from early flowers to strengthen her reserves before turning her attention to nesting. She will choose a cavity in a tumbledown, dry-stone wall.

#2

The queen bee is the leader of the colony, and she will never leave the nest. She will spend the rest of her life producing young, and she will not leave the nest. She is a prisoner, but she is also following on from her own mother and countless queens before her.

#3

The majority of the 20,000 or so species of bees are solitary. They live, forage, and reproduce alone. However, within this group, we find just about every kind of social system imaginable.

#4

The carpenter bee’s relationship with her colony is similar to that of a junior partner in a marriage. The subordinate suffers the indignity of having her eggs eaten, but she can benefit through inclusive fitness.

#5

The sweat bees, which are native to Europe, are a nuisance to humans because they drink salty moisture from their faces. However, they are also a fascinating example of social behavior. The bees can adapt their behavior to suit the conditions.

#6

Some species try to game the system by piggybacking the efforts of others. Cuckoo bees, for example, enter a another species’ colony and drop their eggs off, while a female cuckoo bee looks like a worker of the target species.

#7

The honey produced by bees is a solution to the problem of how to store energy. It is immune to the attentions of bacteria, and it is still used today as a coating for dressings.

#8

The life of an established hive is a miracle of co-operation and coordination among forty or fifty thousand individual insects. The queen continuously lays eggs, and it is essential to maintain numbers because at the height of summer, the lifespan of a worker bee from egg to death is only two months.

#9

The selflessness of bees is demonstrated by their fearless kamikaze defense of their nests. They are the only bees to have exaggerated barbs on their stings, and as a result are the only ones that perish after stinging.

#10

The honeybee is a prime example of how the conflict between loyalties can severely undermine the smooth running of a society. While the queen lays eggs, the workers police any bee other than her who attempts to produce a son.

#11