Ant Encounters

Author : Deborah M. Gordon
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400835445
Total Pages : 182 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Ant Encounters written by Deborah M. Gordon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-22 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do ant colonies get anything done, when no one is in charge? An ant colony operates without a central control or hierarchy, and no ant directs another. Instead, ants decide what to do based on the rate, rhythm, and pattern of individual encounters and interactions--resulting in a dynamic network that coordinates the functions of the colony. Ant Encounters provides a revealing and accessible look into ant behavior from this complex systems perspective. Focusing on the moment-to-moment behavior of ant colonies, Deborah Gordon investigates the role of interaction networks in regulating colony behavior and relations among ant colonies. She shows how ant behavior within and between colonies arises from local interactions of individuals, and how interaction networks develop as a colony grows older and larger. The more rapidly ants react to their encounters, the more sensitively the entire colony responds to changing conditions. Gordon explores whether such reactive networks help a colony to survive and reproduce, how natural selection shapes colony networks, and how these structures compare to other analogous complex systems. Ant Encounters sheds light on the organizational behavior, ecology, and evolution of these diverse and ubiquitous social insects.

Author : Deborah Gordon
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 9780393321326
Total Pages : 188 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Ants at Work written by Deborah Gordon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ants have long been regarded as the most interesting of the social insects. With their queens and celibate workers, these intriguing creatures have captured the imaginations of scientists and children alike for generations. Yet until now, no one had studied intensely the life cycle of the ant colony as a whole. An ant colony has a life cycle of about fifteen years--it is born, matures, and dies. But the individual ants that inhabit the colony live only one year. So how does this system of tunnels and caves in the dirt become so much more than the sum of its parts?Leading ant researcher Deborah Gordon takes the reader to the Arizona desert to explore this question. The answer involves the emerging insights of the new science of complexity, and contributes to understanding the evolution of life itself.

Author : German Terrazas
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 331901692X
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.24/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO 2013) written by German Terrazas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biological and other natural processes have always been a source of inspiration for computer science and information technology. Many emerging problem solving techniques integrate advanced evolution and cooperation strategies, encompassing a range of spatio-temporal scales for visionary conceptualization of evolutionary computation. This book is a collection of research works presented in the VI International Workshop on Nature Inspired Cooperative Strategies for Optimization (NICSO) held in Canterbury, UK. Previous editions of NICSO were held in Granada, Spain (2006 & 2010), Acireale, Italy (2007), Tenerife, Spain (2008), and Cluj-Napoca, Romania (2011). NICSO 2013 and this book provides a place where state-of-the-art research, latest ideas and emerging areas of nature inspired cooperative strategies for problem solving are vigorously discussed and exchanged among the scientific community. The breadth and variety of articles in this book report on nature inspired methods and applications such as Swarm Intelligence, Hyper-heuristics, Evolutionary Algorithms, Cellular Automata, Artificial Bee Colony, Dynamic Optimization, Support Vector Machines, Multi-Agent Systems, Ant Clustering, Evolutionary Design Optimisation, Game Theory and other several Cooperation Models.

Author : Mark W. Moffett
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520945417
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Adventures among Ants written by Mark W. Moffett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett, "the Indiana Jones of entomology," takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo. Moffett’s spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles; warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them creating marketplaces and assembly lines and dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human—including hygiene, recycling, and warfare. Adventures among Ants introduces some of the world’s most awe-inspiring species and offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perception. • Ants are world-class road builders, handling traffic problems on thoroughfares that dwarf our highway systems in their complexity • Ants with the largest societies often deploy complicated military tactics • Some ants have evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating other insects and growing crops for food

Author : Gerald Durrell
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141971304
Total Pages : 176 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Encounters with Animals written by Gerald Durrell and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I once travelled back from Africa on a ship with an Irish captain who did not like animals. This was unfortunate, because most of my luggage consisted of about two hundred odd cages of assorted wildlife . . .' Gerald Durrell's accounts of the animals he encountered on his travels were some of the first widely shared descriptions of the world's most extraordinary animals. Moving from the West Coast of Africa to the northern tip of South America - and elsewhere - Durrell observes the courtships, wars and characters of a variety of creatures, from birds of paradise, to ants and anteaters, among others. Told with his trademark charm and humour, Gerald Durrell's Encounters with Animals is a uniquely entertaining exploration of some of the world's most striking landscapes and the wildlife it is home to.

Author : Stefan Jarau
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1420075616
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Food Exploitation By Social Insects written by Stefan Jarau and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-05-21 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Omnipresent in virtually all terrestrial ecosystems and of undisputed ecological and economical importance, the study of social insects is an area that continues to attract a vast number of researchers. As a consequence, a huge amount of information about their biology and ecology has accumulated. Distilling this scattered information into a highly focused reference, Food Exploitation by Social Insects: Ecological, Behavioral, and Theoretical Approaches unites traditional behavioral and ecological studies with theoretical and mathematical models. The book covers foraging ecology and behavior of social insects, their communication mechanisms, and theoretical models of important aspects. It examines two different but inseparably interlaced levels of social insect foraging: the macroscopic or colony level and the microscopic or individual level. The chapters include discussions of foraging decisions, patterns and strategies of social insect colonies, and information use and information transfer between workers. The book provides examples of how this biological knowledge can be used as a basis for the construction of mathematical and neural network models that in return may increase understanding of social insect foraging. The contributors provide a fresh look on their topics, covering a wide range of subjects and recent scientific developments that are unprecedented in breadth and depth. The coverage of ants, bees, and wasps in one resource is a unique feature of the book. This taxonomic content combined with the variety of research approaches, allows the book to provide deeper insight into the subject.

Author : Joseph L. Camp Jr.
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674029178
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.70/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Confusion written by Joseph L. Camp Jr. and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone has mistaken one thing for another, such as a stranger for an acquaintance. A person who has mistaken two things, Joseph L. Camp argues, even on a massive scale, is still capable of logical thought. In order to make that idea precise, one needs a logic of confused thought that is blind to the distinction between the objects that have been confused. Confused thought and language cannot be characterized as true or false even though reasoning conducted in such language can be classified as valid or invalid. To the extent that philosophers have addressed this issue at all, they take it for granted that confusion is a kind of ambiguity. Camp rejects this notion; his fundamental claim is that confusion is not a mental state. To attribute confusion to someone is to take up a paternalistic stance in evaluating his reasoning. Camp proposes a novel characterization of confusion, and then demonstrates its fruitfulness with several applications in the history of philosophy and the history of science.

Author : Anthony Brabazon
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3662436310
Total Pages : 554 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Natural Computing Algorithms written by Anthony Brabazon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of natural computing has been the focus of a substantial research effort in recent decades. One particular strand of this research concerns the development of computational algorithms using metaphorical inspiration from systems and phenomena that occur in the natural world. These naturally inspired computing algorithms have proven to be successful problem-solvers across domains as diverse as management science, bioinformatics, finance, marketing, engineering, architecture and design. This book is a comprehensive introduction to natural computing algorithms, suitable for academic and industrial researchers and for undergraduate and graduate courses on natural computing in computer science, engineering and management science.

Author : Robert J. Marquis
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030866882
Total Pages : 645 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Caterpillars in the Middle written by Robert J. Marquis and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-04-22 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caterpillars are excellent model organisms for understanding how multiple selective forces shape the ecology and evolution of insects, and organisms in general. Recent research using the tools of modern molecular biology, genetics, metabolomics, microbial ecology, experiments conducted at a global level, network analysis, and statistical analyses of global data sets, combined with basic natural history, are yielding exciting new insights into caterpillar adaptations and ecology. The best way to view these research advances is within a framework of tri-trophic interactions. This is a timely topic for research given the central role of caterpillars and plants in the ecology and trophic structure of terrestrial communities. This book is unique in that it contains chapters from a team of experts on a diversity of key topics within caterpillar-plant interactions. This volume brings together contributions by researchers from around the globe, working in both tropical and temperate habitats, and in human-managed and more natural habitats. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of insect biology, and the role that insects, as represented by caterpillars, play in a world increasingly dominated by humans and one in which threats to insect biodiversity are mounting. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. The Natural History of Caterpillar-Ant Associations" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Author : Robert E. Rockwell
Publisher : Gryphon House, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9780876592311
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.10/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Partnering with Parents written by Robert E. Rockwell and published by Gryphon House, Inc.. This book was released on 2003 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative book makes it easy for teachers to communicate to parents about what their children are learning and engage them in the learning process. Offering a complete plan for every meeting, Partnering With Parents takes the worry out of parent-teacher communication, with meeting plans for all curriculum areas, helpful tips and strategies, and easy ways to make the connection between home and school.