The creators of the award-winning An Egg Is Quiet and A Seed Is Sleepy have teamed up again to create this gorgeous and informative introduction to the world of butterflies. From iridescent blue swallowtails and brilliant orange monarchs to the worlds tiniest butterfly (Western Pygmy Blue) and the largest (Queen Alexandra's Birdwing), an incredible variety of butterflies are celebrated here in all of their beauty and wonder. Perfect for a child's bedroom bookshelf or for a classroom reading circle! Plus, this is the fixed format version, which looks almost identical to the print edition.

Introduce your little budding naturalists to the wonderful world of eggs with this beautiful picture book full of wit and charm. Award-winning artist Sylvia Long has teamed with up-and-coming author Dianna Aston to create this gorgeous and informative introduction to eggs. From tiny hummingbird eggs to giant ostrich eggs, oval ladybug eggs to tubular dogfish eggs, gooey frog eggs to fossilized dinosaur eggs, it magnificently captures the incredible variety of eggs and celebrates their beauty and wonder. The evocative text is sure to inspire lively questions and observations. Yet while poetic in voice and elegant in design, the book introduces children to more than sixty types of eggs and an interesting array of egg facts. Even the endpapers brim with information. A tender and fascinating guide that is equally at home being read to a child on a parent’s lap as in a classroom reading circle. Plus, this is the fixed format version, which looks almost identical to the print edition. Praise for An Egg Is Quiet: A Junior Library Guild Premiere Selection A New York Public Library Title for Reading and Sharing A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best “A delight for budding naturalists of all stripes, flecks, dots, and textures.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “This attractive volume pleases on both aesthetic and intellectual level.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Beautifully illustrated. . . . Will inspire kids to marvel at animals’ variety and beauty.” —Booklist

Nature has perfected the art of deception. Thousands of creatures all over the world - including butterflies, moths, fish, birds, insects and snakes - have honed and practised camouflage over hundreds of millions of years. Imitating other animals or their surroundings, nature's fakers use mimicry to protect themselves, to attract and repel, to bluff and warn, to forage and to hide. The advantages of mimicry are obvious - but how does 'blind' nature do it? And how has humanity learnt to profit from nature's ploys? "Dazzled and Deceived" tells the unique and fascinating story of mimicry and camouflage in science, art, warfare and the natural world. Discovered in the 1850s by the young English naturalists Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russel Wallace in the Amazonian rainforest, the phenomenon of mimicry was seized upon as the first independent validation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. But mimicry and camouflage also created a huge impact outside the laboratory walls. Peter Forbes' cultural history links mimicry and camouflage to art, literature, military tactics and medical cures across the twentieth century, and charts its intricate involvement with the dispute between evolution and creationism.

Walking a forest trail in Costa Rica, a visitor might be struck by the sight of an iridescent blue morpho butterfly fluttering ahead in the filtered daylight, or an enormous silk moth, as magnificently patterned and subtly colored as a Persian carpet, only emerging to fly at night. Elsewhere, vivid yellow and orange sulphur butterflies flock to puddles to sip the concentrated minerals. Such is the dazzling variety of the butterflies and moths unique to this region. Gathered by biologists Daniel Janzen and Winifred Hallwachs in the forests of northwestern Costa Rica, 100 tropical butterflies and moths represent the diversity in large-format photographs by Jeffrey Miller that document the dizzying variety of shapes, colors, and markings. The photographs are accompanied by species accounts and images of the corresponding caterpillar. The authors recount these insects' feats of mimicry and migration, lift the veil on their courtship, and show how the new technology of DNA barcoding is changing the picture of Lepidopteran biodiversity. The authors also tell the success story of Area de Conservacion Guanacaste, where the long-term work of Janzen and Hallwachs, a team of caterpillar collectors, and the participation of neighboring farming communities has deepened understanding of Costa Rica's Lepidoptera and has brought about advances in restoration ecology of tropical habitats, biodiversity prospecting, biotechnology, and ecotourism development.

Unlike most natural colours that are based on pigment absorption, the striking iridescent and intense colouration of many butterflies, birds or beetles stems from the interaction of light with periodic sub-micrometer surface or volume patterns, so called “photonic structures”. These “structural colours” are increasingly well understood, but they are difficult to create artificially and exploit technologically. In this thesis the field of natural structural colours and biomimetic photonic structures is covered in a wide scope, ranging from plant photonics to theoretical optics. It demonstrates diffractive elements on the petal surfaces of many flowering plant species; these form the basis for the study of the role of structural colours in pollinator attraction. Self-assembly techniques, combined with scale able nanofabrication methods, were used to create complex artificial photonic structures inspired by those found in nature. In particular, the colour effect of a Papilio butterfly was mimicked and, by variation of its design motive, enhanced. All photonic effects described here are underpinned by state-of-the-art model calculations.

The USA Today bestselling series "Our baby died on prom night, and nothing was ever the same again." Corabelle doesn't feel like any of the other college girls. On what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, she and her boyfriend Gavin watched a nurse disconnect the ventilator from their seven-day-old baby. During the funeral two days later, Gavin walked out and never returned. Since then, her life has been a spiral of disasters. The only thing that has helped is her ability to black out whenever the pain gets too hard to bear, a habit that has become an addiction. When Gavin shows up in her astronomy class four years later, he is hell-bent on getting her back, insisting she forgive him. Corabelle knows she can't resist the touch that fills the empty ache that has haunted her since he left. But if he learns what she has done, if he follows the trail back through her past, her secrets will destroy their love completely. And once again, she'll lose the only person who always believed she was innocent. A New Adult Contemporary Romance. Contains themes of loss, second chance, love story, first love, reuniting, new adult and coming of age, pregnancy, grief, dangerous romance, college, and blue collar. HEA. 288 print pages

Biomimetic photonics is a burgeoning field. Biologists are finding and describing a whole menagerie of unique and astonishingly complex nano- and microstructures in fauna and flora. Material scientists are developing novel multifunctional and hierarchical structures with a wide variety of post-nano era photonics applications. Mathematicians and computer scientists are using computer models and simulations to understand the underlying principles of biomimetic structures. However, concepts, structures, and phenomena that are well known in one community are quite unknown in others. Exploring a biomimetic approach to developing photonic devices and structures, Biomimetics in Photonics discusses not only the role of and results of biomimicry in engineering, but also the true understanding of natural processes and the application of these techniques to established technologies. Featured Topics Photonic structures in flowers, leaves and fruits and inorganic structures produced in aquatic environment by diatoms, sponges, and shells Mechanisms for biomineralization and how natural structures can be synthetically modified or even used as templates for artificial photonic materials Biological photonic structures in beetles and butterflies and their bio-inspired applications, including anti-reflecting surfaces, iridescent viruses, light reflection, metallic effects, and infrared sensors Suitable for researchers and graduate students, the book does more than describe how to extract good design from nature—Biomimetics in Photonics highlights natural design techniques in context, allowing for a more complete modeling picture. It demonstrates the possibilities and challenges in the move from a laboratory environment to industrial scale production of biomimetic photonic structures.

Structural colors in living beings are one of the most marvelous arts that nature has ever created during the long history of the evolution. These colors originate from surprisingly sophisticated microstructures which gave rise to a new field of research-bionanophotonics. This book occupies a special position among similar books in the field of pho

In Butterfly Biology Systems Roger Dennis explores key topics and contentious issues in butterfly biology, specifically those in life history and behaviour. Uniquely, using a systems approach, the book focuses on the degree of integration and feedback between components and elements affecting each issue, as well as the links between different issues. The book comprises four sections. The first two sections introduce the reader to principles and approaches for investigating complex relationships, and provide a platform of knowledge on butterfly biology. The final two sections deal in turn with life history and behaviour, covering key issues affecting different stages of development from eggs to adults.