Throughout the natural world, organisms have responded to predators, inadequate resources, or inclement conditions by forming ongoing mutually beneficial partnerships--or symbioses--with different species. Symbiosis is the foundation for major evolutionary events, such as the emergence of eukaryotes and plant eating among vertebrates, and is also a crucial factor in shaping many ecological communities. The Symbiotic Habit provides an accessible and authoritative introduction to symbiosis, describing how symbioses are established, function, and persist in evolutionary and ecological time. Angela Douglas explains the evolutionary origins and development of symbiosis, and illustrates the principles of symbiosis using a variety of examples of symbiotic relationships as well as nonsymbiotic ones, such as parasitic or fleeting mutualistic associations. Although the reciprocal exchange of benefit is the key feature of symbioses, the benefits are often costly to provide, causing conflict among the partners. Douglas shows how these conflicts can be managed by a single controlling organism that may selectively reward cooperative partners, control partner transmission, and employ recognition mechanisms that discriminate between beneficial and potentially harmful or ineffective partners. The Symbiotic Habit reveals the broad uniformity of symbiotic process across many different symbioses among organisms with diverse evolutionary histories, and demonstrates how symbioses can be used to manage ecosystems, enhance food production, and promote human health.

Is the human race conclusively set for self-annihilation? As futurists prophesize, are we only decades away from extinguishing the planet? Or are we capable of changing this trajectory because of what YOU start today? Renewal is about how each one of us can: Renew ourselves at a body-mind-spirit level Renew our society and our environment and Renew the systems we operate with As of 2020, Renewal is critical, because it is our laxity that has led to the current state of rising personal illness, mindless lifestyles, social degeneration, environmental degradation, and overall moral decay. Written to serve as a practical guide for everyone’s day-to-day ‘karma,’ Renewal is set in the lives of a modern-day family. It is strung together by the charismatic Guru Pranachandra, whose discourse drives home the vital message: that the world is a mere 30 habits away from Renewal. Adopters of these habits will be the future Renewalists, who could well outnumber the Vegans, Buddhists, Technologists and Catholics in times to come. And it is these Renewalists who hold the key to save the world from annihilation.

Mutualisms, interactions between two species that benefit both of them, have long captured the public imagination. Their influence transcends levels of biological organization from cells to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Mutualistic symbioses were crucial to the origin of eukaryotic cells, and perhaps to the invasion of land. Mutualisms occur in every terrestrial and aquatic habitat; indeed, ecologists now believe that almost every species on Earth is involved directly or indirectly in one or more of these interactions. Mutualisms are essential to the reproduction and survival of virtually all organisms, as well as to nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Furthermore, the key ecosystem services that mutualists provide mean that they are increasingly being considered as conservation priorities, ironically at the same time as the acute risks to their ecological and evolutionary persistence are increasingly being identified. This volume, the first general work on mutualism to appear in almost thirty years, provides a detailed and conceptually-oriented overview of the subject. Focusing on a range of ecological and evolutionary aspects over different scales (from individual to ecosystem), the chapters in this book provide expert coverage of our current understanding of mutualism whilst highlighting the most important questions that remain to be answered. In bringing together a diverse team of expert contributors, this novel text captures the excitement of a dynamic field that will help to define its future research agenda.

Behavior and Ecology discusses the ecology and behavior of crustaceans. It presents an update and overview of most of the dominant lines of research in crustacean biology. This book is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the rapidly advancing topic of how crustaceans communicate with members of the same species as well as on an interspecific basis. Chapter 2 provides a synthesis and review of patterns of movement and orientation of crustaceans in nature. Chapter 3 reviews the basic concepts in the regulation of biological rhythms, surveys rhythms in Crustacea, and then analyzes the data from an ecological perspective. Chapter 4 summarizes symbiotic relationships of crustaceans with other crustacean and noncrustacean hosts. Chapter 5 cites work on adaptation of egg and development to the environment. Chapter 6 discusses assemblages of organisms into populations and communities. This book is a valuable source for zoologists, paleontologists, ecologists, physiologists, endocrinologists, morphologists, pathologists, and fisheries biologists, and an essential reference work for institutional libraries.

This book is published open access under a CC BY license.​ This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction, Symbiotic 2016, held in Padua, Italy, in October 2016. The 12 full papers and 3 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this workshop capitalizes on the computers’ ability to implicitly detect the users goals, preferences or/and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI). The papers present an overview of the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers with emphasis on user-driven research on symbiotic systems, adaptive systems, implicit input data, physiological computing and BCI, but also on understanding the nature of the interdependence and agency between computers and humans more broadly.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction, Symbiotic 2015, held in Berlin, Germany, in October 2015. The 11 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. The papers present an overview of the symbiotic relationships between humans and computers as well as novel advancements. The idea of symbiotic systems put forward in this workshop capitalises on the computers’ ability to implicitly detect the users goals and psycho-physiological states and thereby enhancing human-computer interaction (HCI). A special focus of this year’s Symbiotic Workshop will be on physiological computing approaches, e.g. using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology.

The roots of most plants are colonized by symbiotic fungi to form mycorrhiza, which play a critical role in the capture of nutrients from the soil and therefore in plant nutrition. Mycorrhizal Symbiosis is recognized as the definitive work in this area. Since the last edition was published there have been major advances in the field, particularly in the area of molecular biology, and the new edition has been fully revised and updated to incorporate these exciting new developments. - Over 50% new material - Includes expanded color plate section - Covers all aspects of mycorrhiza - Presents new taxonomy - Discusses the impact of proteomics and genomics on research in this area

Sustainable Media explores the many ways that media and environment are intertwined from the exploitation of natural and human resources during media production to the installation and disposal of media in the landscape; from people’s engagement with environmental issues in film, television, and digital media to the mediating properties of ecologies themselves. Edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker, the assembled chapters expose how the social and representational practices of media culture are necessarily caught up with technologies, infrastructures, and environments.Through in-depth analyses of media theories, practices, and objects including cell phone towers, ecologically-themed video games, Geiger counters for registering radiation, and sound waves traveling through the ocean, contributors question the sustainability of the media we build, exchange, and inhabit and chart emerging alternatives for media ecologies.