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In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin proposed that an ant’s brain, no larger than a pin’s head, must be sophisticated to accomplish all that it does. Yet today many people still find it surprising that insects and other arthropods show behaviors that are much more complex than innate reflexes. They are products of versatile brains which, in a sense, think. Fascinating in their own right, arthropods provide fundamental insights into how brains process and organize sensory information to produce learning, strategizing, cooperation, and sociality. Nicholas Strausfeld elucidates the evolution of this knowledge, beginning with nineteenth-century debates about how similar arthropod brains were to vertebrate brains. This exchange, he shows, had a profound and far-reaching impact on attitudes toward evolution and animal origins. Many renowned scientists, including Sigmund Freud, cut their professional teeth studying arthropod nervous systems. The greatest neuroanatomist of them all, Santiago Ramón y Cajal—founder of the neuron doctrine—was awed by similarities between insect and mammalian brains. Writing in a style that will appeal to a broad readership, Strausfeld weaves anatomical observations with evidence from molecular biology, neuroethology, cladistics, and the fossil record to explore the neurobiology of the largest phylum on earth—and one that is crucial to the well-being of our planet. Highly informative and richly illustrated, Arthropod Brains offers an original synthesis drawing on many fields, and a comprehensive reference that will serve biologists for years to come.
The definitive textbook and reference guide to the arthropod brain. The material is arranged logically in three sections. Section I, on evolution, includes a discussion on the presence of a fourth component, tetrocerebrum in the insect brain in addition to the three commonly recognized parts, and the evolutionary trends in the central and mushroom bodies in major arthropod groups. A section on structure and function includes detailed ultrastructural studies of the brain as well as studies of the mechanoreceptory centers, peripheral sensory coding and sensilla function, and antennal information processing. Also examines biochemical topics such as bioamines and mucosubstances, their respective roles in brain function, and various techniques of brain research.
This book reviews the advances in insect neurobiology in the last two decades and highlights the contributions of this field to our understanding of how nervous systems function in general. By concentrating largely on one insect, the locust, this book unravels the mechanisms by which a brain integrates the vast array of sensory information to generate movement and behavior. The author describes the structure and development of the insect brain, detailing the cellular properties of insect neurons and the way they are altered by neurosecretors. Insect movements are fully analyzed at the cellular level to illustrate particular features of integrative processing. Richly illustrated, this volume emphasizes how the brain of an insect can be an informative model for defining basic neural mechanisms, shared by other animals and man.
Most neurobiological research is performed on vertebrates, and it is only natural that most texts describing neuroanatomical methods refer almost exclusively to this Phylum. Nevertheless, in recent years insects have been studied intensively and are becoming even more popular in some areas of research. They have advantages over vertebrates with respect to studying genetics of neuronal development and with respect to studying many aspects of integration by uniquely identifiable nerve cells. Insect central nervous system is characterized by its compactness and the rather large number of nerve cells in a structure so small. But despite their size, parts of the insect eNS bear structural comparisons with parts of vertebrate eNS. This applies particularly to the organization of the thoracic ganglia (and spinal cord), to the insect and vertebrate visual sys tems and, possibly, to parts of the olfactory neuropils. The neurons that make up these areas in insects are often large enough to be impaled by microelectrodes and can be injected with dyes. Added to advantages of using a small eNS, into which the sensory periphery is precisely mapped, are the many aspects of insect behaviour whose components can be quan titized and which may find both structural and functional correlates within clearly defined regions of neuropil. Together, these various features make the insect eNS a rewarding object for study. This volume is the first of two that describe both classic and recent methods for neuroanatomical research on insect eNS.
This Atlas is addressed not only to specialists of Arthropod neuroanatomy and neurophysiology, but to anyone interested in the general structure of brain. Originally, it was planned to encompass several species of insects in order to show similarities and differences between them: but in practice such an under taking would have demanded a volume three times the present size, an exercise both prohibitive in cost and in material. And had it been accomplished it would have merely concussed all but the most persevering readers. Since my intention is not to stun but to enlighten, I have consequently restricted the main contents of this book to one species, Musca domestica, the common house fly. The Atlas attempts to illustrate the main neuropil regions of the fused cephalic ganglia as well as to define the main tracts and many single neurons which contribute to their structure. Since the accounts of FU)GEL in 1876, VIALLANES in 1884 and KENYON in 1896 and 1897, all three workers veritable Ptolemys of insect neuroanatomy, only the description of POWER comes near to modernizing our knowledge of the general dispositions of the main neuropil masses. And as far as I am aware, apart from the now classic work of reference by BULLOCK and HORRIDGE: Structure and Function in the Nervous System of Invertebrates, there is no contemporary work which lists, in a concise way, the various terminologies used for brain regions.
Insects are ideal subjects for neurophysiological studies. This classic volume relates the activities of nerve cells to the activities of insects, something that had never been attempted when the book first appeared in 1963. In several elegant experiments, Roeder shows how stimulus and behavior are related through the nervous system.
Covers all aspects of crustacean biology, physiology, behavior, and evolution.
More than two thirds of all living organisms described to date belong to the phylum Arthropoda. But their diversity, as measured in terms of species number, is also accompanied by an amazing disparity in terms of body form, developmental processes, and adaptations to every inhabitable place on Earth, from the deepest marine abysses to the earth surface and the air. The Arthropoda also include one of the most fashionable and extensively studied of all model organisms, the fruit-fly, whose name is not only linked forever to Mendelian and population genetics, but has more recently come back to centre stage as one of the most important and more extensively investigated models in developmental genetics. This approach has completely changed our appreciation of some of the most characteristic traits of arthropods as are the origin and evolution of segments, their regional and individual specialization, and the origin and evolution of the appendages. At approximately the same time as developmental genetics was eventually turning into the major agent in the birth of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), molecular phylogenetics was challenging the traditional views on arthropod phylogeny, including the relationships among the four major groups: insects, crustaceans, myriapods, and chelicerates. In the meantime, palaeontology was revealing an amazing number of extinct forms that on the one side have contributed to a radical revisitation of arthropod phylogeny, but on the other have provided evidence of a previously unexpected disparity of arthropod and arthropod-like forms that often challenge a clear-cut delimitation of the phylum.
In this volume outstanding specialists review the state of the art in nervous system research for all main invertebrate groups. They provide a comprehensive up-to-date analysis important for everyone working on neuronal aspects of single groups, as well as taking into account the phylogenesis of invertebrates. The articles report on recently gained knowledge about diversification in the invertebrate nervous systems, and demonstrate the analytical power of a comparative approach. Novel techniques in molecular and developmental biology are creating new perspectives that point toward a theoretical foundation for a modern organismic biology. The comparative approach, as documented here, will engage the interest of anyone challenged by the problem of structural diversification in biology.