Angela E. Douglas – författare

A comprehensive overview of symbiotic relationships between insects and microbesInsects and Their Beneficial Microbes is an authoritative and accessible synthesis of insect associations with beneficial microorganisms. Angela Douglas distills the vast literature in entomology and microbiology, as well as the burgeoning microbiome literature, to explore the full scope of insect-microbial interactions and their applications to real-world problems in agriculture and medicine.Douglas investigates how insects acquire and support their microbial partners, and examines how microorganisms contribute to insect nutrition, the defense against natural enemies, and the detoxification of natural allelochemicals and chemical insecticides. She analyzes how beneficial microbes can be harnessed to solve real-world problems in insect pest management, including strategies to suppress the transmission of viruses and microbial disease agents by mosquitoes and other insects. She also addresses the use of insects as biomedical models for effective microbial therapies treating a range of chronic human diseases, and considers how knowledge of insect-microbial interactions can promote the health of beneficial insects, especially in the context of environmental pollutants and climate change.Insects and Their Beneficial Microbes provides a much-needed conceptual framework for the growing discipline of insect-microbial interactions, and offers a wealth of insights into insect symbioses from molecular, physiological, ecological, and evolutionary perspectives.

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.

An essential introduction to microbiome science, a new cutting-edge discipline that is transforming the life sciencesThis book provides an accessible and authoritative guide to the fundamental principles of microbiome science, an exciting and fast-emerging new discipline that is reshaping many aspects of the life sciences. Resident microbes in healthy animals--including humans—can dictate many traits of the animal host. This animal microbiome is a second immune system conferring protection against pathogens; it can structure host metabolism in animals as diverse as reef corals and hibernating mammals; and it may influence animal behavior, from social recognition to emotional states. These microbial partners can also drive ecologically important traits, from thermal tolerance to diet, and have contributed to animal diversification over long evolutionary timescales.Drawing on concepts and data across a broad range of disciplines and systems, Angela Douglas provides a conceptual framework for understanding these animal-microbe interactions while shedding critical light on the scientific challenges that lie ahead. Douglas explains why microbiome science demands creative and interdisciplinary thinking—the capacity to combine microbiology with animal physiology, ecological theory with immunology, and evolutionary perspectives with metabolic science.An essential introduction to a cutting-edge field that is revolutionizing the life sciences, this book explains why microbiome science presents a more complete picture of the biology of humans and other animals, and how it can deliver novel therapies for many medical conditions and new strategies for pest control.