Danna Staaf – författare

An engaging and beautifully illustrated introduction to some of the world’s most interesting and charismatic marine creaturesDive deep into the fascinating world of cephalopods—octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and the mysterious nautilus—to discover the astonishing diversity of this unique group of intelligent invertebrates and their many roles in the marine ecosystem. Organized by marine habitat, this book features an extraordinary range of these clever and colorful creatures from around the world and explores their life cycles, behavior, adaptations, ecology, links to humans, and much more. With stunning photographs and illustrations as well as profiles of selected species, The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives is a comprehensive, authoritative, and inviting introduction to the natural history of these charismatic creatures.

Cephalopods, Earth’s first truly substantial animals, are still among us: Their fascinating family tree features squid, octopuses, nautiluses, and more. The inventors of swimming, cephs presided over the sea for millions of years. But when fish evolved jaws, cephs had to step up their game (or end up on the menu). Some evolved defensive spines. Others abandoned their shells entirely, opening the floodgates for a tidal wave of innovation: masterful camouflage, fin-supplemented jet propulsion, and intelligence we’ve yet to fully measure. In Monarchs of the Sea, marine biologist Danna Staaf unspools how these otherworldly creatures once ruled the deep—and why they still captivate us today.Publisher’s Note: Monarchs of the Sea was previously published in hardcover as Squid Empire.

It’s time to pay attention to baby animals. From egg to tadpole, chick to fledgling, they offer scientists a window into questions of immense importance: How do genes influence health? Which environmental factors support—or obstruct—life? Entire ecosystems rest on the shoulders (or tentacles, or jointed exoskeletons) of animal babies. At any given moment, babies represent the majority of animal life on Earth.In Nursery Earth, researcher Danna Staaf invites readers into the sibling (and, sometimes, clashing) fields of ecology and developmental biology. The tiny, hidden lives that these scientists study in the lab and in the wild reveal some of nature’s strangest workings: A salamander embryo breathes with the help of algae inside its cells. The young grub of a Goliath beetle dwarfs its parents. The spotted beak of a parasitic baby bird tricks adults of other species into feeding it. Mouse embryos can absorb cancerous cell grafts—and develop into healthy adults.Our bias toward adult animals (not least because babies can be hard to find) means these wonders have long gone under-researched. But for all kinds of animals, if we overlook their babies, we miss out on the most fascinating—and consequential—time in the lives of their species. Nursery Earth makes the case that these young creatures are not just beings in progress but beings in their own right. And our planet needs them all: the maggots as much as the kittens!

Born in a small village in eighteenth-century France, Jeanne Villepreux wasn’t expected to transform marine science.Curious, creative, and clever, Jeanne ventured to Paris by foot as a teenager. After achieving acclaim as a seamstress, she met a wealthy merchant and traveled with him to Sicily, where they married. Rather than settling into a life of domesticity on this beautiful island, she set out to investigate its natural wonders, from fossils and insects on land to the marvelous mysteries of the sea.In an era when women weren’t accepted into scientific societies and many naturalists based their findings on dead specimens, Jeanne fashioned her own fortune. She observed and experimented on living animals, in particular one very unusual shelled octopus called an argonaut. To keep argonauts and other sea creatures alive long enough to learn from them, she invented a device to hold them—the aquarium. With patience and persistence, she solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of whether argonauts grow or steal their shells, and she made sure the scientific world knew about it.Author and octopus enthusiast Danna Staaf presents an engrossing look at the life and science of Jeanne Villepreux-Power, showing how this remarkable woman helped bring about a sea change in the study of marine life.

Born in a small village in eighteenth-century France, Jeanne Villepreux wasn’t expected to transform marine science.Curious, creative, and clever, Jeanne ventured to Paris by foot as a teenager. After achieving acclaim as a seamstress, she met a wealthy merchant and traveled with him to Sicily, where they married. Rather than settling into a life of domesticity on this beautiful island, she set out to investigate its natural wonders, from fossils and insects on land to the marvelous mysteries of the sea.In an era when women weren’t accepted into scientific societies and many naturalists based their findings on dead specimens, Jeanne fashioned her own fortune. She observed and experimented on living animals, in particular one very unusual shelled octopus called an argonaut. To keep argonauts and other sea creatures alive long enough to learn from them, she invented a device to hold them—the aquarium. With patience and persistence, she solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of whether argonauts grow or steal their shells, and she made sure the scientific world knew about it.Author and octopus enthusiast Danna Staaf presents an engrossing look at the life and science of Jeanne Villepreux-Power, showing how this remarkable woman helped bring about a sea change in the study of marine life.