Itô - Böcker

In this book, Itô presents data on tropical wasps which suggest that kin-selection has been overemphasized as an evolutionary explanation of sociality. He concentrates on the Vespidae (paper wasps and hornets), a group much discussed by evolutionary biologists because it exhibits all stages of social evolution:; subsociality, primitive eusociality, and advanced eusociality. The author reports field observations by himself and others in Central America, Asia, and Australia, showing that multiple egg-layers in a nest are not uncommon. Because coexistence of many `queens' leads to lower relatedness among colony members than in single-queen colonies, he suggests that kin-selection may not be the most powerful force determining observed social patterns. Instead, subsocial wasps may first have aggregated for defence purposes in habitats with a high risk of predation, with mutualistic associations among many queens. Through parental manipulation and then kin selection, differentiation into within-generation castes may have followed. Of interest to all students of ecology, evolution, and behaviour, this book beautifully illustrates the ability to combine wide-ranging data with thoughtful questions - the author's trademark.

Bioinspired concepts are becoming increasingly integrated into materials and devices intended for medical applications. Biological organisms evolve within specific environmental constraints, giving rise to elegant and efficient strategies for fabricating materials that often outperform man-made materials of similar composition. A main goal of the interdisciplinary field of bioinspired materials is to unlock the secrets of this process—the composition, processing,self-assembly, hierarchical organization, and properties of biological materials—and use this information to synthesize and engineer novel functional materials for a variety of practical applications.The authors are from a variety of scientific disciplines, including biology, biochemistry, chemistry, physics, materials science, mechanical engineering, and bioengineering. This book will appeal to readers interested in the cross-disciplinary fertilization of new ideas in this emerging field. The first volume of this book includes sections focused on the bioinspired approaches using biological macromolecules including poly(nucleic acids), polypeptides, and the derivatives. Both volumes coverthe interdisciplinary fields of biological, synthetic, and the hybrid materials and describe their medical applications ranging from molecular to cellular levels.