Stephen Daubert – författare

In these stories, Steve Daubert pulls the reader into the mystery and immediacy of ecological processes - great moments in evolution, and you are there! From vanishing neon flying squids to dinosaur habitat upheavals by earthquake, each tale brings the reader into the moment to witness an episode of survival in the wild, first-hand. The book, wonderfully illustrated by the author's brother, includes chapter notes that document the scientific basis for each story and describe the controversies still surrounding some of them - a splendid resource for the curious and the imaginative of all ages.

In this sequel to the acclaimed ""Threads from the Web of Life"", Stephen Daubert presents twenty-six new stories that pull the reader into the mystery and immediacy of ecological processes ranging from the microscopic to the tectonic. Many show surprising intersections of creatures from different realms or the hidden interplay of evolving organisms. These gripping stories contain a level of intimacy and detail not usually encountered in other styles of natural history writing.

Ecology, like all literary narrative, has the potential for turnabout, surprise, lessons learned, and tragedy. The stories in Threads from the Web of Life and The Shark and the Jellyfish describe protagonists, their competitors, and the habitats that provides the setting for their interaction—habitats that have become surprisingly complex with the passage of evolutionary time.One niche moves across a world of flowers that reaches its earliest peak bloom in the low valleys and then peaks later among the slopes of the foothills—a rolling habitat. Another hop-scotches across the ocean floor, compelling its occupants to migrate from the fallen body of one dead whale to the next. Yet another appears in the aftermath of typhoons, requiring its inhabitant to search the tropical coastline for the latest storm landfall.These tales are filled with no less intrigue than other literary works, but they transpire out of the sight of most readers. Once known only to ecologists, in Threads from the Web of Life and The Shark and the Jellyfish, available for the first time in a single deluxe paperback, these stories become accessible to everyone with an interest in natural history.

These stories take readers where they cannot go, be it out into space, back in time, deep under the ocean, down to the microscopic level, and up to the scale of geologic plate tectonics.Squid turn themselves inside-out when disturbed by predators hunting through the darkness with sonar. Beneficial microbes spend their summer living in flower nectar, being transferred between blooms by the bees; then they spend their winter living within those bees.Between the Rocks and the Stars follows the relationships that shape the natural world. The book presents twenty-four vignettes from the wild, each of which describes the natural advantage of a particular organism. These true-to-life accounts are then posed in particular circumstances that illustrate the principles-commensalism, speciation-that shape the niches those organisms occupy. Some stories cover topics in geology and cosmology, describing the physical context through which the living world progresses across the eons.Underlying themes in the book include the network of connections that link all these organisms together and the adaptations they make to the physical world in order to secure a home for themselves.