E-Book Overview
Construction behaviour occurs across the entire spectrum of the animal kingdom and affects the survival of both builders and other organisms associated with them. "Animal Architecture" provides a comprehensive overview of the biology of animal building. The book recognizes three broad categories of built structure - homes, traps, and courtship displays. Even though some of these structures are complex and very large, the behaviour required to build them is generally simple and the anatomy for building unspecialized. Standardization of building materials helps to keep building repertoires simple, while self-organizing effects help create complexity. Some builders exhibit learning and cognitive skills, and include some toolmaking species. In a case-study approach to function, insects demonstrate how homes can remain operational while they grow, spiderwebs illustrate mechanical design, and the displays of bowerbirds raise the possibility of persuasion through design rather than just decoration. Studies of the costs to insect and bird home-builders, and to arthropod web-builders provide evidence of optimal designs and of trade-offs with other life history traits. As ecosystem engineers, the influence of builders is extensive and their effect is generally to enhance biodiversity through niche construction. Animal builders can therefore represent model species for the study of the emerging subject of environmental inheritance. Evidence that building has facilitated social evolution is mixed. However building, and in particular building with silk, has been demonstrated to have important evolutionary consequences. This book is intended for students and researchers in comparative animal biology, but will also be of relevance and use to the increasing numbers of architects and civil engineers interested in developing ideas from the animal kingdom.
E-Book Content
Animal Architecture Oxford Animal Biology Series Editors Professor Pat Willmer is in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews. Dr David Norman is Director of the Sedgwick Museum at the University of Cambridge. Titles Animal Eyes M. F. Land, D-E. Nilsson Animal Locomotion Andrew A. Biewener Animal Architecture Mike Hansell Advisers Mark Elgar (Melbourne) Gideon Louw (Calgary) Charles Ellington (Cambridge) R. McNeill Alexander (Leeds) William Foster (Cambridge) Peter Olive (Newcastle) Craig Franklin (Queensland) Paul Schmid-Hampel (Zurich) Peter Holland (Reading) Steve Stearns (Yale) Joel Kingsolver (North Carolina) Catherine Toft (Davis) The role of the advisers is to provide an international panel to help suggest titles and authors, to ensure individual countries' teaching needs are met, and to act as referees. The Oxford Animal Biology Series publishes attractive supplementary textbooks in comparative animal biology for students and professional researchers in the biologiacal sciences, adopting a lively, integrated approach. The series has two distinguishing features: first, book topics address common themes that transcend taxonomy, and are illustrated with examples from throughout the animal kingdom; secondly, chapter contents are chosen to match existing and proposed courses and syllabuses, carefully taking into account the depth of coverage required. Further reading sections, consisting mainly of review articles and books, guide the reader into the more detailed research literature. The Series is international in scope, both in terms of the species used as examples and in the references to scientific work. Animal Architecture Mike Hansell Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worl