Rodent Societies: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective

by Jerry O. Wolff (Editor)

Rodent Societies synthesizes and integrates the current state of knowledge about the social behavior of rodents, providing ecological and evolutionary contexts for understanding their societies and highlighting emerging conservation and management strategies to preserve them. It begins with a summary of the evolution, phylogeny, and biogeography of social and nonsocial rodents, providing a historical basis for comparative analyses. Subsequent sections focus on group-living rodents and characterize their reproductive behaviors, life histories and population ecology, genetics, neuroendocrine mechanisms, behavioral development, cognitive processes, communication mechanisms, cooperative and uncooperative behaviors, antipredator strategies, comparative socioecology, diseases, and conservation. Using the highly diverse and well-studied Rodentia as model systems to integrate a variety of research approaches and evolutionary theory into a unifying framework, Rodent Societies will appeal to a wide range of disciplines, both as a compendium of current research and as a stimulus for future collaborative and interdisciplinary investigations.

610 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I still linger only a quarter through the book, my cocktail party conversation has been vastly enhanced… which probably says more about the number of cocktail parties I have ever attended. This book served as my leisure reading during travels to South America. The chapters are all interesting. Still, in any scientific compendium I believe that it falls on the editors to find an author capable of providing a general overview to open with, in this case, on the variation in rodent ecology and evolution. I felt this was lacking. Fortunately, the chapters are logically organized and readable to someone outside of the field, making this a nice collection.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great information source for those interested in rodent behavior (isn't everyone?).