Desert Arthropods: Life History Variations

Front Cover
Springer Science & Business Media, Dec 14, 1999 - Science - 230 pages
It is difficult for me to recollect a time when I was not fascinated with the very notion of a desert. Walt Disney's film, The Living Desert, which I initially saw when I was 8 years of age, provided me with my first glimpse of this wondrous yet seemingly ho stile environment. The images were hypnotic and captivating. I looked on in amazement at the promenade Cl deux of the male and female scorpions during courtship. Their rhythmic and coordinated movements as they grasped one another made them appear to glide in unis on over the surface of the sand, each individual totally absorbed with its partner. In the next minute the fern ale had suddenly and utterly transformed herself like some Jekyll and Hyde act, into an aggressive predator whose prior gregarious embrace was now a hold of death for the male. The indomitable desert grasshopper mouse, the ever sentient kit fox, the graceful shovel-nosed snake swimming in an endless sea of sand.
 

Contents

Life Histories and the Desert Environment
1
Embryonic Development
15
Postembryonic Development
47
Reproduction
75
Individual Case Studies
105
Relationship Between Life History
157
References
185
Subject Index
221
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