Honey bees are among the most complex of the extant protostomes, and their behavior and central nervous system has been studied in some detail. This easy to read reference describes beekeeping, the life cycle of the bees and the bee hive, communication by pheromes, communication by sound, communication by the bee's 'dance language', navigation by a sun 'compass', navigation by a polarized light 'compass', navigation by landmarks, possible navigation by a magnetic 'compass', flower learning and memory, matching from memory, visual memory, and the possibility of limited insight in bees.

The authors, in laying out an engaging and thorough discussion of bees, their 'honey dance', and other elements of highly structured language, illuminate the broader question of how animals experience and learn. The folklore -- and wonderful pictures -- will make this book a pleasure for nature lovers, while students of language and of the scientific process will enjoy it for the window it provides into how classical experiments are used to probe cognition and learning. Despite the apparently narrow scope of the title, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys popular-press books on science: there's a lot of wonderful material here, and its not hard to get at and enjoy.

The behaviorist school of psychology has so dominated research for almost 60 years. Finally, the tide is beginning to turn in the opposite direction. New research is showing without doubt that humans have underestimated animals to an extreme degree. This book examines the "Umwelt" of various animals and illustrates very complex behavior, even in animals as startling different than us as the honeybee. The authors are honeybee behavior researchers. Other works on the subject have come from researchers working with Mammals. Beautifully illustrated.

This book is a treasure. I used it several years ago as a sophomore in high school to prepare for the AP Examination in Biology. Wonderfully illustrated, exceptionally written, and very easy to use!

I got a "5" on the exam, which is the highest score attainable... I think that speaks for itself!

Good, concise reviews regarding the evolution of the first lifeforms on the Earth by the editors, the earliest cells by J.W. Schopf of the University of California at Los Angeles, the first animals by M.A.S. McMenamin at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, chemosynthesis in the deep sea by James J. Childress at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Horst Felbeck and George N. Somero at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, intertidal fishes by Michael H. Horn at California State University at Fullerton and Robin N. Gibson at the Scottish Marine Biological Association at Oban, U.K., the physiology of the Koala by Robert Degabriele at Riverina College in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia, raiding ability and slavery in ants by Edward O. Wilson at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and viroids by T.O. Diener at the Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland. The other articles provide an excellent, broad overview of life's ability to survive in a variety of harsh environments.

This reference starts off by showing that an important unsolved problem in evolutionary biology is why sex should be necessary. Sex appears to be required by most higher lifeforms. Indeed, most asexual species which exist are recent derivations from sexual species, implying that without sex a species tends to go extinct. The mechanisms of sex at the cellular level are considered. The book then considers mating behaviors of various animals.

This is a very good work. I enjoyed it immensely. The chapters by Choi Chatterjee, in particular, were very thoughtful and well researched. She is proof positive that the historical field suffers from a dearth of women and minority thinkers, and would benefit greatly from their unique and compelling vision.
Given Chatterjee's tremendous breadth on such issues as gender, class, and ethnicity, one would hope for future research by her about academic sinecures for bourgeois mothers of color.
Many people are unaware of this phenomenon. Recently, women of color are being exploited as diversified pawns in the playing field of white male academia. After culminating their rights to motherhood, they are, in effect, phased out of the academy. They are still paid a solid middle class income, of coure, but are petered into nominal positions, teaching, say, one course per semester, thus minimizing their significance within the department's political landscape. (They are permitted to work only about ten to fifteen hours per week.)
This is just another disgraceful example of the dominant white male hierarchy imposing its oppressions upon middle-class mothers of color.
Once again, this is an excellent book. I highly recommend it.

Chatterjee should write a book on academic sinecures for bourgeois mothers of color.

The fact that I seem to be statistically challenged may be the cause of a clouded review; however, I feel that this book leaves out a great deal of information pertinent to finding your way from point A to B. The layout also leaves much to be desired. Examples frequently correspond to other examples in previous pages so that you are constantly flipping pages and trying to sort out what's what. I am now halfway through this book (and still clueless) and between all members of my class, we have found multiple typo errors. The errors are not just simple misspellings- most of them have been major errors in formulas. I had hoped to learn and understand much more of what's in the book- granted part of that is the instructor's responsibility, but the book truly seems lacking.

Gould are forgetting who is the reader of this book. It is biology student, not a statistician. The book uses too many big-words that only a statistician knows exactly. The index is terrible and the organization of the topics is horrendous.

I wouldn't recommend this to Biology student who doesn't have any strong background in Statistics. And if you have already had a strong background in Statistics, you don't need this book for it is too shallow.