Biology
Aquatic Invertebrates of Alberta
A great diversity of invertebrate life lives beneath the surface of Alberta's lakes and streams. Aquatic Invertebrates of Alberta complements existing field guides to organisms in Alberta, covering all major groups of aquatic invertebrates. Colour photographs, pictorial keys, and 114 whole-specimen drawings complement the text. This book is only av …
At the Seashore: Atlantic Edition
Here's the perfect companion for having fun at the seashore: a book packed with great ideas for things to do, games to play, crafts and discovery--all at the ocean's edge.
Have you wondered where jellyfish or shore crabs come from? Looked for the names of different seaweeds or shells? Are you interested in learning how you can adopt a killer whale? …
At the Seashore: Pacific Edition
Here's the perfect companion for having fun at the seashore: a book packed with great ideas for things to do, games to play, crafts and discovery--all at the ocean's edge.
Have you wondered where jellyfish or shore crabs come from? Looked for the names of different seaweeds or shells? Are you interested in learning how you can adopt a killer whale? …
Bringing Back the Dodo
This is a strikingly thought-provoking book about how the forces of evolution and extinction have shaped the living world, and the part that humans play therein. These elegant and penetrating essays speak to some of our most fundamental questions about the human and animal worlds, and confirm Grady’s standing as one of our foremost literary scien …
Generally speaking, in these essays I seem to be constantly alarmed at our tendency to ignore or deny the degree to which we are part of the natural world. I believe it is true that, as J.F. Blumenbach, the nineteenth-century founder of anthropology, first observed, we are “the most perfect of all domesticated species.” Many of these essays are ruminations about what that means. But we have not taken nature out of ourselves — even the most domesticated cat eats, drinks, breathes, hunts, hosts fleas, and reproduces — rather, we have taken ourselves out of nature. To our cost. In many of the essays I try to remind us of the fact that when we destroy a segment of nature — by cutting down a forest to make a road, or killing wild animals for sport, or even ridding ourselves of pests and parasites — we destroy an essential part of ourselves. When we tamper with nature, by altering an organism’s genetic makeup to produce a new plant or animal, or bypass sexual reproduction through cloning or gene splicing, when we remove a species from or add a species to an ecosystem, we are interfering with a process that has evolved on its own, and which has taken us into account, for millions of years, and about which we know next to nothing. It ought to be a sobering thought that, when most of us encounter a bear in the forest, the bear knows more about us than we know about it.
I am not, however, a polemicist by nature. My inclination is simply to point out what we’re doing as a species, place that action in some kind of natural context, and occasionally ask why we persist in doing it. If the voice sometimes sounds plaintive, or incredulous, or impatient, well, that is often the voice of the essayist. An essay is a pearl that began with an irritating grain of sand.
Bugs of Ontario
A fun-filled field guide into the creepy-crawly world of Ontario's bugs. Learn about 125 of the coolest bugs you might encounter in the province's great outdoors. John Acorn, an avid bugster and host of the popular television series The Nature Nut, supplies a lively and personable text that evokes each species' character. Meanwhile, respected Canad …
Cell-Cell Interactions: A Practical Approach
This book provides a wealth of practical information relating to this area of intense research in cell biology. It describes the methods essential to the identification and characterization of the molecules that mediate cellular interactions in a variety of systems. Invaluable to a wide rangeof biological scientists, the book includes methods for p …
Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest
Written by a marine biologist and illustrated in colour by a prizewinning underwater photographer, Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest is the only comprehensive field guide to marine fishes of BC, Washington, and southern Alaska. It is also a useful reference for marine fishes of Oregon and Northern California.
Each fish is identified by its com …
Death
Our love of life makes the inevitability of death very difficult to accept. Death is a comprehensive examination of that inevitable and universal human experience. To better our understanding of death--and so perhaps fear it less--the book explains the biological processes and the different causes of death, and examines the human perceptions of de …