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Neurobiology of Monotremes: Brain Evolution in Our Distant Mammalian Cousins by Ken Ashwell

2014 | ISBN: 0643103112 | English | 536 pages | PDF | 43 MB

The monotremes are an unusual and evolutionarily important group of mammals showing striking behavioral and physiological adaptations to their niches. They are the only mammals exhibiting electroreception (in the trigeminal sensory pathways) and the echidna shows distinctive olfactory specializations. This book brings together current information on the development, structure, function and behavioral ecology of the monotremes. 

The author aims to close the current gap in knowledge between the genes and developmental biology of monotremes on the one hand, and the adult structure, function and ecology of monotremes on the other. He explores how the sequence “embryonic structure › adult structure › behavior” is achieved in monotremes and how this differs from other mammals. The work also combines a detailed review of the neurobiology of monotremes with photographic and diagrammatic atlases of the sectioned adult brains and peripheral nervous system of the short-beaked echidna and platypus. Pairing of a detailed review of the field with the first published brain atlases of two of the three living monotremes will allow the reader to immediately relate key points in the text to features in the atlases and will extend a universal system of brain nomenclature developed in eutherian brain atlases by G. Paxinos and colleagues to monotremes. 

Contributors:

* Craig D. Hardman--Department of Anatomy, School of Medical Sciences, University of New South Wales

* A. M. Musser--Australian Museum, Sydney

* Stewart C. Nicol--School of Zoology, University of Tasmania