By J. Scott Turner

Can the constructions that animals build--from the standard burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the good Barrier Reef--be acknowledged to reside? despite the fact that counterintuitive the belief could first appear, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates during this publication that many animals build and use constructions to harness and regulate the stream of strength from their setting to their very own virtue. construction on Richard Dawkins's vintage, The prolonged Phenotype , Turner exhibits why drawing the boundary of an organism's body structure on the epidermis of the animal is bigoted. because the constructions animals construct certainly do physiological paintings, shooting and channeling chemical and actual strength, Turner argues that such constructions are extra appropriately appeared now not as frozen behaviors yet as exterior organs of body structure or even extensions of the animal's phenotype. via difficult dearly held assumptions, a desirable new view of the residing international is opened to us, with implications for our knowing of body structure, the surroundings, and the outstanding constructions animals construct.

(20001210)

Show description

Read or Download The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures PDF

Best anatomy books

Mitral Valve Prolapse: Benign Syndrome?

Sharon Anderson explores Mitral Valve Prolapse, a syndrome that has questioned many for many years, and sheds gentle on a ailment that is affecting such a lot of and is addressed too little. the indications of the ailment are usually not varied from these of alternative diseases: palpitations, fainting, fatigue, shortness of breath, migraine complications, chest discomfort, episodes of tremendous quick or abnormal heartbeat, dizziness and lightheadedness.

LAWS, LANGUAGE and LIFE: Howard Pattee’s classic papers on the physics of symbols with contemporary commentary

Howard Pattee is a physicist who for a few years has taken his personal course in learning the physics of symbols, that is now a origin for biosemiotics. by way of extending von Neumann’s logical specifications for self-replication, to the actual standards of symbolic guide on the molecular point, he concludes kind of quantum size is important for all times.

Animal Cell Culture

​Animal cells are the popular “cell factories” for the creation of complicated molecules and antibodies to be used as prophylactics, therapeutics or diagnostics. Animal cells are required for the right kind post-translational processing (including glycosylation) of biopharmaceutical protein items. they're used for the creation of viral vectors for gene treatment.

Extra resources for The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures

Sample text

In the calciloblast antiport, for every calcium ion moved out of the cell, two hydrogen ions are transported into the cell. Both transport processes work against their respective concentration gradients; that is, they are creating order, and so they require energy from ATP. In general, one ATP molecule is sufficient to turn the crank once, moving one calcium ion and two hydrogen ions in opposite directions across the calciloblast’s membrane. 4 The calcium-proton antiport in the calciloblast of a hermatypic coral.

Conventional physiology encompasses an organism using metabolic energy to do work on its internal environment. A putative external physiology extends the reach of this work to the environment outside the animal. In the last chapter, I asserted that the laws of thermodynamics put no constraints, save one, on the extent of this outward reach. It so happens that this one constraint is a serious one, so it must be dealt with straightaway. The supposed constraint is imposed by the Second Law, which states that any transformation of energy into useful work must be accompanied by the loss of a portion of that energy as heat: energy in → useful work + heat The problem is that physiological functions are powered only by energy being made to do useful work— with a few exceptions, heat is pretty much useless to an organism’s physiology.

How Structures Can Live Making energy do work means capturing and channeling it so that it flows in a controlled way down a potential energy gradient. Usually a structure of some sort—whether it be an imperfection in a silicon crystal, an enzyme molecule, or a crankshaft—directs the flow of energy. If physiological work is to be powered by the physical energy stream, there must be a structure of some sort that can capture and channel the energy. Most engineering done by humans is devoted to figuring out clever ways of manipulating energy.

Download PDF sample

Download The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built by J. Scott Turner PDF
Rated 4.63 of 5 – based on 31 votes