Seasons of Life: The biological rhythms that enable living things to thrive and survive

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Profile Books, 26 ago 2010 - 316 páginas
The natural world is full of rhythms. How do birds know when to return to their nesting grounds? What effect do the seasons have on our wellbeing, and how does the season in which we are born affect our subsequent life chances? How did humans get the idea that there were seasons 50,000 years ago? Seasons of Life explains why the seasons occur, the impact of seasonal change and how organisms have evolved to anticipate these changes. For although we mask the effects of seasonal changes by warming our homes, lighting our nights, preserving foods and storing water, we cannot hide from them.
 

Índice

Introduction
1
1 The generation of the seasons
8
2 Adapting to seasonal change
24
3 Anticipating seasonal change in plants
38
4 Seasonal reproduction in mammals and birds
64
hibernation and diapause
93
6 Timing migration
120
7 Seasons and human evolution
141
10 Disease and seasonal timing
181
11 Seasonal affective disorder
199
12 The seasonality of dying
218
13 We are all phenology freaks now
232
Glossary of common terms
244
Appendix I
250
References
252
Index
281

8 Timing reproduction in humans
151
9 Birth month effects
169

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Sobre el autor (2010)

Russell G. Foster is Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a leading expert on the neuroscience of biological time. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Leon Kreitzman is a writer and broadcaster, a widely respected futurologist, and author of The 24 Hour Society.

In Rhythms of Life, also published by Profile, Russell Foster and Leon Kreitzman introduced the science of chronobiology and circadian rhythms to the general public. Their influential book was a finalist for the Galileo science book prize in Padua and short-listed for the US independent publishers science book award. Rhythms of Life has been published in the UK, USA, Italy China, Japan, Taiwan

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