About the Cover
Cover
The "virtual" symposium in this issue, consisting of six concept and review articles, focuses on the neuroecology of chemical defense. Evolution sculpts nervous systems through natural selection, and many ecological interactions among individual organisms are mediated by behavioral processes. Thus, neuroecology synthesizes neuroethological and ecological principles, embodying both the neural basis for behavior and the role of behavior in establishing patterns of organism abundances and species distributions within natural habitats. The diverse variety of topics in these papers covers a range of environments (freshwater, marine, terrestrial) and taxa (mammals, salamanders, fish, insects, snails, crustaceans, seaweeds, and bacteria), several of which are featured on the cover.
Images, clockwise (beginning at top left), depict the taxa, with their environments shown in insets:
Black-eared mouse (Peromyscus melanotis) foraging on a chemically defended monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) within a high-altitude forest habitat of central Mexico.
Sacoglossan sea slug (Oxynoe sp.) on the green alga Caulerpa sertularioides in the Florida Keys. The chemical defenses of Caulerpa spp. may have allowed representatives of these species to invade new habitats, as in the case of Caulerpa taxifolia in the Mediterranean Sea.
California newt (Taricha torosa), which possesses a potent toxin that has potentially profound effects on riparian stream communities within coastal mountain environments.
Sea hare (Aplysia californica), shown here releasing ink for protection from predators, inhabits giant kelp forests (Macrocystis pyrifera) along the California coast.
Photo credits: Black-eared mouse, by John Glendinning (Barnard College) and W. Perry Conway; inset of butterfly forest, by Lincoln Brower (Sweet Briar College).
Sea slug on green algae and inset of coral reef, by Raphael Ritson Williams (Smithsonian Marine Station).
California newt and inset of riparian stream habitat, by Ryan Ferrer (UCLA).
Sea hare, by Genevieve Anderson (Santa Barbara City College); inset of kelp forest, by Eric Hanauer.
Cover design: Beth Liles (Marine Biological Laboratory).
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Copyright © 2008 by the Marine Biological Laboratory.
