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This book presents the whole picture of the ecological and evolutionary study on the ground beetle group, the subgenus Ohomopterus of the genus Carabus, endemic to Japan. This flightless beetle group consists of many geographic races. They show divergence in key traits for reproductive isolation¿body size and genital morphology, which leads to coexistence of two or more species. This beetle group provides an important material to study how a lineage of organisms diversify and form multi-species assemblage, and thereby multiply their species richness. The book introduces novel genomic approaches to resolve questions about evolution of Ohomopterus. The readers will find that this story of evolution in Carabus beetles revealed by recent approaches is much different from what was told in previous literature.Exploring different cases across a wide range of lineages is important in constructing a synthetic theory of species radiation and richness, including speciation and species coexistence. This study on Ohomopterus beetles contributes to the ongoing discussion to understand how and why species multiply and how species richness increases in one area of our planet.

This book examines the mechanisms and functions of tonic immobility, the so-called death feigning behavior, or thanatosis, or animal hypnosis. The chapters cover the neurophysiological and experimental studies on insects, the functional significance of death-feigning, examination of the freezing and immobility behavior in insects through environment, physiology, genetics, and responses to ultrasound and vibration. It also covers tonic immobility and freezing behavior in fish from the perspective of vertebrates study.Tonic immobility is an interesting behavior that occurs reflexively in various animals under physical restraint by predators. The physiological mechanism of thanatosis was extensively investigated during 1960-1980. Researchers have proposed hypotheses to explain the mechanism underlying tonic immobility in vertebrates; local inhibition of the central nervous system, acceleration of the limbic system, abnormal control of the autonomic nervous system. On the other hand, the peripheral and central mechanisms of tonic immobility were intensely investigated at a behavioral and a neuronal level in stick insects and crickets. In the 1970s, behavioral ecology has shed light on the aspect of an ultimate factor for tonic immobility. Ethologists and ecologists challenged this matter in the laboratory and natural habitats, and have collected evidence for its functional roles using mainly insects such as beetles, moths, locusts. More recently, studies of tonic immobility in humans are drawing attention, as clinicians are trying to explain the defencelessness of rape victims from the viewpoint of animal hypnosis.This timely publication provides an understanding of the past and present research of the mechanisms and functions of tonic immobility. This book is intended for researchers and undergraduate/ graduate students in the field of zoology including physiology, ethology, ecology, and human behavior. It will also appeal to the public audience who has an interest in animal behavior, including human behavior.

This book reviews the physiological mechanisms of diverse insect clocks, including circadian clock, lunar clock, tidal clock, photoperiodism, circannual rhythms and others. It explains the commonality and diversity of insect clocks, focusing on the recent advances in their molecular and neural mechanisms. In the history of chronobiology, insects provided important examples of diverse clocks. The first report of animal photoperiodism was in an aphid, and the time-compensated celestial navigation was first shown in the honeybee. The circadian clock was first localized in the brain of a cockroach. These diverse insect clocks also have some common features which deserve to be reviewed in a single book. The central molecular mechanism of the circadian clock, i.e., the negative feedback loop of clock genes, was proposed in Drosophila melanogaster in the 1990s and later became the subject of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2017. Thereafter, researches on the molecular and neural mechanisms in diverse insect clocks other than the Drosophila circadian clock also advanced appreciably. Various new methods including RNAi, NGS, and genome editing with CRISPR-Cas9 have become applicable in these researches. This book comprehensively reviews the physiological mechanisms in diverse insect clocks in the last two decades, which have received less attention than the Drosophila circadian clock. The book is intended for researchers, graduate students, and highly motivated undergraduate students in biological sciences, especially in entomology and chronobiology.

This book presents the discoveries made during nearly three decades of research on the parental shield bug, Parastrachia japonensis inhabiting Kyushu Island, Japan. P. japonensis has evolved a unique and fascinating life history, characterized by extreme behavioral and physiological adaptations that have culminated in a singularly dependent relationship with its lone host tree, Schoepfia jasminodora (Olacaceae), which is a generally scarce and unreliable resource.It is expected that the evolution of parental care behaviors in the strictly semelparous P. japonensis was more directly influenced by the benefit to females that arises from enhanced survivorship of current offspring, rather than any possible cost the females might incur in terms of reduced future reproductive success, because no future reproduction is possible. The authors explain how the different parental cares in this species enhance offspring survivorship in the context of the ecological conditions it has experienced over evolutionary time.The book begins with a recap of the earliest studies, the reports through 1991, and then introduces the many fascinating aspects of the life history, neurobiology, physiology and behavior of P. japonensis that have been newly discovered since, and those aspects that have been confirmed through experimentation over the past thirty years. This comprehensive review of information will be useful for comparative studies of parental care in other semelparous and iteroparous organisms experiencing both similar and different ecological constraints. The book will be of academic interest to undergraduate and graduate students of entomology, zoology, behavior, and behavioral ecology.