Australasian Marsupials and Monotremes

Australasian Marsupials and Monotremes
Author: Michael Kennedy
Publisher: IUCN
Total Pages: 122
Release: 1992
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 9782831700526

Australia, Papua New Guinea, and eastern Indonesia together share all the monotremes (egg-laying mammals) of the world and all the marsupials (pouched mammals) except those of the Americas. There is an urgent need for concerted action to conserve the marsupials and monotremes of the Australasian region. Australia has the worst extinction rate for the mammals of any continent or country and Papua New Guinea and eastern Indonesia are undergoing rapid development which, if not properly planned and controlled, could threaten the habitat of many marsupials, as well as other species.This Action Plan provides an overall perspective of the problems that confront conservation agencies and NGOs in the region and recommends actions required before the year 2000.

Neurobiology of Monotremes

Neurobiology of Monotremes
Author: Ken Ashwell
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 626
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0643103163

Neurobiology of Monotremes brings together current information on the development, structure, function and behavioural ecology of the monotremes. The monotremes are an unusual and evolutionarily important group of mammals showing striking behavioural and physiological adaptations to their niches. They are the only mammals exhibiting electroreception (in the trigeminal sensory pathways) and the echidna shows distinctive olfactory specialisations. The authors aim 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. They explore how the sequence 'embryonic structure › adult structure › behaviour' 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.

Echidna

Echidna
Author: M. L. Augee
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2006
Genre: Echidnas
ISBN: 0643092048

"This book is based on Echidnas of Australia and New Guinea, first published as part of the Australian Natural History series"--Preface.

Australian Mammals

Australian Mammals
Author: Leonard Cronin
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2008
Genre: Mammals
ISBN: 1741751101

The third in a series of highly illustrated natural history books that provides a wonderful introduction to identifying Australian mammals.

Platypus Matters

Platypus Matters
Author: Jack Ashby
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2022-08-04
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 022678925X

"Naturalist and Assistant Director of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, Jack Ashby shares his love for the platypus and other Australian mammals, including wombats, echidnas, and kangaroos. Informed by stories of his experiences meeting living marsupials and egg-laying mammals on fieldwork in Tasmania and mainland Australia and his close contact with thousands of zoological specimens collected for museums over the last 200 years, Ashby's book explains historical mysteries and debunks myths about these mammals and especially the platypus-which lays eggs, feeds its young on milk, has venom spurs, and sports a bill that can detect electricity. In evaluating how humans have considered these special mammals, he makes clear that calling these animals "weird" or "primitive"- or incorrectly implying that Australia is an "evolutionary backwater"-has only added to the challenges for their conservation. One outcome of these descriptions is that Australia now has the worst mammal extinction rate of anywhere on Earth. Ashby argues that many of the ways that the world thinks about Australia's mammals can be traced back to the country's colonial history"--