Overview

Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to their own advantage. Building on Richard Dawkins's classic, The Extended Phenotype, Turner shows why drawing the boundary of an organism's physiology at the skin of the animal is arbitrary. Since the structures animals build undoubtedly do physiological work, capturing and channeling chemical and physical energy, Turner argues that such structures are more properly regarded not as frozen behaviors but as external organs of physiology and even extensions of the animal's phenotype. By challenging dearly held assumptions, a fascinating new view of the living world is opened to us, with implications for our understanding of physiology, the environment, and the remarkable structures animals build.

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9780674009851

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Reviews

[Turner's] thesis is that many of the external structures that organisms build represent the same kind of physiological machinery we typically associate with kidneys, lungs and other squishy bits. He demonstrates his view with verve and enthusiasm in fascinating chapters on how organisms manipulate the external environment to their advantage...Stories like this form the heart of this book, presenting a novel set of environmental mysteries and revealing their solutions. But Turner does not merely explain the answers--he dissects them and makes us see why they are the answers. Each chapter is, in fact, a hidden lesson in physiology, biomechanics and environmental chemistry... The Extended Organism can be read and enjoyed without taking a position on the Gaia question. It is a clever dissection of environmental physiology from a persistent and clever teacher. Like most good teachers, Turner manages to slip a huge range of new information into your head along the way--information that helps change your view of organisms in their world. -- Stephen R. Palumbi American Scientist

When a gene determines a physical or behavioural characteristic of an animal, there is little doubt that the end result of the gene's activity is a function of the animal's genome...But what about structures that animals build? They fulfill the same criteria although they are separated from the individual; but then so are eggs. Is there a fundamental difference between the way that eggs and the nest in which they are laid are encoded in the genome?...[This] concept is elaborated...in this masterful book by J. Scott Turner.--Dennis Cotton Biologist

Author Information

J. Scott Turner is Associate Professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse.

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