The Insects has been the standard textbook in the field since the first edition published over forty years ago. Building on the strengths of Chapman's original text, this long-awaited 5th edition has been revised and expanded by a team of eminent insect physiologists, bringing it fully up-to-date for the molecular era. The chapters retain the successful structure of the earlier editions, focusing on particular functional systems rather than taxonomic groups and making it easy for students to delve into topics without extensive knowledge of taxonomy. The focus is on form and function, bringing together basic anatomy and physiology and examining how these relate to behaviour. This, combined with nearly 600 clear illustrations, provides a comprehensive understanding of how insects work. Now also featuring a richly illustrated prologue by George McGavin, this is an essential text for students, researchers and applied entomologists alike.

The insects: structure and function.

We review the physiological, molecular, and neural mechanisms of insect color vision. Phylogenetic and molecular analyses reveal that the basic bauplan, UV-blue-green-trichromacy, appears to date back to the Devonian ancestor of all pterygote insects. There are variations on this theme, however. These concern the number of color receptor types, their differential expression across the retina, and their fine tuning along the wavelength scale. In a few cases (but not in many others), these differences can be linked to visual ecology. Other insects have virtually identical sets of color receptors despite strong differences in lifestyle. Instead of the adaptionism that has dominated visual ecology in the past, we propose that chance evolutionary processes, history, and constraints should be considered. In addition to phylogenetic analyses designed to explore these factors, we suggest quantifying variance between individuals and populations and using fitness measurements to test the adaptive value of traits identified in insect color vision systems.

The evolution of color vision in insects.

An exploration of embodied intelligence and its implications points toward a theory of intelligence in general; with case studies of intelligent systems in ubiquitous computing, business and management, human memory, and robotics. How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment-in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies. This crucial notion of embodiment underlies fundamental changes in the field of artificial intelligence over the past two decades, and Pfeifer and Bongard use the basic methodology of artificial intelligence-"understanding by building"-to describe their insights. If we understand how to design and build intelligent systems, they reason, we will better understand intelligence in general. In accessible, nontechnical language, and using many examples, they introduce the basic concepts by building on recent developments in robotics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology to outline a possible theory of intelligence. They illustrate applications of such a theory in ubiquitous computing, business and management, and the psychology of human memory. Embodied intelligence, as described by Pfeifer and Bongard, has important implications for our understanding of both natural and artificial intelligence.

How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence

The metaphor of a "cognitive map"has attracted wide interest since it was first proposed in the late 1940s Researchers from fields as diverse as psychology, geography, and urban planning have explored how humans process and use spatial information, often with the view of explaining why people make wayfinding errors or what makes one person a better navigator than another Cognitive psychologists have broken navigation down into its component steps and shown it to be an interplay of neurocognitive functions, such as "spatial updating"and "reference frames"or "perception-action couplings"But there has also been an intense debate among biologists over whether animals have cognitive maps or have other forms of internal spatial representations that allow them to behave as if they did Yet until now, little has been done to relate research on human and non-human subjects in this area In Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes Reginald Golledge brings together a distinguished group of scholars to offer a unique and comprehensive survey of current research in these diverse fields Among the common themes they discover is the psychologists' "black box"approach, in which the internal mechanisms of spatial perception and route planning are modeled or constructed, like metaphors, based on the behavioral evidence Cognitive neuroscientists, on the other hand, have attempted to discover the neurocognitive basis for spatial behavior (They have shown, for example, that damage in the hippocampus system invariably impairs the ability of animals and humans to learn about, remember, and navigate through environments, and studies in humans show that neurons in this system code for location, direction, and distance, thereby providing the elements needed for a mapping system) Artificial intelligence and robotics theorists attempt to construct intelligent mapping systems using computer technology In these areas, there is growing evidence that, as in human wayfinding processes, useful representations cannot be achieved without sacrificing completeness and precision Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes offers not only state-of-the-art knowledge about "wayfinding, "but also represents a point of departure for future interdisciplinary studies "The more we know," concludes volume editor Reginald Golledge, "about how humans or other species can navigate, wayfind, sense, record and use spatial information, the more effective will be the building of future guidance systems, and the more natural it will be for human beings to understand and control those systems"

Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes

Developmental robotics is an emerging field located at the intersection of robotics, cognitive science and developmental sciences. This paper elucidates the main reasons and key motivations behind the convergence of fields with seemingly disparate interests, and shows why developmental robotics might prove to be beneficial for all fields involved. The methodology advocated is synthetic and two-pronged: on the one hand, it employs robots to instantiate models originating from developmental sciences; on the other hand, it aims to develop better robotic systems by exploiting insights gained from studies on ontogenetic development. This paper gives a survey of the relevant research issues and points to some future research directions.

/pdf/developmental-robotics-a-survey-ohrdclr26o.pdf

Developmental robotics: a survey

http://www.imls.uzh.ch/static/CMS_publications/neuhauss/literatur_labhart/pdf/Lambrinos_etal_RobAutSyst2000.pdf

A mobile robot employing insect strategies for navigation

Apart from the sun, the polarization pattern of the sky offers insects a reference for visual compass orientation. Using behavioral experiments, it has been shown in a few insect species (field crickets, honey bees, desert ants, and house flies) that the detection of the oscillation plane of polarized skylight is mediated exclusively by a group of specialized ommatidia situated at the dorsal rim of the compound eye (dorsal rim area). The dorsal rim ommatidia of these species share a number physiological properties that make them especially suitable for polarization vision: each ommatidium contains two sets of homochromatic, strongly polarization-sensitive photoreceptors with orthogonally-arranged analyzer orientations. The physiological specialization of the dorsal rim area goes along with characteristic changes in ommatidial structure, providing actual anatomical hallmarks of polarized skylight detection, that are readily detectable in histological sections of compound eyes. The presence of anatomically specialized dorsal rim ommatidia in many other insect species belonging to a wide range of different orders indicates that polarized skylight detection is a common visual function in insects. However, fine-structural disparities in the design of dorsal rim ommatidia of different insect groups indicate that polarization vision arose polyphyletically in the insects.

/pdf/detectors-for-polarized-skylight-in-insects-a-survey-of-4vbctvg41m.pdf

Detectors for polarized skylight in insects: a survey of ommatidial specializations in the dorsal rim area of the compound eye.

Recent behavioural experiments dealing with the mechanism of polarized skylight navigation in bees indicated that processing of e-vector information in the visual system involves antagonistic interaction between polarization-sensitive photoreceptors1,2. Here we report electrophysiological recordings from polarization-opponent interneurons in the optic lobe of crickets. These neurons receive antagonistic input from polarization sensitive photoreceptors with orthogonally arranged analyser orientations. Although polarization-sensitive interneurons have previously been reported from the visual system of crabs3 and goldfish4,5, this is the first demonstration of polarization-opponent units.

Polarization-opponent interneurons in the insect visual system

http://www.imls.uzh.ch/static/CMS_publications/neuhauss/literatur_labhart/pdf/Wernet_etal_Cell2003.pdf

Homothorax Switches Function of Drosophila Photoreceptors from Color to Polarized Light Sensors

One of the fundamental abilities required in autonomous agents is homing. Natural agents—for instance, desert ants—solve the homing problem mainly by using path integration within an egocentric frame of reference. When employing such a mechanism, compass information for determining direction is necessary, and the precision of the compass will have a crucial effect on the precision of homing. For deriving compass information, certain insects use the pattern of polarized light in the sky that arises due to scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere (polarized light compass). The analysis of skylight polarization is mediated by specialized photoreceptors and neurons in the visual system. Inspired by the insect's polarized light compass, we have constructed a polarization compass that was employed successfully on the mobile robot Sahabot. Three models for extracting compass information from the polarization pattern of the sky were tested. In this article, we describe the navigation system and report results of ...

Thomas Labhart

Papers

A mobile robot employing insect strategies for navigation

Detectors for polarized skylight in insects: a survey of ommatidial specializations in the dorsal rim area of the compound eye.

Polarization-opponent interneurons in the insect visual system

Homothorax Switches Function of Drosophila Photoreceptors from Color to Polarized Light Sensors

An autonomous agent navigating with a polarized light compass