Do the movements of animals, including humans, follow patterns that can be described quantitatively by simple laws of motion? If so, then why? These questions have attracted the attention of scientists in many disciplines, and stimulated debates ranging from ecological matters to queries such as 'how can there be free will if one follows a law of motion?' This is the first book on this rapidly evolving subject, introducing random searches and foraging in a way that can be understood by readers without a previous background on the subject. It reviews theory as well as experiment, addresses open problems and perspectives, and discusses applications ranging from the colonization of Madagascar by Austronesians to the diffusion of genetically modified crops. The book will interest physicists working in the field of anomalous diffusion and movement ecology as well as ecologists already familiar with the concepts and methods of statistical physics.

Domestication of vertebrates is based on the understanding of the needs of animals in their natural environment. Thus the success of this domestication throughout human history is largely dependant of the knowledge of the animal feeding behaviour. The aim of this volume is to provide advanced students and researchers with a review of current knowledge of feeding in domestic mammals and birds. The book also presents chapters on feeding behaviour in particular species; the scope is wide, covering not only ruminants, poultry and pigs, but also more specifically horses, rabbits and ostrich. Contributors include leading research workers from Europe, USA, Australia and South Africa.

The International Symposium on Ruminant Physiology (ISRP) is the premier forum for presentation and discussion of advances in knowledge of the physiology of ruminant animals. This book brings together edited versions of the keynote review papers presented at the symposium.

Dispersal of plants and animals is one of the most fascinating subjects in ecology. It has long been recognized as an important factor affecting ecosystem dynamics. Dispersal is apparently a phenomenon of biological origin; however, because of its complexity, it cannot be studied comprehensively by biological methods alone. Deeper insights into dispersal properties and implications require interdisciplinary approaches involving biologists, ecologists and mathematicians. The purpose of this book is to provide a forum for researches with different backgrounds and expertise and to ensure further advances in the study of dispersal and spatial ecology. This book is unique in its attempt to give an overview of dispersal studies across different spatial scales, such as the scale of individual movement, the population scale and the scale of communities and ecosystems. It is written by top-level experts in the field of dispersal modeling and covers a wide range of problems ranging from the identification of Levy walks in animal movement to the implications of dispersal on an evolutionary timescale.

Do the movements of animals, including humans, follow patterns that can be described quantitatively by simple laws of motion? If so, then why? These questions have attracted the attention of scientists in many disciplines, and stimulated debates ranging from ecological matters to queries such as 'how can there be free will if one follows a law of motion?' This is the first book on this rapidly evolving subject, introducing random searches and foraging in a way that can be understood by readers without a previous background on the subject. It reviews theory as well as experiment, addresses open problems and perspectives, and discusses applications ranging from the colonization of Madagascar by Austronesians to the diffusion of genetically modified crops. The book will interest physicists working in the field of anomalous diffusion and movement ecology as well as ecologists already familiar with the concepts and methods of statistical physics.

This book is not a text devoted to a pedagogical presentation of a specialized topic nor is it a monograph focused on the author's area of research. It accomplishes both these things while providing a rationale for why the reader ought to be interested in learning about fractional calculus. This book is for researchers who has heard about many

Foraging is fundamental to animal survival and reproduction, yet it is much more than a simple matter of finding food; it is a biological imperative. Animals must find and consume resources to succeed, and they make extraordinary efforts to do so. For instance, pythons rarely eat, but when they do, their meals are large—as much as 60 percent larger than their own bodies. The snake’s digestive system is normally dormant, but during digestion metabolic rates can increase fortyfold. A python digesting quietly on the forest floor has the metabolic rate of thoroughbred in a dead heat. This and related foraging processes have broad applications in ecology, cognitive science, anthropology, and conservation biology—and they can be further extrapolated in economics, neurobiology, and computer science. Foraging is the first comprehensive review of the topic in more than twenty years. A monumental undertaking, this volume brings together twenty-two experts from throughout the field to offer the latest on the mechanics of foraging, modern foraging theory, and foraging ecology. The fourteen essays cover all the relevant issues, including cognition, individual behavior, caching behavior, parental behavior, antipredator behavior, social behavior, population and community ecology, herbivory, and conservation. Considering a wide range of taxa, from birds to mammals to amphibians, Foraging will be the definitive guide to the field.

This book presents the fundamental theory for non-standard diffusion problems in movement ecology. Lévy processes and anomalous diffusion have shown to be both powerful and useful tools for qualitatively and quantitatively describing a wide variety of spatial population ecological phenomena and dynamics, such as invasion fronts and search strategies. Adopting a self-contained, textbook-style approach, the authors provide the elements of statistical physics and stochastic processes on which the modeling of movement ecology is based and systematically introduce the physical characterization of ecological processes at the microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic levels. The explicit definition of these levels and their interrelations is particularly suitable to coping with the broad spectrum of space and time scales involved in bio-ecological problems. Including numerous exercises (with solutions), this text is aimed at graduate students and newcomers in this field at the interface of theoretical ecology, mathematical biology and physics.

These proceedings gather outstanding research papers presented at the Second International Conference on Data Engineering 2015 (DaEng-2015) and offer a consolidated overview of the latest developments in databases, information retrieval, data mining and knowledge management. The conference brought together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to address key challenges in these fields, discuss advanced data engineering concepts and form new collaborations. The topics covered include but are not limited to: • Data engineering • Big data • Data and knowledge visualization • Data management • Data mining and warehousing • Data privacy & security • Database theory • Heterogeneous databases • Knowledge discovery in databases • Mobile, grid and cloud computing • Knowledge management • Parallel and distributed data • Temporal data • Web data, services and information engineering • Decision support systems • E-Business engineering and management • E-commerce and e-learning • Geographical information systems • Information management • Information quality and strategy • Information retrieval, integration and visualization • Information security • Information systems and technologies