Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions (signed)

Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010. INSCRIBED: "For David Wake, With Highest Regards and fond memories of our tropical adventures together." Dated 12 April 2010 and SIGNED by the AUTHOR. From his New York Times obituary (May 19, 2021): "David Wake, an evolutionary biologist and a pre-eminent authority on salamanders who raised an alarm in the 1980s about the loss of amphibians to climate change… A longtime professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Wake used salamanders as vehicles to study how animals diversify and develop new species over millions of years. His focus was a family of species of lungless salamander called plethodontids… Dr. Wake named 144 salamander species, some of which he discovered, on his own or with colleagues. One, Nototriton wakei, was named for him. Two lizards and a frog also bear his name… Dr. Wake's research expeditions took him to the Appalachians, the Pacific Northwest, Costa Rica and Guatemala as well as areas of California. But in the 1980s, he realized that a species of salamander that he had found to be plentiful in Mexico a decade earlier had become difficult to find. Other herpetologists had by then had similar experiences of amphibian scarcity." Fine condition in a Near Very Good dust jacket (a few short, closed edge tears). The jacket is protected by a removable Brodart clear-plastic sleeve. Well illustrated with full color photos. Bound in the original black cloth, stamped in bright lime green metallic on the spine. Complete with dust jacket. From the publisher: "Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett, 'the Indiana Jones of entomology,' takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo. Moffett's spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles; warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them creating marketplaces and assembly lines and dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human -- including hygiene, recycling, and warfare. ADVENTURES AMONG ANTS introduces some of the world's most awe-inspiring species and offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perception: Ants are world-class road builders, handling complex traffic problems on thoroughfares that dwarf our highway systems; Ants take slaves from conquered armies and create societies dependent on their labor; Ants with the largest societies often deploy complex military tactics; Some ants have evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating other animals and growing specific crops for food.". INSCRIBED / SIGNED by the AUTHOR. First Printing of the First Edition. Hardcover. Fine condition/Near Very Good dust jacket. Illus. by NOT a library discard. vii, 280pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.