Many mammals like to dig in the dirt, but few call it home. Those that do, such as mole-rats, zokors, and tuco-tucos, have developed novel adaptations to their subterranean life, including bones and muscles modified for efficient digging and ways to "see" underground without using their eyes. These unusual traits, adopted independently by unrelated groups around the world, also make subterranean rodents fascinating subjects for biologists. Life Underground provides the first comprehensive review of the biology of subterranean rodents. Arranged by topic rather than by taxon to facilitate cross-species comparisons, chapters cover such subjects as morphology, physiology, social behavior, genetic variation, and evolutionary diversification. Two main questions run throughout the book. First, to what extent has subterranean life shaped the biology of these animals, leading to similar adaptations among otherwise dissimilar species? Second, how have the distinct evolutionary histories of these groups led to different solutions to the challenges posed by life underground?

Subterranean Rodents presents achievements from recent years of research on these rodents, divided into five sections: ecophysiology; sensory ecology; life histories, behavioural ecology and demography; environmental and economical impact; molecular ecology and evolution. It is a must for all researchers working in this field and will be of interest to zoologists, physiologists, morphologists, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists.

Subterranean life exists within an extraordinary environment and has evolved among different groups of mammals all over the globe. With relatively constant temperature, few opportunities to meet organisms other than the immediate family, and a completely different sensory environment, the evolution of such life is fascinating. Locomotion, communication, food-finding, navigation, circadian rhythms, and indeed the whole of the animals' physiology may be specialized to cope with life underground. And from burrowing to blindness, magnetic communication to the weird bee-like eusociality of blind mole rats, specialization has been extreme and has led to speciation in a whole range of new contexts. That the subterranean way of life occurs in different species of mammals across the globe has provided scientists with one of nature's best studied global evolutionary demonstrations of adaptive radiation and speciation. The revolution in molecular biology that has occurred over the last ten years has massively expanded these horizons, allowing scientists to explore, map, and clone the genes underlying the basis of adaptation and speciation and translate their fascinating structural and functional evolution into genes and genomic language. This book draws together the burgeoning literature about all aspects of the biology of subterranean mammals. Beginning with their evolutionary history and the processes that led to the subterranean way of life, the author reviews ecology, behavior, and physiology within the context of the highly stressful subterranean context, considers the specialization that has evolved in response, and then compares the eleven families of extant subterranean mammals. The incredible circumstances surrounding subterranean mammals present a unique, global, 'natural experiment' in evolution that has implications throughout biology. As such, this broad survey will stand as an invaluable reference to evolutionary biologists, ecologists, and molecular biologists for years to come.

This volume, first published in 2000, explores the range of social systems in this fascinating group to understand how complex social systems evolved.

This volume brings together more than a decade of information collected in the field and lab on the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a northeast African mammal unique for its physical characteristics and eusociality. Nearly blind and virtually hairless, naked mole-rats inhabit large subterranean colonies in which only one female and her one to three mates conceive offspring, while the young from previous litters maintain and defend the group as do workers in colonies of the social insects. In this first major treatise on naked mole-rats an international group of researchers covers such topics as the evolution of eusociality, phylogeny and systematics of the rodent family Bathyergidae, population and behavioral ecology and genetics of naked mole-rats in the field, vocal and nonvocal behaviors, social organization and divisions of labor within colonies, and climatic, social, and physiological factors affecting growth, reproduction, and reproductive suppression. In addition to the editors, the contributors are D. H. Abbott, M. W. Allard, N. C. Bennett, R. A. Brett, S. H. Braude, B. Crespi, S. V. Edwards, C. G. Faulkes, L. M. George, R. L. Honeycutt, E. A. Lacey, C. E. Liddell, E. McDaid, K. Nelson, K. M. Noonan, J. O'Riain, J. W. Pepper, H. K. Reeve, and D. A. Schlitter. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The second installment in a planned three-volume series, this book provides the first substantive review of South American rodents published in over fifty years. Increases in the reach of field research and the variety of field survey methods, the introduction of bioinformatics, and the explosion of molecular-based genetic methodologies have all contributed to the revision of many phylogenetic relationships and to a doubling of the recognized diversity of South American rodents. The largest and most diverse mammalian order on Earth—and an increasingly threatened one—Rodentia is also of great ecological importance, and Rodents is both a timely and exhaustive reference on these ubiquitous creatures. From spiny mice and guinea pigs to the oversized capybara, this book covers all native rodents of South America, the continental islands of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean Netherlands off the Venezuelan coast. It includes identification keys and descriptions of all genera and species; comments on distribution; maps of localities; discussions of subspecies; and summaries of natural, taxonomic, and nomenclatural history. Rodents also contains a detailed list of cited literature and a separate gazetteer based on confirmed identifications from museum vouchers and the published literature.

This volume focuses on the huge advances in the last 25 years on the use of this animal model for biomedical research (cancer, heart disease and neurodegeneration), fundamental neuroscience and basic subterranean biology. In 2013, Science magazine named the naked mole-rat as the Vertebrate of the Year. This was partly due to research carried out documenting its extreme longevity, negligible senescence, and prolonged maintenance of cancer free, good health well into old age as well as seminal work on mechanisms involved in these processes, pain and hypoxia resistance. In addition to this research focus on longevity and chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, the naked mole-rat has also made a substantial contribution to the fields of ecophysiology, neuroscience and behavior. With international contributions, this book provides a valuable text for zoological students, behavioral scientists and biomedical researchers.