The Neurobiology of Australian Marsupials: Brain Evolution in the Other Mammalian Radiation

Description

Australian marsupials represent a parallel adaptive radiation to that seen among placental mammals. This great natural experiment has produced a striking array of mammals with structural and behavioural features echoing those seen among primates, rodents, carnivores, edentates and ungulates elsewhere in the world. Many of these adaptations involve profound evolutionary changes in the nervous system, and occurred in isolation from those unfolding among placental mammals. Ashwell provides the first comprehensive review of the scientific literature on the structure and function of the nervous system of Australian marsupials. The book also includes the first comprehensive delineated atlases of brain structure in a representative diprotodont marsupial (the tammar wallaby) and a representative polyprotodont marsupial (the stripe-faced dunnart). For those interested in brain development, the book also provides the first comprehensive delineated atlas of brain development in a diprotodont marsupial (the tammar wallaby) during the critical first 4 weeks of pouch life.

Ken Ashwell has over 29 years in the neurosciences field, including teaching experience in medical anatomy, neuroscience, comparative anatomy and anthropology. Ken has published over 100 papers in international refereed neuroscience journals, ten book chapters and four books. He has published four developmental and adult brain atlases in collaboration with George Paxinos and colleagues and contributed to a prestigious and definitive work on the anatomy of the human nervous system edited by Jurgen Mai and George Paxinos. With research funding support from the Australian Research Council and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany, Ken has published more than 30 papers in international refereed journals on comparative neuroscience of living and recently extinct Australasian mammals and birds, 20 of these have been on monotreme neuroanatomy and 9 on marsupial neuroanatomy. Ken is currently Professor of Anatomy at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

'... rigorously organized ...this volume provides a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on the structure and function of the nervous system of Australian marsupials ... as well as a useful glossary. A recommendable book.' Mammalia