Book Description

Comparative Endocrinology Aubrey Gorbman, Walton W. Dickhoff, Steven R. Vigna, Nancy B. Clark & Charles L. Ralph Keenly sensitive to the needs and capabilities of today’s undergraduate, this textbook provides a broadly comparative approach to vertebrate endocrinology which is not confined to the study of mammals but compares and relates all vertebrate groups. The mechanism of hormonal action is considered as a general phenomenon and specifically with respect to each of the vertebrate hormones. The book’s initial gland-by-gland approach permits a rapid review of the entire endocrine system and of the linkages between environmental changes and hormonally regulated adaptive changes. Gradually, the book’s emphasis shifts from glands and their hormones to chemically modulated phenomena of increasing complexity. Thus, the relatively simpler process of integumentary pigment control and its regulation is discussed before calcium metabolism. Other multihormonally regulated phenomena like osmoregulation, and the highly complex subject of intermediary metabolism are discussed in stages throughout the work before being presented in their own right in later chapters. The book’s comparative approach gives way in Chapter 13 to the examination of endocrine-regulated reproduction in mammals, particularly in man. This departure is due primarily to the well-recognized difficulty of generalizing from one animal group to another in light of the highly adaptive quality of vertebrate reproduction. The book, at this point, limits the range of discussion on the comparative aspects of reproductive endocrinology by choosing to present the best understood species—the rat and man—as the principal models for study of the phenomenon. As an instructional tool, Comparative Endocrinology is unsurpassed in its clarity. The use of all technical terms is preceded or accompanied by explanations for those terms. The most lavishly illustrated endocrinology text available, the book contains numerous summary diagrams to permit students to organize complex interrelationships visually. Photographs and electron micrographs are drawn from the vast body of original literature to provide outstanding illustrations of morphological features.