© 2003 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
Behavior and Its Neural Control in Gastropod Molluscs
1 Professor of Biology and Director, Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
Behavior and Its Neural Control in Gastropod Molluscs. RONALD CHASE. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, 2002. 314 pp. (ISBN 0-19-511314-4 $90.00).
Ronald Chase's book is a welcome review of the breathtaking progress of the past 3 or so decades to unravel behavioral and neural mechanisms in gastropods. Gastropods are refreshingly diverse along several dimensions. Necessarily, they have tinkered evolutionarily with the neural machinery controlling their behavior and physiology sufficiently to carve out niches in most of the planet's ecosystems (even including the aerial one if you permit inclusion of the slugs that mate hanging in mid-air from a mucus thread). During the past few decades, triggered in part by their inherent diversity, and by the exceptional utility of several species that have become "model systems" for basic cellular and biomedical processes, major progress has been made in understanding mechanisms at all levels.
The timing and directions of Chase's career in the field coincides closely with this explosion of knowledge, and his own work has played a significant role at the interface of the ‘psychology’ and neurophysiology of the group. His review reaches into the slug ‘mind’ exploring e.g., motivation, behavioral choice, and learning.
The chapter on reproduction is a good example. It covers the literature in depth. And it should be an provocative read for many neuroethologists because despite the wealth of fascinating behavioral options uncovered, the underlying neural machinery has been studied in just a few species (principally Lymnaea, Helix and Aplysia). It is all the more compelling because gastropods include large hermaphroditic groups likely subject to post-copulatory mechanisms of selection. There is a wide-open field beckoning for behavioral and neural studies in e.g., opisthobranchs, and several other major groups. One can predict that Chase's book will promote new work on neural networks, neuropharmacological mechanisms, and combined field and laboratory analysis of reproductive selection mechanisms including perhaps sperm competition.
Chase gives the phylogenetic relations of the gastropods and the evolutionary sculpting of the their nervous systems an authoritative analysis, however the outcome is not particularly satisfying. There remain serious doubts about the relationships of prosobranchia, and opisthobranchia to the rest of the gastropods, and one doubts that either cladistic or molecular genetic analyses (or a combination) will sort these out in the near future.
Sensory systems are well reviewed, (a summary, but nonetheless, only the second major one since Bullock and Horridge's work of nearly 40 years ago). It is crucial however for workers in the field, since it includes useful new physiological and anatomical detail. The same can be said for the previously ‘terra incognita’ of nerve-muscle cell relationships, and especially the structural and functional roles of the peripheral nervous system.
Chase opens with the hope that "curious persons of diverse backgrounds will read this book." Regrettably, I doubt that the randomly curious will take this one home for intellectual fun. It is loaded with the specialty language of fans of the Mollusca and aimed deliberately to answer questions lurking in the minds of specialists. Nonetheless, it is a splendid summary, and should be required reading for graduate students in zoology and neuroethology who are looking for questions on the overlapping edges of neuroscience, behavior and their cellular and molecular underpinnings.
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