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Index
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction – What is Dung?
Paying lip service to food
You are what you eat
Rights and wrongs of passage
The long and the short of it
What goes in one end…
2. Cleanliness Is Next to Fastidiousness – The Human Obsession with Sewage
Don’t touch that!
No mere flush in the pan
Just add water?
What goes in must come out
A test for purity, or at least potability
The yeuch factor
3. Waste Not – Dung as a Human Resource
What will they think of next?
Throwing it all away
From dung heap to hill of beans
Dung worth fighting over
4. It’s Worth Fighting Over – Dung as a Valuable Ecological Resource
The mad scramble for possession
First find your dung – and be quick about it
Not putting all your eggs in one basket… of dung
What is the point of horns?
Major and minor leagues — mine’s bigger than yours
The downside of having horns
Battling the elements too
Minority dung uses
5. Dung Communities – Interactions and Conflicts
A model of good dung behaviour
Make way for the dung masters
Carving up the dung pie – three feeding and nesting strategies
Dwellers – at home in the middle of it all
Tunnellers – in a hole in the ground there lived a beetle
Rollers – divine inspiration was just about right
Thievery – possession is nine-tenths of the nest
A cuckoo in the nest
Predators – who eats whom?
Parasites and parasitoids – the enemies within
6. The Evolution of Dung Feeding – Where Did It All Begin?
The great bowel shift
A beetle in the nest is worth two in the leaf litter
Walking with dinosaur dung?
Once a dung beetle, always a dung beetle?
7. A Closer Look – Who Lives In Dung?
Now wash your hands
The English scarab – not so sacred
An insect to be proud of
Flies – the good, the bad and the bugly
The not quite so scenic route
The mystery of the deep
8. Cross Section of a Dung Pat – A Slice of Coprophagous Life
Swimming in the stuff – soft centres
The soil horizon
9. The Ageing Process – Time Line of A Dung Pat
Newly minted, going on mature
The well-developed community
This place is falling to pieces
Very little left now
10. Dung Problems – The End of World Ordure As We Know It
A fly in the bush is a pain in the eye
Beetles to the rescue
An impending ecological disaster of our own making
Megafauna and microfauna extinctions
11. Dung Types – An Identification Guide
12. Dung Inhabitants and Dung Feeders – A Rogues’ Gallery
Diptera – flies
Coleoptera – beetles
Lepidoptera – butterflies and moths
Dictyoptera – termites and cockroaches
Hymenoptera – wasps and ants
Other invertebrates
Other animals
13. Dung Is a Four-Letter Word – A Scatological Dictionary
References
Index
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