Abstract
The recent history of Zoology, starting some time before the middle of this century and still continuing, is principally characterized by many researches on both the utility and the damages to man due to animals. Applied zoology, in a word, was born in this period of development of the zoological sciences.
The building of the world is held together by the forces of hunger and love.
Schiller
[CAMERANO, LORENZO. 1880 Dell’equilibrio dei viventi mercè la reciproca distruzione. Atti delia Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 15:393–414. 8° 24 pp. 4 plates.]
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End Notes
Also consult on this topic, among other works, Camerano, The Insects, Turin, E. Loescher, 1879, p. 26, etc. I have treated the main questions concerning the relations between insects and agriculture in a passage of this book: “Let us consider a portion of unploughed land, in which a large number of herbs and wild plants grow. If we visited this place, we would find a large population of insects; some phytophagous, which feed on the various kinds of plants available, some carnivorous, feeding on the phytophagous species... Suppose that the area is now tilled. The farmer, by plucking out the plants that filled up the place and turning over the soil with the plough, destroys a large number of insect species which either lived on the uprooted plants or metamorphosed there.” “Following the seeding, only one or two species of plants will take the place of the many more that the farmer took away. Very few insect species will remain, and these will precisely be those which feed on the cultivated plants. Since these plants are in great number, the number of insects will soon grow to such an extent as to cause great damage to the plants.” “This does not mean, as is the general belief, that the total number of insects has increased. Before the tillage the area was populated with many types of insects. After the tillage the number of species is reduced, and instead the number of individuals from the remaining species has increased.”
Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, vol. XII, 1877.
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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Camerano, L. (1994). On the Equilibrium of Living Beings by Means of Reciprocal Destruction. In: Levin, S.A. (eds) Frontiers in Mathematical Biology. Lecture Notes in Biomathematics, vol 100. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-50124-1_22
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