Author : Douglas J. Futuyma
Publisher : Sinauer Associates, Incorporated
Page : 584 pages
File Size : 40,45 MB
Release : 1979
Category : Science
ISBN :
Futuyma (ecology and evolution, SUNY Stony Brook) covers such subject areas as phylogeny, paleobiology, genetic mechanisms of change and speciation, character evolution, the theory of processes and macroevolution, and new molecular perspectives. Numerous line drawings, charts, diagrams, and maps are provided. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author : R. Paul Thompson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 33,25 MB
Release : 2014-03-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1107027012
This volume explores the philosophical and biological richness of twenty-first-century evolution: its concepts, methods, structure and religious implications.
Author : Karl J. Niklas
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 476 pages
File Size : 12,42 MB
Release : 1997-06-08
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780226580838
Provides a comprehensive synthesis of modern evolutionary biology as it relates to plants. This text recounts the saga of plant life from its origins to the radiation of the flowering plants. Through computer-generated "walks" it shows how living plants might have evolved.
Author : Régis Ferrière
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 447 pages
File Size : 28,96 MB
Release : 2004-06-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 1139453750
As anthropogenic environmental changes spread and intensify across the planet, conservation biologists have to analyze dynamics at large spatial and temporal scales. Ecological and evolutionary processes are then closely intertwined. In particular, evolutionary responses to anthropogenic environmental change can be so fast and pronounced that conservation biology can no longer afford to ignore them. To tackle this challenge, areas of conservation biology that are disparate ought to be integrated into a unified framework. Bringing together conservation genetics, demography, and ecology, this book introduces evolutionary conservation biology as an integrative approach to managing species in conjunction with ecological interactions and evolutionary processes. Which characteristics of species and which features of environmental change foster or hinder evolutionary responses in ecological systems? How do such responses affect population viability, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning? Under which conditions will evolutionary responses ameliorate, rather than worsen, the impact of environmental change?
Author : Gerd B. Muller
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 48,78 MB
Release : 2003-01-03
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262134194
A more comprehensive version of evolutionary theory that focuses as much on the origin of biological form as on its diversification. The field of evolutionary biology arose from the desire to understand the origin and diversity of biological forms. In recent years, however, evolutionary genetics, with its focus on the modification and inheritance of presumed genetic programs, has all but overwhelmed other aspects of evolutionary biology. This has led to the neglect of the study of the generative origins of biological form. Drawing on work from developmental biology, paleontology, developmental and population genetics, cancer research, physics, and theoretical biology, this book explores the multiple factors responsible for the origination of biological form. It examines the essential problems of morphological evolution—why, for example, the basic body plans of nearly all metazoans arose within a relatively short time span, why similar morphological design motifs appear in phylogenetically independent lineages, and how new structural elements are added to the body plan of a given phylogenetic lineage. It also examines discordances between genetic and phenotypic change, the physical determinants of morphogenesis, and the role of epigenetic processes in evolution. The book discusses these and other topics within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology, a new research agenda that concerns the interaction of development and evolution in the generation of biological form. By placing epigenetic processes, rather than gene sequence and gene expression changes, at the center of morphological origination, this book points the way to a more comprehensive theory of evolution.
Author : Erik Svensson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 37,76 MB
Release : 2012-05-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 0199595372
The 'Adaptive Landscape' has been a central concept in population genetics and evolutionary biology since this powerful metaphor was first formulated in 1932. This volume brings together historians of science, philosophers, ecologists, and evolutionary biologists, to discuss the state of the art from several different perspectives.
Author : Evelyn Fox Keller
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 45,51 MB
Release : 1992
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674503137
In science, more than elsewhere, a word is expected to mean what it says, nothing more, nothing less. But scientific discourse is neither different nor separable from ordinary language--meanings are multiple, ambiguities ubiquitous. Keywords in Evolutionary Biology grapples with this problem in a field especially prone to the confusion engendered by semantic imprecision. Written by historians, philosophers, and biologists--including, among others, Stephen Jay Gould, Diane Paul, John Beatty, Robert Richards, Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, Peter Bowler, and Richard Dawkins--these essays identify and explicate those terms in evolutionary biology which, though commonly used, are plagues by multiple concurrent and historically varying meanings. By clarifying these terms in their many guises, the editors Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd hope to focus attention on major scholarly problems in the field--problems sometimes obscured, sometimes reveals, and sometimes even created by the use of such equivocal words. "Competition," "adaptation," and "fitness," for instance, are among the terms whose multiple meaning have led to more than merely semantic debates in evolutionary biology. Exploring the complexity of keywords and clarifying their role in prominent issues in the field, this book will prove invaluable to scientists and philosophers trying to come to terms with evolutionary theory; it will also serve as a useful guide to future research into the way in which scientific language works.
Author : Michael P. Muehlenbein
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : pages
File Size : 16,55 MB
Release : 2010-07-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1139789007
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Author :
Publisher : Academic Press
Page : 2138 pages
File Size : 11,88 MB
Release : 2016-04-14
Category : Science
ISBN : 0128004266
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, Four Volume Set is the definitive go-to reference in the field of evolutionary biology. It provides a fully comprehensive review of the field in an easy to search structure. Under the collective leadership of fifteen distinguished section editors, it is comprised of articles written by leading experts in the field, providing a full review of the current status of each topic. The articles are up-to-date and fully illustrated with in-text references that allow readers to easily access primary literature. While all entries are authoritative and valuable to those with advanced understanding of evolutionary biology, they are also intended to be accessible to both advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Broad topics include the history of evolutionary biology, population genetics, quantitative genetics; speciation, life history evolution, evolution of sex and mating systems, evolutionary biogeography, evolutionary developmental biology, molecular and genome evolution, coevolution, phylogenetic methods, microbial evolution, diversification of plants and fungi, diversification of animals, and applied evolution. Presents fully comprehensive content, allowing easy access to fundamental information and links to primary research Contains concise articles by leading experts in the field that ensures current coverage of each topic Provides ancillary learning tools like tables, illustrations, and multimedia features to assist with the comprehension process
Author : Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 22,43 MB
Release : 2020-11-10
Category : Science
ISBN : 0691221782
Unifying Biology offers a historical reconstruction of one of the most important yet elusive episodes in the history of modern science: the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. For more than seventy years after Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, it was hotly debated by biological scientists. It was not until the 1930s that opposing theories were finally refuted and a unified Darwinian evolutionary theory came to be widely accepted by biologists. Using methods gleaned from a variety of disciplines, Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis argues that the evolutionary synthesis was part of the larger process of unifying the biological sciences. At the same time that scientists were working toward a synthesis between Darwinian selection theory and modern genetics, they were, according to the author, also working together to establish an autonomous community of evolutionists. Smocovitis suggests that the drive to unify the sciences of evolution and biology was part of a global philosophical movement toward unifying knowledge. In developing her argument, she pays close attention to the problems inherent in writing the history of evolutionary science by offering historiographical reflections on the practice of history and the practice of science. Drawing from some of the most exciting recent approaches in science studies and cultural studies, she argues that science is a culture, complete with language, rituals, texts, and practices. Unifying Biology offers not only its own new synthesis of the history of modern evolution, but also a new way of "doing history."
