In the Light of Evolution: Essays from the Laboratory and Field PDF Download
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Author: Jonathan Losos
Publisher: Roberts
ISBN: 9780981519494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A collection of essays by leading scientists, and includes essays by science writer Carl Zimmer, historian Janet Browne, and a foreword by journalist David Quammen. As Quammen says in his foreword, the book collects "reports from the field, plainspoken descriptions of lifetime obsessions, hard-earned bits of wisdom, and works in progress, pried loose from some of the most interesting, eminent researchers in evolutionary biology...” The book is intended for anyone with an interest in evolution, and it can be used in a wide variety of courses, including major's and non-major's introductory biology and evolution classes. For anyone who is fascinated by evolutionary biology and who desire to understand better the day-by-day, species, ecosystem-by-ecosystem texture of its practice as a scientific profession.
Author: Jonathan Losos
Publisher: Roberts
ISBN: 9780981519494
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book
Book Description
A collection of essays by leading scientists, and includes essays by science writer Carl Zimmer, historian Janet Browne, and a foreword by journalist David Quammen. As Quammen says in his foreword, the book collects "reports from the field, plainspoken descriptions of lifetime obsessions, hard-earned bits of wisdom, and works in progress, pried loose from some of the most interesting, eminent researchers in evolutionary biology...” The book is intended for anyone with an interest in evolution, and it can be used in a wide variety of courses, including major's and non-major's introductory biology and evolution classes. For anyone who is fascinated by evolutionary biology and who desire to understand better the day-by-day, species, ecosystem-by-ecosystem texture of its practice as a scientific profession.
Author: Michael R. Canfield
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072065
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Once in a great while, as the New York Times noted recently, a naturalist writes a book that changes the way people look at the living world. John James Audubon’s Birds of America, published in 1838, was one. Roger Tory Peterson’s 1934 Field Guide to the Birds was another. How does such insight into nature develop? Pioneering a new niche in the study of plants and animals in their native habitat, Field Notes on Science and Nature allows readers to peer over the shoulders and into the notebooks of a dozen eminent field workers, to study firsthand their observational methods, materials, and fleeting impressions. What did George Schaller note when studying the lions of the Serengeti? What lists did Kenn Kaufman keep during his 1973 “big year”? How does Piotr Naskrecki use relational databases and electronic field notes? In what way is Bernd Heinrich’s approach “truly Thoreauvian,” in E. O. Wilson’s view? Recording observations in the field is an indispensable scientific skill, but researchers are not generally willing to share their personal records with others. Here, for the first time, are reproductions of actual pages from notebooks. And in essays abounding with fascinating anecdotes, the authors reflect on the contexts in which the notes were taken. Covering disciplines as diverse as ornithology, entomology, ecology, paleontology, anthropology, botany, and animal behavior, Field Notes offers specific examples that professional naturalists can emulate to fine-tune their own field methods, along with practical advice that amateur naturalists and students can use to document their adventures.
Author: Christopher D. Lynn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349951390
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333
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Book Description
This volume reaches beyond the controversy surrounding the teaching and learning of evolution in the United States, specifically in regard to the culture, politics, and beliefs found in the Southeast. The editors argue that despite a deep history of conflict in the region surrounding evolution, there is a wealth of evolution research taking place—from biodiversity in species to cultural evolution and human development. In fact, scientists, educators, and researchers from around the United States have found their niche in the South, where biodiversity is high, culture runs deep, and the pace is just a little bit slower.
Author: Asher Cutter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198874529
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
The Anthropocene defines the here-and-now time period on Earth of indelible (and possibly irreversible) human disturbance to the natural world, from habitat destruction and mass extinction to global climate change. To ameliorate and repair the damage that threatens the world's dwindling resources and our very existence, humanity is enacting massive interventions to fuse modern technologies with long established natural processes. Advances in genetic engineering have put us on the cusp of directly shaping the DNA of every living organism (including ourselves), as well as determining the evolution of completely novel species. The author invites the reader to explore how humans have manipulated the ancient forces of evolution and the future possibilities of genetic engineering for conservation and rewilding, de-extinction, and even the creation of viable populations of entirely new species. To entertain such possibilities of synthetic biology, he forces us to wrestle with the threats and ethical conundrums that surround the unintended consequences, as well as the values that humanity places on authenticity in nature. In so doing, this accessible and thought-provoking book explores the potential future of life on planet Earth.
Author: Samuel B. Jones
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Science, Engineering & Mathematics
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
Author: Jerry A. Coyne
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019164384X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
For all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.
Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
Author: Jason Rosenhouse
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108842305
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
This book refutes anti-scientific, superficially mathematical arguments used to support anti-evolutionism in language accessible for both lay and professional audiences.
Author: John N. Thompson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022601861X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
At a glance, most species seem adapted to the environment in which they live. Yet species relentlessly evolve, and populations within species evolve in different ways. Evolution, as it turns out, is much more dynamic than biologists realized just a few decades ago. In Relentless Evolution, John N. Thompson explores why adaptive evolution never ceases and why natural selection acts on species in so many different ways. Thompson presents a view of life in which ongoing evolution is essential and inevitable. Each chapter focuses on one of the major problems in adaptive evolution: How fast is evolution? How strong is natural selection? How do species co-opt the genomes of other species as they adapt? Why does adaptive evolution sometimes lead to more, rather than less, genetic variation within populations? How does the process of adaptation drive the evolution of new species? How does coevolution among species continually reshape the web of life? And, more generally, how are our views of adaptive evolution changing? Relentless Evolution draws on studies of all the major forms of life—from microbes that evolve in microcosms within a few weeks to plants and animals that sometimes evolve in detectable ways within a few decades. It shows evolution not as a slow and stately process, but rather as a continual and sometimes frenetic process that favors yet more evolutionary change.
Author: Michael W. Roth
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000890597
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the significant role of physics in evolution, based on the ideas of matter and energy resource flow, organism self-copying, and ecological change. The text employs these ideas to create quantitative models for important evolutionary processes. Many fields of science and engineering have come up against the problem of complex design—when details become so numerous that computer power alone cannot make progress. Nature solved the complex-design problem using evolution, yet how it did so has been a mystery. Both laboratory experiments and computer-simulation attempts eventually stopped evolving. Something more than Darwin’s ideas of heredity, variation, and selection was needed. The solution is that there is a fourth element to evolution: ecological change. When a new variation is selected, this can change the ecology, and the new ecology can create new opportunities for even more new variations to be selected. Through this endless cycle, complexity can grow automatically. This book uses the physics of resource flow to describe this process in detail, developing quantitative models for many evolutionary processes, including selection, multicellularity, coevolution, sexual reproduction, and the Serengeti Rules. The text demonstrates that these models are in conceptual agreement with numerous examples of biological phenomena, and reveals, through physics, how complex design can arise naturally. This will serve as a key text on the part physics plays in evolution, and will be of great interest to students at the university level and above studying biophysics, physics, systems biology, and related fields.
