Download or read book On the Origin of Autonomy written by Bernd Rosslenbroich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume describes features of autonomy and integrates them into the recent discussion of factors in evolution. In recent years ideas about major transitions in evolution are undergoing a revolutionary change. They include questions about the origin of evolutionary innovation, their genetic and epigenetic background, the role of the phenotype and of changes in ontogenetic pathways. In the present book, it is argued that it is likewise necessary to question the properties of these innovations and what was qualitatively generated during the macroevolutionary transitions. The author states that a recurring central aspect of macroevolutionary innovations is an increase in individual organismal autonomy whereby it is emancipated from the environment with changes in its capacity for flexibility, self-regulation and self-control of behavior. The first chapters define the concept of autonomy and examine its history and its epistemological context. Later chapters demonstrate how changes in autonomy took place during the major evolutionary transitions and investigate the generation of organs and physiological systems. They synthesize material from various disciplines including zoology, comparative physiology, morphology, molecular biology, neurobiology and ethology. It is argued that the concept is also relevant for understanding the relation of the biological evolution of man to his cultural abilities. Finally the relation of autonomy to adaptation, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and other factors and patterns in evolution is discussed. The text has a clear perspective from the context of systems biology, arguing that the generation of biological autonomy must be interpreted within an integrative systems approach.

Download or read book Biology of Rove Beetles Staphylinidae written by Oliver Betz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rove beetles (Staphylinidae) are common elements of the soil biota, living in the litter and deeper soil layers. Although they are one of the most diverse and speciose groups of insects, no comprehensive books on their general evolution and ecology are as yet available. This book fills that gap, discussing significant aspects and active research examples in the fields of phylogeny and systematics, ecology and conservation, and reproduction and development. The combination of review chapters and case studies provides an excellent introduction to the biology of rove beetles and enables readers to become familiar with active research fields in this megadiverse group of beetles. Offering easy access to these fields, it also demonstrates how staphylinids are used as bioindicators in applied ecosystem research, including that concerning conservation issues. Experienced scientists and beginners alike find the diversity of subjects covered intriguing and inspiring for continuing and starting their own research. The book is intended for students and researchers in biology and zoology (entomology), including morphologists, ecologists, soil scientists, evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, biogeographers, taxonomists and systematists.

Download or read book Terrestrial Coastal Ecosystems in Germany and Climate Change written by Dietrich Mossakowski and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-02 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is one of the most severe dangers for mankind worldwide. Beside the temperature increase, the sea level will rise and flood wide coastal areas, which is already remarkable today. The effects will be dramatic, in particular, at coasts with low elevation gradients such as at the German coasts of the North and Baltic Sea. The impact will be not only severe for coastal people, but still more for the unique coastal ecosystems, which harbors many plant and animal species that are already endangered today. This book focuses on the coastal terrestrial ecosystems of the German North and Baltic Sea. It describes the reactions of plants and animals (i.e. spiders, carabid beetles, bees and nematodes) on the future temperature and sea level increase. The combination of field and experimental studies is unique for Europe and for many parts of the world. It not only studies the actual elevation gradients and the climatic and saline gradients from West to East, but also the historical changes to document processes at coastal ecosystems that were already passed. In contrast to many books that studied the marine processes with similar backgrounds, this book concerns the terrestrial coastal ecosystems that were overall rarely studied and, in particular, never studied under this specific viewpoint.

Download or read book MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES Volume IV written by Osmo Otto Paivio Hanninen; Mustafa Atalay; B.P. Mansourian; A. Wojtezak; S.M. Mahfouz; Harry Majewski; Elaine Elisabetsky; Nina L. Etkin; Ralph Kirby; T.G. Downing and M.I. El Gohary and published by EOLSS Publications. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical and Health Sciences is a component of Encyclopedia of Biological, Physiological and Health Sciences in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. These volume set contains several chapters, each of size 5000-30000 words, with perspectives, applications and extensive illustrations. It carries state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Medical and Health Sciences and is aimed, by virtue of the several applications, at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students, Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers and NGOs.

Download or read book Early Organic Evolution written by Manfred Schidlowski and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the final outcome of a conference designed to wrap up IOCP Project 157 (" Early Organic Evolution and Mineral and Energy Resources ") after a decade of prolific activity. The picturesque solitude of Maria Laach Abbey in the Eifel Mountains (FRO) provided the appropriate setting for a conclave of some 80 specialists from the various walks of the field who, during the week of Sept. 19 - 23, 1988, strived hard to define the state of the art in the principal segments of this Earth Science frontier. The following pages contain the essence of the conference transactions, giv ing a vivid cross-section of the activities pursued by IOCP Project 157 during its final years. The coverage of topics is not necessarily complete, but rather eclec tic in part. With regard to single papers dealing with modern analogues of ancient processes, the book title might even be considered a grave misnomer. Neverthe less, all contributions relate to the subject in the widest sense, and the reader should be reminded that much of the heterogeneity reflected by the volume de rives from the fact that it is primarily a research report from a highly inter disciplinary field rather than a textbook.

Download or read book Anthropologischer Anzeiger written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Story of the Human Body written by Daniel Lieberman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark book of popular science that gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years—with charts and line drawings throughout. “Fascinating.... A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”—Nature In this book, Daniel E. Lieberman illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.

Download or read book Evolutionary Biology written by Douglas J. Futuyma and published by Sinauer Associates, Incorporated. This book was released on 1979 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Evolution in Action written by Matthias Glaubrecht and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-07-24 with total page 597 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radiations, or Evolution in Action We have just celebrated the “Darwin Year” with the double anniversary of his 200th birthday and 150th year of his masterpiece, “On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection”. In this work, Darwin established the factual evidence of biological evolution, that species change over time, and that new organisms arise by the splitting of ancestral forms into two or more descendant species. However, above all, Darwin provided the mechanisms by arguing convincingly that it is by natural selection – as well as by sexual selection (as he later added) – that organisms adapt to their environment. The many discoveries since then have essentially con?rmed and strengthened Darwin’s central theses, with latest evidence, for example, from molecular genetics, revealing the evolutionary relationships of all life forms through one shared history of descent from a common ancestor. We have also come a long way to progressively understand more on how new species actually originate, i. e. on speciation which remained Darwin’s “mystery of m- teries”, as noted in one of his earliest transmutation notebooks. Since speciation is the underlying mechanism for radiations, it is the ultimate causation for the biological diversity of life that surrounds us.

Download or read book The Real Chimpanzee written by Christophe Boesch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encapsulates the behaviour of wild chimps, discussing the differences observed in populations across the species, and levels of social behaviour.

Download or read book Synecology and Evolution written by Michael Schmitt and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Deep Metazoan Phylogeny The Backbone of the Tree of Life written by J. Wolfgang Wägele and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2014-02-27 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growing success of molecular methods has challenged traditional views of animal evolution and a large number of alternative hypotheses are hotly debated today. For the deep metazoan phylogeny project, data sets of hitherto unmatched quality and quantity were compiled and analysed with innovative bioinformatics tools. The book begins at the base of the tree of life to discuss the origin of animals and early branches of the phylogenetic tree. The following section presents special data sets gained from mitochondrial genomes and from morphology, with a focus on nervous systems. The final section is dedicated to theoretical aspects of data analysis and new bioinformatics tools. The book closes with a unique general discussion of all hypotheses contained in previous chapters. This work provides the most comprehensive overview available of the state of the art in this exciting field of evolutionary research.

Download or read book Flavonoids of the Sunflower Family Asteraceae written by Bruce A. Bohm and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-27 with total page 836 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flavonoids are secondary plant products that have previously been shown to be helpful in determining relationships among plant groups. This work presents comprehensively the occurrence, patterns of variation, and systematic and evolutionary importance of flavonoids in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), the largest family of flowering plants (23,000 species). It gathers together the more than 2500 reports of flavonoids in Asteraceae published between 1950 to the present and interprets these data in context of new taxonomic (especially generic) alignments. The authors discuss flavonoid patterns with reference to modern phylogenetic studies based on morphology and DNA data. This book provides, therefore, the most exhaustive synthesis and evaluation of the systematic and evolutionary import of flavonoids ever accomplished for any large family of angiosperms.

Download or read book Systematics 2008 G ttingen Programme and Abstracts written by Stephan Robbert Gradstein and published by Universitätsverlag Göttingen. This book was released on 2008 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Göttingen conference Systematics 2008 is the first joint meeting of the Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik (GfBp. and the German Botanical Society, section Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (DBG), being the 10th Annual Meeting of the GfBS and the 18th International Symposium Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology of the DBG. The conference programme covers biological systematics in the widest sense and provides ample opportunities for oral and poster presentations on new advances in plant, animal and microbial systematics. This volume brings together the abstracts of invited speaches from the plenary sessions on Progress in Deep Phylogeny, Speciation and Phylogeography, and New Trends in Biological Systematics as well as those of submitted talks and poster sessions.

Download or read book The Evolution of the Long necked Giraffe Giraffa Camelopardalis L written by Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig and published by MV-Verlag. This book was released on 2011 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Darwin (1871) and many African folk legends before him [...] proposed a simple but powerful explanation for the large and elongated shape. Long necks allowed giraffe to outreach presumed competitors, particularly during dry-season bottlenecks when leaves become scarce; (Simmons and Scheepers). However, this old African folk legend which is still commonly taught in high schools, fails to explain, among other things, the size differences between males and females. Giraffe cows are up to 1.5 meters shorter than the giraffe bulls, not to mention the offspring. The wide migration range of the giraffe and the low heights of the most common plants in their diet likewise argue against the dominant selection hypothesis. Also: 1) The fossil "links," which according to the theory should appear successively and replace each other, usually exist simultaneously for long periods of time. 2) Evolutionary derivations based on similarities rely on circular reasoning. 3) The giraffe has eigh t cervical vertebrae. Although the 8th vertebra displays almost all the characteristics of a neck vertebra, as an exception to the rule the first rib pair is attached there. 4) The origin of the long-necked giraffe by a macromutation is, due to the many synorganized structures, extremely improbable. 5) Sexual selection also lacks a mutational basis and, what is more, is frequently in conflict with natural selection ("head clubbing" is probably "a consequence of a long neck and not a cause"; see also Mitchell et al. 2009). 6) In contrast to the thus-far proposed naturalistic hypotheses, the intelligent design theory is basically testable. 7) The long-necked giraffes possibly all belong to the same basic type inasmuch as 8) a gradual evolution from the short-necked to the long-necked giraffe is ruled out by the duplication of a neck vertebra and the loss of a thoracic vertebra. 9) Chance mutations are principally not sufficient to explain the origin of the long-necked giraffe. 10) The intelligent design theory offers an adequate and satisfying solution to the problems and points to numerous "old" and new research projects. 11) Mitchell and Skinner present a good analysis of the selectionist problem; however, their phylogenetic hypotheses presuppose the correctness of the synthetic evolutionary theory, and their claims of "intermediate forms" are unproven (similarly summary Part 2). Part 1 shows why Dawkins and Kutschera are wrong. The scientific facts speak for design."

Download or read book The Art of Evolution written by Barbara Jean Larson and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2009 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and stimulating collection of essays about the impact of Darwin's ideas on visual culture

Download or read book Phylogenetic Systematics written by Olivier Rieppel and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-07-06 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phylogenetic Systematics: Haeckel to Hennig traces the development of phylogenetic systematics against the foil of idealistic morphology through 100 years of German biology. It starts with the iconic Ernst Haeckel-the German Darwin from Jena-and the evolutionary morphology he developed. It ends with Willi Hennig, the founder of modern phylogenetic