Download or read book The Evolutionary Biology of Species written by Timothy G. Barraclough and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Species' are central to understanding the origin and dynamics of biological diversity; explaining why lineages split into multiple distinct species is one of the main goals of evolutionary biology. However the existence of species is often taken for granted, and precisely what is meant by species and whether they really exist as a pattern of nature has rarely been modelled or critically tested. This novel book presents a synthetic overview of the evolutionary biology of species, describing what species are, how they form, the consequences of species boundaries and diversity for evolution, and patterns of species accumulation over time. The central thesis is that species represent more than just a unit of taxonomy; they are a model of how diversity is structured as well as how groups of related organisms evolve. The author adopts an intentionally broad approach, stepping back from the details to consider what species constitute, both theoretically and empirically, and how we detect them, drawing on a wealth of examples from microbes to multicellular organisms.
Download or read book The Evolutionary Biology of Plants written by Karl J. Niklas and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997-06-08 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Evolutionary Ecology of Invasive Species written by Johannes Le Roux and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2021-10-24 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolutionary Ecology of Invasive Species offers new insights into the mechanisms that underlie rapid evolution in these species. The book provides a comprehensive overview of achievements in the field during the boom of information over the past two decades and includes discussions of possible future directions for the study of evolution in invasive species. Written by an international expert in invasion ecology, population genetics, and evolutionary biology, the book explores the roles of preadaptation, phenotypic plasticity, selection, and stochastic processes in driving rapid evolution. The book draws insights from a wide spectrum of invasive microbes, plants, and animals, covering many of the planet’s biogeographic regions and discusses the evolutionary consequences for native species in response to biological invasions. A valuable resource to researchers and students in evolutionary biology, invasive species biology, and global change biology, this text suggests future research directions related to the evolutionary biology, impacts, and management of invasive species. Highlights the most recent advances and developments in using evolutionary principles to study and manage invasive species Offers new and often overlooked insights in processes that govern rapid evolution Discusses key stages of population demography that underlie rapid evolutionary change in invasive species, including their introduction, naturalisation, and dispersal
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology written by and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 2138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Species written by John S. Wilkins and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over time the complex idea of "species" has evolved, yet its meaning is far from resolved. This comprehensive work is a fresh look at an idea central to the field of biology by tracing its history from antiquity to today. Species is a benchmark exploration and clarification of a concept fundamental to the past, present, and future of the natural sciences. In this edition, a section is added on the debate over species since the time of the New Synthesis, and brings the book up to date. A section on recent philosophical debates over species has also been added. This edition is better suited non-specialists in philosophy, so that it will be of greater use for scientists wishing to understand how the notion came to be that living organisms form species. Key Selling Features: Covers the philosophical and historical development of the concept of "species" Documents that variation was recognized by pre-Darwinian scholars Includes a section on the debates since the time of the New Synthesis Better suited to non-philosophers
Download or read book Populations Species and Evolution written by Ernst Mayr and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1970 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his extraordinary book, Mayr fully explored, synthesized, and evaluated man's knowledge about the nature of animal species and the part they play in the process of evolution. Now, in this long-awaited abridged edition, Mayr's definitive work is made available to the interested nonspecialist, the college student, and the general reader.
Download or read book How and Why Species Multiply written by Peter R. Grant and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Darwin's experiences in the Galápagos Islands in 1835 helped to guide his thoughts toward a revolutionary theory: that species were not fixed but diversified from their ancestors over many generations, and that the driving mechanism of evolutionary change was natural selection. In this concise, accessible book, Peter and Rosemary Grant explain what we have learned about the origin and evolution of new species through the study of the finches made famous by that great scientist: Darwin's finches. Drawing upon their unique observations of finch evolution over a thirty-four-year period, the Grants trace the evolutionary history of fourteen different species from a shared ancestor three million years ago. They show how repeated cycles of speciation involved adaptive change through natural selection on beak size and shape, and divergence in songs. They explain other factors that drive finch evolution, including geographical isolation, which has kept the Galápagos relatively free of competitors and predators; climate change and an increase in the number of islands over the last three million years, which enhanced opportunities for speciation; and flexibility in the early learning of feeding skills, which helped species to exploit new food resources. Throughout, the Grants show how the laboratory tools of developmental biology and molecular genetics can be combined with observations and experiments on birds in the field to gain deeper insights into why the world is so biologically rich and diverse. Written by two preeminent evolutionary biologists, How and Why Species Multiply helps to answer fundamental questions about evolution--in the Galápagos and throughout the world.
Download or read book Animal Species and Evolution written by Ernst Mayr and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 1963 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This masterly and long-awaited work is a full exposition, synthesis, summation, and critical evaluation of the present state of man's knowledge about the nature of animal species and of the part they play in the processes of evolution. In a series of twenty chapters, Mr. Mayr presents a consecutive story, beginning with a description of evolutionary biology and ending with a discussion of man as a biological species. Calling attention to unsolved problems, and relating the evolutionary subject matter to appropriate material from other fields, such as physiology, genetics, and biochemistry, the author integrates and interprets existing data. Believing that an unequivocal stand is more likely to produce constructive criticism than evasion of an issue, he does not hesitate to choose that interpretation of a controversial matter which to him seems most consistent with the emerging picture of the evolutionary process. Between the terminal points mentioned above, Mr. Mayr pursues the narrative through discussions of species concepts and their application, morphological species characters and sibling species, biological properties of species, isolating mechanisms, hybridization, the variation and genetics of populations, storage and protection of genetic variation, the unity of the genotype, geographic variation, the polytypic species of the taxonomist, the population structure of species, kinds of species, multiplication of species, geographic speciation, the genetics of speciation, the ecology of speciation, and species and transpecific evolution. The volume provides a valuable glossary; and an inclusive bibliography greatly extends its range for those who wish to investigate special aspects of the material. Animal Species and Evolution is presented as a permanent entity. In accordance with the author's feeling that the acquisition of new knowledge will require a new statement, rather than an emendation of a previous one, no substantive revisions of this volume are planned for future printings. Because of the impossibility of experimenting with man, and because an understanding of man's biology is indispensable for safeguarding his future, emphasis throughout this book is placed on those findings from the higher animals which are directly applicable to man. In his final chapter on hominids and the various forms of Homo, Mr. Mayr comes to the conclusion that, while modem man appears to be just as well adapted for survival purposes as were his ancestors, there is much evidence to suggest that he is threatened by the loss of his most typically human characteristics. It would be within his power to reverse this tendency.
Download or read book Specialization Speciation and Radiation written by Kelley Jean Tilmon and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume captures the state-of-the-art in the study of insect-plant interactions, and marks the transformation of the field into evolutionary biology. The contributors present integrative reviews of uniformly high quality that will inform and inspire generations of academic and applied biologists. Their presentation together provides an invaluable synthesis of perspectives that is rare in any discipline."--Brian D. Farrell, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University "Tilmon has assembled a truly wonderful and rich volume, with contributions from the lion's share of fine minds in evolution and ecology of herbivorous insects. The topics comprise a fascinating and deep coverage of what has been discovered in the prolific recent decades of research with insects on plants. Fascinating chapters provide deep analyses of some of the most interesting research on these interactions. From insect plant chemistry, behavior, and host shifting to phylogenetics, co-evolution, life-history evolution, and invasive plant-insect interaction, one is hard pressed to name a substantial topic not included. This volume will launch a hundred graduate seminars and find itself on the shelf of everyone who is anyone working in this rich landscape of disciplines."--Donald R. Strong, Professor of Evolution and Ecology, University of California, Davis "Seldom have so many excellent authors been brought together to write so many good chapters on so many important topics in organismic evolutionary biology. Tom Wood, always unassuming and inspired by living nature, would have been amazed and pleased by this tribute."--Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Download or read book Genetics and the Origin of Species written by Theodosius Dobzhansky and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Evolutionary Conservation Biology written by Régis Ferrière and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-10 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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?
Download or read book Genes Categories and Species written by Jody Hey and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2001 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Genes, Categories and Species, Jody Hey provides an enlightening new solution to one of biology's most ironic and perplexing puzzles. When Darwin showed that life evolves, and that it does so by natural selection, he transformed our understanding of living things. But the very question Darwin addressed-the nature of species-continues to pose an awkward conundrum for biologists. Despite enormous efforts by a great many scholars, biologists still cannot agree on how to identify species or even how to define the word "species." Genes, Categories, and Species is not like other books on the species problem, for it does not begin by asking, "What is a species?" Instead, it focuses on the very fact that biologists are stumped by species and their curious behavior in coping with that uncertainty. Faced with a persistent conundrum-and no lack of data on the subject-biologists who ponder the species problem have ceased to ask the most essential of scientific questions: "What new information do we need to resolve the problem?" This is the question that motivates this book and leads to the discoveries it reveals. The answer to the species problem lies not with the processes and patterns of biological diversity, Hey contends, but rather in the way the human mind perceives and categorizes that diversity. The promise of this book is twofold. First, it allows biologists to understand the causes of the species problem and to use this knowledge to avoid the major confusions that arise over species. Second, with its explanation of the species problem, it gives scholars and students of human nature a humbling example of how ill-suited the human mind is for certain kinds of scientific questions.
Download or read book Evolutionary Biology of Carabus Ground Beetles written by Teiji Sota and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the whole picture of the ecological and evolutionary study on the ground beetle group, the subgenus Ohomopterus of the genus Carabus, endemic to Japan. This flightless beetle group consists of many geographic races. They show divergence in key traits for reproductive isolation—body size and genital morphology, which leads to coexistence of two or more species. This beetle group provides an important material to study how a lineage of organisms diversify and form multi-species assemblage, and thereby multiply their species richness. The book introduces novel genomic approaches to resolve questions about evolution of Ohomopterus. The readers will find that this story of evolution in Carabus beetles revealed by recent approaches is much different from what was told in previous literature. Exploring different cases across a wide range of lineages is important in constructing a synthetic theory of species radiation and richness, including speciation and species coexistence. This study on Ohomopterus beetles contributes to the ongoing discussion to understand how and why species multiply and how species richness increases in one area of our planet.
Download or read book Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language written by Philip Lieberman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-30 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this forcefully argued book, the leading evolutionary theorist of language draws on evidence from evolutionary biology, genetics, physical anthropology, anatomy, and neuroscience, to provide a framework for studying the evolution of human language and cognition. Philip Lieberman argues forcibly that the widely influential theories of language's development, advanced by Chomskian linguists and cognitive scientists, especially those that postulate a single dedicated language "module," "organ," or "instinct," are inconsistent with principles and findings of evolutionary biology and neuroscience. He argues that the human neural system in its totality is the basis for the human language ability, for it requires the coordination of neural circuits that regulate motor control with memory and higher cognitive functions. Pointing out that articulate speech is a remarkably efficient means of conveying information, Lieberman also highlights the adaptive significance of the human tongue. Fully human language involves the species-specific anatomy of speech, together with the neural capacity for thought and movement. In Lieberman's iconoclastic Darwinian view, the human language ability is the confluence of a succession of separate evolutionary developments, jury-rigged by natural selection to work together for an evolutionarily unique ability.
Download or read book Species written by John S. Wilkins and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive work, John S. Wilkins traces the history of the idea of "species" from antiquity to today, providing a new perspective on the relationship between philosophical and biological approaches.--[book cover].
Download or read book Evolutionary Genetics written by Glenn-Peter Sætre and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-05 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolutionary genetics is the study of how genetic variation leads to evolutionary change. With the recent explosion in the availability of whole genome sequence data, vast quantities of genetic data are being generated at an ever-increasing pace with the result that programming has become an essential tool for researchers. Most importantly, a thorough understanding of evolutionary principles is essential for making sense of this genetic data. This up-to-date textbook covers all the major components of modern evolutionary genetics, carefully explaining fundamental processes such as mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and speciation, together with their consequences. The book also draws on a rich literature of exciting and inspiring examples to demonstrate the diversity of evolutionary research, including an emphasis on how evolution and selection has shaped our own species. Furthermore, at the end of each chapter, study questions are provided to motivate the reader to think and reflect on the concepts introduced. Practical experience is essential when it comes to developing an understanding of how to use genetic and genomic data to analyze and address interesting questions in the life sciences and how to interpret results in meaningful ways. In addition to the main text, a series of online tutorials using the R language serves as an introduction to programming, statistics, and the analysis of evolutionary genetic data. The R environment stands out as an ideal all-purpose, open source platform to handle and analyze such data. The book and its online materials take full advantage of the authors' own experience in working in a post-genomic revolution world, and introduce readers to the plethora of molecular and analytical methods that have only recently become available.
Download or read book The Evolutionary Biology of Extinct and Extant Organisms written by Subir Ranjan Kundu and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2021-03-23 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolutionary Biology of Extinct and Extant Organisms offers a thorough and detailed narration of the journey of biological evolution and its major transitional links to the biological world, which began with paleontological exploration of extinct organisms and now carries on with reviews of phylogenomic footprint reviews of extant, living fossils. This book moves through the defining evolutionary stepping stones starting with the evolutionary changes in prokaryotic, aquatic organisms over 4 billion years ago to the emergence of the modern human species in Earth’s Anthropocene. The book begins with an overview of the processes of evolutionary fitness, the epicenter of the principles of evolutionary biology. Whether through natural or experimental occurrence, evolutionary fitness has been found to be the cardinal instance of evolutionary links in an organism between its ancestral and contemporary states. The book then goes on to detail evolutionary trails and lineages of groups of organisms including mammalians, reptilians, and various fish. The final section of the book provides a look back at the evolutionary journey of "nonliving" or extinct organisms, versus the modern-day transition to "living" or extant organisms. The Evolutionary Biology of Extinct and Extant Organisms is the ideal resource for any researcher or advanced student in evolutionary studies, ranging from evolutionary biology to general life sciences. Provides an updated compendium of evolution research history Details the evolution trails of organisms, including mammals, reptiles, arthropods, annelids, mollusks, protozoa, and more Offers an accessible and easy-to-read presentation of complex, in-depth evolutionary biology facts and theories
