With more than 29,000 species, fishes are the most diverse group of vertebrates on the planet. Of that number, more than 12,000 species are found in freshwater ecosystems, which occupy less than 1 percent of the Earth's surface and contain only 2.4 percent of plant and animal species. But, on a hectare-for-hectare basis, freshwater ecosystems are richer in species than more extensive terrestrial and marine habitats. Examination of the distribution patterns of fishes in these fresh waters reveals much about continental movements and climate changes and has long been critical to biogeographical...

This clear, candid, and generously illustrated book is written for the open-minded reader who does not understand the technical issues of evolution, but would like to, who sees everywhere the signs of a bitter political, philosophical, and educational debate, but does not know what to make of it or who to believe. It tells how science proceeds, what evolution is, how science knows that it has occurred and continues to occur, and what biologists can point to, in fossils and in the living world, as hard evidence of evolution. For its content and foundations, the book draws on zoology, botany,...

While much has been written about the life and works of Charles Darwin, the lives of his ten children remain largely unexamined. Most "Darwin books" consider his children as footnotes to the life of their famous father and close with the death of Charles Darwin. This is the only book that deals substantially with the lives of his children from their birth to their death, each in his or her own chapter. Tim Berra's Darwin and His Children: His Other Legacy explores Darwin's marriage to his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, a devout Unitarian, who worried that her husband's lack of faith...