Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Life Sciences - Evolution

Competition is one of the most important factors controlling the distribution and abundance of living creatures. Sperm cells racing up reproductive tracts, beetle larvae battling inside single seeds, birds defending territories, and trees interfering with the light available to neighbours, are all engaged in competition for limited resources. Along with predation and mutualism, competition is one of the three major biological forces that assemble living communities. Recent experimental work, much of it only from the last few decades, has enhanced human knowledge of the prevalence of...

Introducing the latest ideas on how life originated and diversified on earth, this new edition of a classic work provides a concise and engaging summary of modern evolutionary theory. The heavily illustrated book is intended for readers with little or no formal training in science and is an ideal introduction for students. Teachers of biology will also find the book a valuable reference text. Among the features of the second edition: * new chapters on neural evolution and gene evolution * explanations of the latest theories on the evolution of humans * extensive updates throughout, with...

Timely and cogent in its aims and arguments, it should prompt debate and discussion leading to fresh critical and historiographical insights concerning all those topics that historians of science, of society, and of culture associate with 'Darwinism' and 'evolutionism.'

This detailed study of the different rates of growth of parts of the body relative to the body as a whole represents Sir Julian Huxley's great contribution to analytical morphology, and is still the basis for modern investigations in the field.

Since Darwin's time, comparative psychologists have searched for a good way to compare cognition in humans and nonhuman primates. In Origins of Intelligence, Sue Parker and Michael McKinney offer such a framework and make a strong case for using human development theory (both Piagetian and neo-Piagetian) to study the evolution of intelligence across primate species. Their approach is comprehensive, covering a broad range of social, symbolic, physical, and logical domains, which fall under the all-encompassing and much-debated term intelligence.

A widely held theory...

For more than two decades the concept of phenotypic plasticity has allowed researchers to go beyond the nature-nurture dichotomy to gain deeper insights into how organisms are shaped by the interaction of genetic and ecological factors. Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture is the first work to synthesize the burgeoning area of plasticity studies, providing a conceptual overview as well as a technical treatment of its major components.

Phenotypic plasticity integrates the insights of ecological genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. Plasticity...

This concise introduction offers students and researchers an overview of the discipline that connects genetics and evolution. Addressing the theories behind population genetics and relevant empirical evidence, John Gillespie discusses genetic drift, natural selection, nonrandom mating, quantitative genetics, and the evolutionary advantage of sex. First published to wide acclaim in 1998, this brilliant primer has been updated to include new sections on molecular evolution, genetic drift, genetic load, the stationary distribution, and two-locus dynamics. This book is indispensable for...

Introduced in 1859, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution generated hot debate and controversy. Today nearly all reputable scientists agree: evolution did happen and natural selection was its main driving force. Yet a century and a half after Darwin, the theory of evolution is still being fought over with a ferocity that has rarely been equaled in the annals of science. What are scientists arguing about? And why are their exchanges sometimes so bitter?

In The Evolutionists, Richard Morris vividly portrays the controversies that rage today in the field of evolutionary biology....

"Shermer is savage about the shortcomings of intelligent design
and eloquent about the spirituality of science . . . An invaluable primer."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

Science is on the defensive. Half of Americans reject the theory of evolution and intelligent-design campaigns are gaining ground. Classroom by classroom, creationism is overthrowing biology.

In Why Darwin Matters, bestselling author Michael Shermer decodes the scientific evidence to show that evolution is not "just a theory" and illustrates how it achieves the design...

The most important aspect of evolution, from a philosophical viewpoint, is the rise of complex, advanced creatures from simple, primitive ones. This "vertical" dimension of evolution has been downplayed in both the specialist and popular literature on evolution, in large part because it was in the past associated with unsavory political views. The avoidance of evolution's vertical dimension has, however, left evolutionary biology open to the perception, from outside, that it deals merely with the diversification of rather similar creatures, all at the same level of "advancedness" from a...

The theories propounded by Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species have had a profound and revolutionary effect, not only on biology but also on philosophy, history, and theology. His concept of natural selection has created eruptive disputes among scientists and religious leaders of his time and ours. The phenomenal importance of his brilliant work is universally recognized, but the present volume marks the first scholarly attempt to compile a complete variorum edition of The Origin of Species, covering all of the extensive variants in the six texts published between 1859...