A New Paradigm for the Conquest of Land by Vertebrates That Includes Exaptations
A New Paradigm for the Conquest of Land by Vertebrates That Includes Exaptations

Author: Mauro Luís Triques

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9004684913

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A new view for studying and understanding biological evolution emerges when the concepts of phylogenetic systematics and exaptation are combined. A new definition of macroevolution is created. Preadaptation is shown to be a null concept and its comparison with exaptation is shown to be inappropriate. This book criticizes the prevailing view, the adaptationist, microevolutionary outlook, which considers adaptation as being the exclusive or main evolutionary process responsible for vertebrates having occupied the terrestrial environment. The authors argue that the macroevolutionary processes are significantly more important to explain an improbable evolutionary event. Their research shows that macroevolutionary processes are the dominant factors involved in the origin of terrestriality. This book is a revised and expanded English translation from the original Portuguese edition Peixes conquistam a terra firme: nova abordagem para um evento acidental único (Editora Baraúna, 2017).

A New Paradigm for the Conquest of Land by Vertebrates That Includes Exaptations
A New Paradigm for the Conquest of Land by Vertebrates That Includes Exaptations

Author: Mauro Luís Triques

Publisher:

Published: 2023-12-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004684751

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A new view for studying and understanding biological evolution emerges when the concepts of phylogenetic systematics and exaptation are combined. A new definition of macroevolution is created. Preadaptation is shown to be a null concept and its comparison with exaptation is shown to be inappropriate. This book criticizes the prevailing view, the adaptationist, microevolutionary outlook, which considers adaptation as being the exclusive or main evolutionary process responsible for vertebrates having occupied the terrestrial environment. The authors argue that the macroevolutionary processes are significantly more important to explain an improbable evolutionary event. Their research shows that macroevolutionary processes are the dominant factors involved in the origin of terrestriality. This book is a revised and expanded English translation from the original Portuguese edition Peixes conquistam a terra firme: nova abordagem para um evento acidental único (Editora Baraúna, 2017).

Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives
Bibliography of Natural History Travel Narratives

Author: Anne S. Troelstra

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 9004343784

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Anne Troelstra’s fine bibliography is an outstanding and ground-breaking work. He has provided the academic world with a long-needed bibliographical record of human endeavour in the field of the natural sciences. The travel narratives listed here encompass all aspects of the natural world in every part of the globe, but are especially concerned with its fauna, flora and fossil remains. Such eyewitness accounts have always fascinated their readers, but they were never written solely for entertainment: fragmentary though they often are, these narratives of travel and exploration are of immense importance for our scientific understanding of life on earth, providing us with a window on an ever changing, and often vanishing, natural world. Without such records of the past we could not track, document or understand the significance of changes that are so important for the study of zoogeography. With this book Troelstra gives us a superb overview of natural history travel narratives. The well over four thousand detailed entries, ranging over four centuries and all major western European languages, are drawn from a wide range of sources and include both printed books and periodical contributions. While no subject bibliography by a single author can attain absolute completeness, Troelstra’s work is comprehensive to a truly remarkable degree. The entries are arranged alphabetically by author and chronologically, by the year of first publication, under the author’s name. A brief biography, with the scope and range of their work, is given for each author; every title is set in context, the contents – including illustrations – are described and all known editions and translations are cited. In addition, there is a geographical index that cross refers between authors and the regions visited, and a full list of the bibliographical and biographical sources used in compiling the bibliography.

Amphibian Evolution
Amphibian Evolution

Author: Rainer R. Schoch

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-03-19

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 1118759133

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This book focuses on the first vertebrates to conquer land and their long journey to become fully independent from the water. It traces the origin of tetrapod features and tries to explain how and why they transformed into organs that permit life on land. Although the major frame of the topic lies in the past 370 million years and necessarily deals with many fossils, it is far from restricted to paleontology. The aim is to achieve a comprehensive picture of amphibian evolution. It focuses on major questions in current paleobiology: how diverse were the early tetrapods? In which environments did they live, and how did they come to be preserved? What do we know about the soft body of extinct amphibians, and what does that tell us about the evolution of crucial organs during the transition to land? How did early amphibians develop and grow, and which were the major factors of their evolution? The Topics in Paleobiology Series is published in collaboration with the Palaeontological Association, and is edited by Professor Mike Benton, University of Bristol. Books in the series provide a summary of the current state of knowledge, a trusted route into the primary literature, and will act as pointers for future directions for research. As well as volumes on individual groups, the series will also deal with topics that have a cross-cutting relevance, such as the evolution of significant ecosystems, particular key times and events in the history of life, climate change, and the application of a new techniques such as molecular palaeontology. The books are written by leading international experts and will be pitched at a level suitable for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers in both the paleontological and biological sciences.

Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture
Human Evolution Beyond Biology and Culture

Author: Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 1108470971

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A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

Encyclopedia of Evolution
Encyclopedia of Evolution

Author: Stanley A. Rice

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1438110057

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Evolutionary science is not only one of the greatest breakthroughs of modern science, but also one of the most controversial. Perhaps more than any other scientific area, evolutionary science has caused us all to question what we are, where we came from, and how we relate to the rest of the universe. Encyclopedia of Evolution contains more than 200 entries that span modern evolutionary science and the history of its development. This comprehensive volume clarifies many common misconceptions about evolution. For example, many people have grown up being told that the fossil record does not demonstrate an evolutionary pattern, and that there are many missing links. In fact, most of these missing links have been found, and their modern representatives are often still alive today. The biographical entries represent evolutionary scientists within the United States who have had and continue to have a major impact on the broad outline of evolutionary science. The biographies chosen reflect the viewpoints of scientists working within the United States. Five essays that explore interesting questions resulting from studies in evolutionary science are included as well. The appendix consists of a summary of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which is widely considered to be the foundational work of evolutionary science and one of the most important books in human history. The five essays include: How much do genes control human behavior?What are the ghosts of evolution?Can an evolutionary scientist be religious?Why do humans die?Are humans alone in the universe

Darwin's Conjecture
Darwin's Conjecture

Author: Geoffrey M. Hodgson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-12

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0226346900

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A theoretical study dealing chiefly with matters of definition and clarification of terms and concepts involved in using Darwinian notions to model social phenomena.

Cardio-Respiratory Control in Vertebrates
Cardio-Respiratory Control in Vertebrates

Author: Mogens L. Glass

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-07-24

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 3540939857

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Hopefully, this book will be taken off of the shelf frequently to be studied carefully over many years. More than 40 researchers were involved in this project, which examines respiration, circulation, and metabolism from ?sh to the land vertebrates, including human beings. A breathable and stable atmosphere ?rst appeared about 500 million years ago. Oxygen levels are not stable in aquatic environments and exclusively water-breathing ?sh must still cope with the ever-changing levels of O 2 and with large temperature changes. This is re?ected in their sophisticated count- current systems, with high O extraction and internal and external O receptors. 2 2 The conquest for the terrestrial environment took place in the late Devonian period (355–359 million years ago), and recent discoveries portray the gradual transitional evolution of land vertebrates. The oxygen-rich and relatively stable atmospheric conditionsimpliedthatoxygen-sensingmechanismswererelativelysimpleandl- gain compared with acid–base regulation. Recently, physiology has expanded into related ?elds such as biochemistry, molecular biology, morphology and anatomy. In the light of the work in these ?elds, the introduction of DNA-based cladograms, which can be used to evaluate the likelihood of land vertebrates and lung?sh as a sister group, could explain why their cardio-respiratory control systems are similar. The diffusing capacity of a duck lung is 40 times higher than that of a toad or lung?sh. Certainly, some animals have evolved to rich high-performance levels.

The Perception of the Environment
The Perception of the Environment

Author: Tim Ingold

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-29

Total Pages: 644

ISBN-13: 1000504662

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In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive new approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. To account for the generation of skills we have therefore to understand the dynamics of development. And this in turn calls for an ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an active engagement with the constituents of their surroundings. The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood, on what it means to ‘dwell’, and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise the way we think about what is ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ in humans, about evolution and history, and indeed about what it means for human beings – at once organisms and persons – to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, geographers and philosophers. This edition includes a new Preface by the author.