Genetics in the Wild
Genetics in the Wild

Author: John C. Avise

Publisher: Smithsonian Institution

Published: 2014-05-27

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1588344290

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Award-winning geneticist John C. Avise guides this delightful voyage around the planet in search of answers to nature's mysteries. He demonstrates how scientists directly examine DNA to address long-standing questions about wild animals, plants, and microbes. Through dozens of stories that span the world, nature emerges as a realm where truth can be far stranger than fiction. From a 100-ton mushroom to egg-swapping birds, extinct ground sloths to microbes inside our bodies, Avise examines a cornucopia of natural-history topics and explains how today's modern genetic techniques offer novel insights. Do armadillo litters really contain clones? When is a fig tree not just a single tree? Where have migratory whales traveled? Who are the mothers of the embryos carried by pregnant male seahorses? What insect was the world's earliest farmer? How closely related are Neanderthals to modern humans? Answers to these and many more questions are presented here in a straightforwad manner that reveals Avise's enthusiasm for uncovering nature's hidden ways. Each entry is accompanied by a beautiful illustration from Trudy Nicholson, widely recognized as one of today's leading nature artists.

Conservation and the Genetics of Populations
Conservation and the Genetics of Populations

Author: Fred W. Allendorf

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-12-17

Total Pages: 636

ISBN-13: 0470671459

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Loss of biodiversity is among the greatest problems facing the world today. Conservation and the Genetics of Populations gives a comprehensive overview of the essential background, concepts, and tools needed to understand how genetic information can be used to conserve species threatened with extinction, and to manage species of ecological or commercial importance. New molecular techniques, statistical methods, and computer programs, genetic principles, and methods are becoming increasingly useful in the conservation of biological diversity. Using a balance of data and theory, coupled with basic and applied research examples, this book examines genetic and phenotypic variation in natural populations, the principles and mechanisms of evolutionary change, the interpretation of genetic data from natural populations, and how these can be applied to conservation. The book includes examples from plants, animals, and microbes in wild and captive populations. This second edition contains new chapters on Climate Change and Exploited Populations as well as new sections on genomics, genetic monitoring, emerging diseases, metagenomics, and more. One-third of the references in this edition were published after the first edition. Each of the 22 chapters and the statistical appendix have a Guest Box written by an expert in that particular topic (including James Crow, Louis Bernatchez, Loren Rieseberg, Rick Shine, and Lisette Waits). This book is essential for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of conservation genetics, natural resource management, and conservation biology, as well as professional conservation biologists working for wildlife and habitat management agencies. Additional resources for this book can be found at: www.wiley.com/go/allendorf/populations.

Introduction to Conservation Genetics
Introduction to Conservation Genetics

Author: Richard Frankham

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 643

ISBN-13: 0521878470

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This impressive author team brings the wealth of advances in conservation genetics into the new edition of this introductory text, including new chapters on population genomics and genetic issues in introduced and invasive species. They continue the strong learning features for students - main points in the margin, chapter summaries, vital support with the mathematics, and further reading - and now guide the reader to software and databases. Many new references reflect the expansion of this field. With examples from mammals, birds ...

Molecular Approaches in Natural Resource Conservation and Management
Molecular Approaches in Natural Resource Conservation and Management

Author: J. Andrew DeWoody

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-06-14

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 1139488554

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Recent advances in molecular genetics and genomics have been embraced by many in natural resource conservation. Today, several major conservation and management journals are now using 'genetics' editors to deal solely with the influx of manuscripts that employ molecular data. The editors have attempted to synthesize some of the major uses of molecular markers in natural resource management in a book targeted not only at scientists but also at individuals actively making conservation and management decisions. To that end, the text features contributors who are major figures in molecular ecology and evolution - many having published books of their own. The aim is to direct and distil the thoughts of these outstanding scientists by compiling compelling case histories in molecular ecology as they apply to natural resource management.

Nature Via Nurture
Nature Via Nurture

Author: Matt Ridley

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2003-04-29

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0060006781

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Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are. In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will. Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, Nature via Nurture chronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. Nature via Nurture is an enthralling,up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.

Wild Germplasm for Genetic Improvement in Crop Plants
Wild Germplasm for Genetic Improvement in Crop Plants

Author: Muhammad Tehseen Azhar

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2021-03-10

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0128221704

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Wild Germplasm for Genetic Improvement in Crop Plants addresses the need for an integrated reference on a wide variety of crop plants, facilitating comparison and contrast, as well as providing relevant relationships for future research and development. The book presents the genetic and natural history value of wild relatives, covers what wild relatives exist, explores the existing knowledge regarding specific relatives and the research surrounding them and identifies knowledge gaps. As understanding the role of crop wild relatives in plant breeding expands the genetic pool for abiotic and biotic stress resistance, this is an ideal reference on this important topic. - Provides a single-volume resource to important crops for accessible comparison and research - Explores both conventional and molecular approaches to breeding for targeted traits and allows for expanded genetic variability - Guides the development of hybrids for germplasm with increased tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses

Living with Our Genes
Living with Our Genes

Author: Dean H. Hamer

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 1999-02-16

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0385485840

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"A lucid, thought-provoking account of the case for 'nature' as a determinant of personality."—Peter D. Kramer, Author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave? Nowhere is the nature-nurture controversy being more arduously tested than in the labs of world-renowned molecular scientist Dean Hamer, whose cutting-edge research has indisputably linked specific genes to behavioral traits, such as anxiety, thrill-seeking, and homosexuality. The culmination of that research is this provocative book, Living with Our Genes. In it, Dr. Hamer reveals that much of our behavior—how much we eat and weigh, whether we drink or use drugs, how often we have sex—is heavily influenced by genes. His findings help explain why one brother becomes a Wall Street trader, while his sibling remains content as a librarian, or why some people like to bungee-jump, while others prefer Scrabble. Dr. Hamer also sheds light on some of the most compelling and vexing aspects of personality, such as shyness, aggression, depression, and intelligence. In the tradition of the bestselling book Listening to Prozac, Living with Our Genes is the first comprehensive investigation of the crucial link between our DNA and our behavior. "Compulsive reading, reminiscent of Jared Diamond, from a scientist who knows his stuff and communicates it well."—Kirkus Reviews "A pioneer in the field of molecular psychology, Hamer is exploring the role genes play in governing the very core of our individuality. Accessible . . . provocative."—Time "Absolutely terrific! I couldn't put it down."—Professor Robert Plomin, Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Research Center, Institute of Psychiatry

Evolution of Wild Emmer and Wheat Improvement
Evolution of Wild Emmer and Wheat Improvement

Author: E. Nevo

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2002-01-29

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9783540417507

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Wild emmer is the progenitor of most cultivated wheats and thus an important source of wheat improvement. This book draws the results from multidisciplinary studies on the ecological, genetic, genomic, agronomic, and evolutionary aspects of wild emmer, conducted at many labs around the world. It is divided into the following parts: Origin and Evolution of Wheat - Population Genetics of Wild Emmer Wheat at the Protein and DNA Levels - Genetic Resources of Wild Emmer for Wheat Improvement - Genome Organization and Genetic Mapping - Conclusions and Prospects. The authors describe the evolution of wild emmer as a model organism of a selfer in evolutionary biology, and its rich potential genetic resources for wheat improvement.

Gene Drives on the Horizon
Gene Drives on the Horizon

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-08-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 0309437873

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Research on gene drive systems is rapidly advancing. Many proposed applications of gene drive research aim to solve environmental and public health challenges, including the reduction of poverty and the burden of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue, which disproportionately impact low and middle income countries. However, due to their intrinsic qualities of rapid spread and irreversibility, gene drive systems raise many questions with respect to their safety relative to public and environmental health. Because gene drive systems are designed to alter the environments we share in ways that will be hard to anticipate and impossible to completely roll back, questions about the ethics surrounding use of this research are complex and will require very careful exploration. Gene Drives on the Horizon outlines the state of knowledge relative to the science, ethics, public engagement, and risk assessment as they pertain to research directions of gene drive systems and governance of the research process. This report offers principles for responsible practices of gene drive research and related applications for use by investigators, their institutions, the research funders, and regulators.

Quantitative Genetics in the Wild
Quantitative Genetics in the Wild

Author: Anne Charmantier

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 019967423X

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This book gathers the expertise of 30 evolutionary biologists from around the globe to highlight how applying the field of quantitative genetics - the analysis of the genetic basis of complex traits - aids in the study of wild populations.