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Author: Jeffrey S. Levinton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2001-08-06
Total Pages: 644
ISBN-13: 9780521005500
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn expanded and updated second edition comprehensively looks at macroevolution, integrating evolutionary processes at all levels to explain animal diversity.
Author: for the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 1995-02-09
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 0309552672
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince George Gaylord Simpson published Tempo and Mode in Evolution in 1944, discoveries in paleontology and genetics have abounded. This volume brings together the findings and insights of today's leading experts in the study of evolution, including Ayala, W. Ford Doolittle, and Stephen Jay Gould. The volume examines early cellular evolution, explores changes in the tempo of evolution between the Precambrian and Phanerozoic periods, and reconstructs the Cambrian evolutionary burst. Long-neglected despite Darwin's interest in it, species extinction is discussed in detail. Although the absence of data kept Simpson from exploring human evolution in his book, the current volume covers morphological and genetic changes in human populations, contradicting the popular claim that all modern humans descend from a single woman. This book discusses the role of molecular clocks, the results of evolution in 12 populations of Escherichia coli propagated for 10,000 generations, a physical map of Drosophila chromosomes, and evidence for "hitchhiking" by mutations.
Author: Jeffrey Levinton
Publisher:
Published: 1988
Total Pages: 637
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 1999-09-08
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0684856239
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEverybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.
Author: Philippe Huneman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 0199377170
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSince its origin in the early 20th century, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution has grown to become the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. Its central defining feature is the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of evolutionary dynamics. Since the advent of the 21st century, however, the Modern Synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. These are largely empirically driven. In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development of organisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. The extent to which the new biology challenges the Modern Synthesis has been the subject of lively debate. Many current commentators charge that the new biology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the Modern Synthesis Theory of evolution. Defenders of the Modern Synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology. The original essays collected in this volume survey the various challenges to the Modern Synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. The authors are evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology from Europe and North America. Each of the essays discusses a particular challenge to the Modern Synthesis treatment of inheritance, development, or adaptation. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the Modern Synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the Modern Synthesis. The collection will be of interest to researchers and students in evolutionary biology, and the philosophy and history of the biological sciences.
Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 524
ISBN-13: 9780674272262
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBiology was forged into a single, coherent science only within living memory. In this volume the thinkers responsible for the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology and genetics come together to analyze that remarkable event. In a new Preface, Ernst Mayr calls attention to the fact that scientists in different biological disciplines varied considerably in their degree of acceptance of Darwin's theories. Mayr shows us that these differences were played out in four separate periods: 1859 to 1899, 1900 to 1915, 1916 to 1936, and 1937 to 1947. He thus enables us to understand fully why the synthesis was necessary and why Darwin's original theory--that evolutionary change is due to the combination of variation and selection--is as solid at the end of the twentieth century as it was in 1859.
Author: Derek Turner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-04-28
Total Pages: 241
ISBN-13: 1139497782
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the wake of the paleobiological revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, paleontologists continue to investigate far-reaching questions about how evolution works. Many of those questions have a philosophical dimension. How is macroevolution related to evolutionary changes within populations? Is evolutionary history contingent? How much can we know about the causes of evolutionary trends? How do paleontologists read the patterns in the fossil record to learn about the underlying evolutionary processes? Derek Turner explores these and other questions, introducing the reader to exciting recent work in the philosophy of paleontology and to theoretical issues including punctuated equilibria and species selection. He also critically examines some of the major accomplishments and arguments of paleontologists of the last 40 years.
Author: David Zeigler
Publisher: Academic Press
Published: 2014-04-14
Total Pages: 211
ISBN-13: 0128004177
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEvolution: Components and Mechanisms introduces the many recent discoveries and insights that have added to the discipline of organic evolution, and combines them with the key topics needed to gain a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of evolution. Each chapter covers an important topic or factor pertinent to a modern understanding of evolutionary theory, allowing easy access to particular topics for either study or review. Many chapters are cross-referenced. Modern evolutionary theory has expanded significantly within only the past two to three decades. In recent times the definition of a gene has evolved, the definition of organic evolution itself is in need of some modification, the number of known mechanisms of evolutionary change has increased dramatically, and the emphasis placed on opportunity and contingency has increased. This book synthesizes these changes and presents many of the novel topics in evolutionary theory in an accessible and thorough format. This book is an ideal, up-to-date resource for biologists, geneticists, evolutionary biologists, developmental biologists, and researchers in, as well as students and academics in these areas and professional scientists in many subfields of biology. - Discusses many of the mechanisms responsible for evolutionary change - Includes an appendix that provides a brief synopsis of these mechanisms with most discussed in greater detail in respective chapters - Aids readers in their organization and understanding of the material by addressing the basic concepts and topics surrounding organic evolution - Covers some topics not typically addressed, such as opportunity, contingency, symbiosis, and progress
Author: Steven M. Stanley
Publisher:
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 382
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Not only is a wealth of evidence presented to support the model of punctuated equilibria, but Stanley's stream of refreshing insights into classic topics of evolution, such as living fossils, mass extinctions and adaptive radiations add further weight to the validity of the general model".--GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. "Overall, Stanley offers an imaginative treatment of almost every issue in macroevolution".--AMERICAN SCIENTIST. 192 illustrations.
Author: Jerry A. Coyne
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2010-01-14
Total Pages: 416
ISBN-13: 019164384X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor all the discussion in the media about creationism and 'Intelligent Design', virtually nothing has been said about the evidence in question - the evidence for evolution by natural selection. Yet, as this succinct and important book shows, that evidence is vast, varied, and magnificent, and drawn from many disparate fields of science. The very latest research is uncovering a stream of evidence revealing evolution in action - from the actual observation of a species splitting into two, to new fossil discoveries, to the deciphering of the evidence stored in our genome. Why Evolution is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, palaeontology, geology, molecular biology, anatomy, and development to demonstrate the 'indelible stamp' of the processes first proposed by Darwin. It is a crisp, lucid, and accessible statement that will leave no one with an open mind in any doubt about the truth of evolution.
