This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1984.
Highlighting the growing importance of the sticklebacks as a model species in emerging fields such as molecular genetics, genomics, and environmental toxicology, Biology of the Three-Spined Stickleback examines data from researchers who use studies of the stickleback to address a wide range of biological issues. This state-of-the-art volume
The threespine stickleback is a small fish of temperate coastal and fresh waters that exhibits extraordinary phenotypic diversity. Benefiting from its amenability to observation in the field and manipulation in the laboratory, Niko Tinbergen pioneered the threespine stickleback's use in behavioral studies and established it as a model system in ethology. This up-to-date volume incorporates reviews from active researchers who use studies of the fish to address a broad variety of evolutionary issues, including optimal foraging, armor variation, speciation, and the endocrine basis for correlated behavioral characters. The work demonstrates the value of viewing the biology of a single organism simultaneously from multiple perspectives. Students and researchers in ecology, evolution, animal behavior, and vertebrate zoology will find much of interest in this useful book.
Sexual reproduction is a fundamental aspect of life. It is defined by the occurrence of meiosis and the fusion of two gametes of different sexes or mating types. Sex-determination mechanisms are responsible for the sexual fate and development of sexual characteristics in an organism, be it a unicellular alga, a plant, or an animal. In many cases, sex determination is genetic: males and females have different alleles or different genes that specify their sexual morphology. In animals, this is often accompanied by chromosomal differences. In other cases, sex may be determined by environmental (e.g. temperature) or social variables (e.g. the size of an organism relative to other members of its population). Surprisingly, sex-determination mechanisms are not evolutionarily conserved but are bewilderingly diverse and appear to have had rapid turnover rates during evolution. Evolutionary biologists continue to seek a solution to this conundrum. What drives the surprising dynamics of such a fundamental process that always leads to the same outcome: two sex types, male and female? The answer is complex but the ongoing genomic revolution has already greatly increased our knowledge of sex-determination systems and sex chromosomes in recent years. This novel book presents and synthesizes our current understanding, and clearly shows that sex-determination evolution will remain a dynamic field of future research. The Evolution of Sex Determination is an advanced, research level text suitable for graduate students and researchers in genetics, developmental biology, and evolution.
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
A home aquarium seems a peaceful place. Gazing at its inhabitants as they swim slowly through their small universe is a soothing, even hypnotic, experience. But this seeming tranquillity is only surface deep. Like their wild counterparts, these tiny, glittering beings exhibit a wide array of fascinating behaviors.Stéphan Reebs provides a delightfully entertaining, yet scientifically grounded, look at what fishes do and how they do it. From defending their young, to seeking out the perfect sexual partner, to telling time, fishes display a variety of behaviors that may not be readily apparent to the casual observer. Reebs not only describes the behaviors, but also outlines simple experiments that can be performed by observers wishing to learn for themselves just how resourceful—and bizarre—these creatures can be.How Fish Behave introduces us to damselfishes that sing like birds, elephantfishes that communicate electrically, and sticklebacks that deceive other fish into believing they have found food. Drawing on the experimental evidence behind such intrinsically interesting responses, Reebs demonstrates how science is conducted in the field of animal behavior.
From guppies to Galapagos finches and from adaptive landscapes to haldanes, this compilation of contributed works provides reviews, perspectives, theoretical models, statistical developments, and empirical demonstrations exploring the tempo and mode of microevolution on contemporary to geological time scales. New developments, and reviews, of classic and novel empirical systems demonstrate the strength and diversity of evolutionary processes producing biodiversity within species. Perspectives and theoretical insights expand these empirical observations to explore patterns and mechanisms of microevolution, methods for its quantification, and implications for the evolution of biodiversity on other scales. This diverse assemblage of manuscripts is aimed at professionals, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates who desire a timely synthesis of current knowledge, an illustration of exciting new directions, and a springboard for future investigations in the study of microevolution in the wild.
This comprehensive, groundbreaking book on the biodiversity of parasites offers a clear and accessible explanation of how parasite biodiversity provides insight into the history and biogeography of other organisms, the structure of ecosystems, and the processes that lead to the diversification of life.
Darwin's Dreampondtells the evolutionary story of the extraordinary "furu" and the battlefield leading to extinction. Tijs Goldschmidt skillfully blends a masterful discussion of the principles of neo-Darwinian evolution and speciation with a history of Lake Victoria's ecosystem. The science unfolds in the context of the engaging first-person narrative of Goldschmidt's adventures and misadventures as a field researcher. An astute observer and a clear and witty writer, he warmly portrays the colors and textures of the landscapes and the lives of the local people as he interacts with them during the course of his fieldwork.
