This text aims to establish biology as a discipline not just a collection of facts. Life develops students' understanding of biological processes with scholarship, a smooth narrative, experimental contexts, art and effective pedagogy.
This is an authoritative introductory text that presents biological concepts through the research that revealed them. "Life" covers the full range of topics with an integrated experimental focus that flows naturally from the narrative.
This book provides an overview of the diversity of lizards and their major adaptive features. The authors discuss the latest research findings and provide new hypotheses about lizard diversity.
This text aims to establish biology as a discipline, not just a collection of facts. 'Life' develops students' understanding of biological processes with scholarship, a smooth narrative, experimental contexts, art and effective pedagogy.
This study, first published in 1942, helped to revolutionize evolutionary biology by offering a new approach to taxonomic principles, and correlating the ideas and findings of modern systematics with those of other life disciplines. This book is one of the foundational documents of the Evolutionary Synthesis. It is the book in which Ernst Mayr pioneered his concept of species based chiefly on such biological factors as interbreeding and reproductive isolation, taking into account ecology, geography and life history. In the introduction to this edition, Mayr reflects on the place of this work in the subsequent history of his field.
CO-PUBLISHED BY SINAUER ASSOCIATES, INC., AND W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY. LIFE HAS EVOLVED. . . from its original publication to this dramatically revitalized Eighth Edition. LIFE has always shown students how biology works, offering an engaging and coherent presentation of the fundamentals of biology by describing the landmark experiments that revealed them. This edition builds on those strengths and introduces several innovations.. As with previous editions, the Eighth Edition will also be available in three paperback volumes: • Volume I The Cell and Heredity, Chapters 1-20 • Volume II Evolution, Diversity and Ecology, Chapters 1, 21-33, 52-57 • Volume III Plants and Animals, Chapters 1, 34-51
There are many different types of organisms in the world: they differ in size, physiology, appearance, and life history. The challenge for evolutionary biology is to explain how such diversity arises. The Evolution of Life Histories does this by showing that natural selection is the principal underlying force molding life history variation. The book describes in particular the ways in which variation can be analyzed and predicted. It covers both the genetic and optimization approaches to life history analysis and gives an overview of the general framework of life history theory and the mathematical tools by which predictions can be made and tested. Factors affecting the age schedule of birth and death and the costs of reproduction are discussed. The Evolution of Life Histories concentrates on those theoretical developments that have been tested experimentally. It will interest both students and professionals in evolution, evolutionary ecology, mathematical and theoretical biology, and zoology and entomology.
Essays from a range of disciplinary perspectives show the central role that cooperation plays in structuring our world. This collection reports on the latest research on an increasingly pivotal issue for evolutionary biology: cooperation. The chapters are written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and utilize research tools that range from empirical survey to conceptual modeling, reflecting the rich diversity of work in the field. They explore a wide taxonomic range, concentrating on bacteria, social insects, and, especially, humans. Part I ("Agents and Environments") investigates the connections of social cooperation in social organizations to the conditions that make cooperation profitable and stable, focusing on the interactions of agent, population, and environment. Part II ("Agents and Mechanisms") focuses on how proximate mechanisms emerge and operate in the evolutionary process and how they shape evolutionary trajectories. Throughout the book, certain themes emerge that demonstrate the ubiquity of questions regarding cooperation in evolutionary biology: the generation and division of the profits of cooperation; transitions in individuality; levels of selection, from gene to organism; and the "human cooperation explosion" that makes our own social behavior particularly puzzling from an evolutionary perspective. Bradford Books imprint