He shows how oxygen underpins the origin of biological complexity, the birth of photosynthesis, the sudden evolution of animals, the need for two sexes, the accelerated aging of cloned animals like Dolly the sheep, and the surprisingly long lives of bats and birds. Drawing on this grand evolutionary canvas, Oxygen offers fresh perspectives on our own lives and deaths, explaining modern killer diseases, why we age, and what we can do about it. Advancing revelatory new ideas, following chains of evidence, the book ranges through many disciplines, from environmental sciences to molecular medicine. The result is a captivating vision of contemporary science and a humane synthesis of our place in nature. This remarkable book will redefine the way we think about the world.

    It explains all this and much more. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, when to seduce your sisters or eat your lover. Quirky and brilliant, it takes as its starting point all creatures great and small worried about their bizarre sex lives, and the letters they write to the wise Dr Tatiana, the only agony aunt in all creation with a prodigious knowledge of both natural history and evolutionary biology.

    Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up as the father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races?Examining the hidden secrets of human evolution in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the revolutionary science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. Replete with marvelous anecdotes and remarkable information, from the truth about the real Adam and Eve to the way differing racial types emerged, The Journey of Man is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind.

    Many millions more lived here in the past. Where did they all come from? Why have some become extinct and others lived on? In this remarkable book for children, Steve Jenkins explores the fascinating history of life on earth and the awe-inspiring story of evolution, Charles Darwin’s great contribution to modern science.

    Next, he examines the three critiques that currently challenge this classic Darwinian edifice: that selection operates on multiple levels, from the gene to the group; that evolution proceeds by a variety of mechanisms, not just natural selection; and that causes operating at broader scales, including catastrophes, have figured prominently in the course of evolution.Then, in a stunning tour de force that will likely stimulate discussion and debate for decades, Gould proposes his own system for integrating these classical commitments and contemporary critiques into a new structure of evolutionary thought.In 2001 the Library of Congress named Stephen Jay Gould one of America's eighty-three Living Legends--people who embody the quintessentially American ideal of individual creativity, conviction, dedication, and exuberance. Each of these qualities finds full expression in this peerless work, the likes of which the scientific world has not seen--and may not see again--for well over a century.

    Taking diversity of optical mechanisms as a framework, it also discusses aspects of structure and function of eyes, including visual ecology, design philosophy, properties of light critical to vision, factors in eye adaptation and capabilities of a wide variety of eye types.

    Written by two leading authorities, no other reference covers all resident species north of Mexico, mammals large and small. With full-color illustrations for every one of the 442 species, "Mammals of North America" shows the user how to identify any mammal encountered, from mouse to moose, bat to baleen whale, Abert's Squirrel to the Yuma Myotis.The core of the book consists of 108 color plates featuring exceptionally detailed mammal illustrations. Each species is depicted on these plates, with subspecies, geographic, and sexual variation portrayed whenever relevant. The artwork is supplemented by maps showing present range and by a short paragraph of text highlighting key identification characteristics and relevant aspects of the animal's behavior and ecology. All the artwork, maps, and text for a species are on two facing pages, eliminating the need to flip through the book to learn about an animal. Mammal signs are often more easily found than the animals themselves, so illustrations of tracks and scat are also included.North America's mammal fauna is one of the best documented in the world, and the authors have scoured the continent's outstanding mammalogy literature to make this book as accurate and up-to-date as possible. Amateur naturalists will appreciate the complete coverage, detailed range maps, and outstanding artwork; professionals will welcome the inclusion of subspecies variation and the illustration of obscure traits crucial in distinguishing some pairs of similar species. This spectacular guide is the definitive one-volume resource on the mammals of a vast andtremendously varied continent.108 color plates with illustrations for all 442 of North America's mammal species north of MexicoSubspecies, geographic, and sexual variation depicted when relevantArtwork is supplemented on facing pages by range maps and by concise text noting key identification traits and relevant aspects of behavior and ecologyTracks and scat illustrated as wellWell-documented, accurate, and completely up-to-date

    For Natural Selection and Social Theory, he has selected eleven of his most influential papers, including several classic papers from the early 1970s on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, parent-offspring conflicts, and asymmetry in sexual selection, which helped to establish the centrality of sociobiology, as well as some of his later work on deceit in signalling, sex antagonistic genes, and imprinting. Trivers introduces each paper, setting them in their contemporary context, and critically evaluating them in the light of subsequent work and further developments. The result is a unique portrait of the intellectual development of sociobiology, with valuable insights for evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology.

    But what role is left for women within such evolutionary thinking? The role women get is that of the passive, weak, individual left to ride on the coat tails of their male suitors. The default, no testosterone sex interested in just selecting the best male to expand the gene pool . Is it any wonder that feminists are dismissive of such evolutionary approaches? That many have sought to ignore the contribution that evolutionary theory can make to our understanding of women. But have women really just been bit part actors in the whole story of evolution? Have they not played their own role in ensuring their reproductive success? In this highly accessible and thought provoking new book, Anne Campbell challenges this passive role of women in evolutionary theory, and redresses the current bias within evolutionary writing. Guiding us through the basics of evolutionary theory, she proposes that women have forged their own strategic way forward, acting through their own competition, rivalry, indirect aggression, and unfaithfulness, to shape their own destiny. Throwing down a challenge to feminist theories, Campbell argues that evolutionary theory can indeed teach us plenty about the development of the female mind - we just need to get it right. This is an important book that will force others to re-evaluate their own assumptions about the evolution of the female mind.

    Addressing a wealth of new research, the second edition continues in this vein, leading readers through the basic principles of anatomy and physiology and on to the complex behavioral functions which constitute the workings of the normal and abnormal female brain. Examines Questions about Structural and Functional Differences The book addresses the question of structural and functional differences between the female brain and the male brain. Are there differences? How good is the evidence? Where do the differences lie? Are there differences in the neuroanatomy of females, and if so, where? Do females and males process information differently, and if so, how? The author puts the relative lack of information on the female brain into historical perspective and reviews empirical evidence relevant to the different aspects of brain structure and function. She elucidates laterality, the functional asymmetry of the brain, the left brain-right brain distinctions, and how they differ between females and males. A Clear Presentation and Evaluation of Medical and Scientific Evidence Filled with rigorous scientific analysis in an easily accessible format and detailed explanatory diagrams, the book systematically develops the topic from anatomy to behavior. It draws on current research to explain why men and women behave differently and why these differences should be exploited when designing research and clinical studies.

    One of the attractions of the Northwest is its varied terrain, from the volcanic Cascade Range to the flood-scoured scablands of eastern Washington and the eroded peaks of the northern Rockies. These vast differences are the result of a collision of the old and the new. The western edge of Idaho was once the edge of ancient North America; as eons passed, a jumble of islands, minicontinents, and sediment piled up against the old continental edge, gradually extending it west to the present coastline. Figuring out how and when these various land forms came together to create the Northwest took much geological detective work. Unlike many geology books that focus on rocks, The Restless Northwest emphasizes the human drama of geology. The narrative is sprinkled with firsthand accounts of people involved in the exciting geological discoveries made in recent years. Hill Williams uses an informal conversational style to explain complex processes to a general readership. He enlivens the story of long-ago geologic events with fascinating asides on everything from enormous undersea tube worms to the Willamette meteorite, the largest ever found in the United States. Interested readers will discover much about Pacific Northwest geology without getting bogged down in an overabundance of details and scientific terms.

    It offers a battery of methods that can be used to help us understand human behavior. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of this exercise is at the center of a heated controversy that has raged for over a century. Many evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and psychologists have taken these evolutionary principles and tried using them to explain a wide range of human characteristics, such as homicide, religion and sex differences in behavior. Others, however, are sceptical of these interpretations. Moreover, researchers disagree as to the best ways to use evolution to explore humanity, and a number of schools have emerged. Sense and Nonsense provides an introduction to the ideas, methods, and findings of five such schools, namely, sociobiology, human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics, and gene-culture co-evolution. Carefully guiding the reader through the mire of confusing terminology, claim and counter-claim, and polemical statements, Laland and Brown provide a balanced, rigorous analysis that scrutinizes both the evolutionary arguments and the allegations of the critics. This is a book that will be make fascinating reading for popular science readers, undergraduate and postgraduate students (for example, in psychology, anthropology and zoology), and to experts on one approach who would like to know more about the other perspectives. Having completed this book the reader will feel better placed to assess the legitimacy of claims made about human behavior under the name of evolution, and to make judgements as to what is sense and what is nonsense.

    It presents a truly "balanced" treatment, not in the sense of treating creationism as a legitimate scientific theory (it demonstrably is not), but in the sense of dividing the blame for the controversy equally between creationists and scientists—the former for subscribing to various forms of anti-intellectualism, the latter for discounting science education and presenting science as scientism to the public and the media. The central part of the book focuses on a series of creationist fallacies (aimed at showing errors of thought, not at deriding) and of mistakes by scientists and science educators. The last part of the book discusses long-term solutions to the problem, from better science teaching at all levels to the necessity of widespread understanding of how the brain works and why people have difficulties with critical thinking.

    The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as consciousness and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

    It is also a journey through space, following the migrations of mammal species that evolved on other continents and eventually met to compete or coexist in Cenozoic Europe. Finally, it is a journey through the complexity of mammalian evolution, a review of the changes and adaptations that have allowed mammals to flourish and become the dominant land vertebrates on Earth.With the benefit of recent advances in geological and geophysical techniques, Jordi Agust? and Mauricio Ant?n are able to trace the processes of mammalian evolution as never before; events that hitherto appeared synchronous or at least closely related can now be distinguished on a scale of hundreds or even dozens of thousands of years, revealing the dramatic importance of climactic changes both major and minor. Evolutionary developments are rendered in magnificent illustrations of the many extraordinary species that once inhabited Europe, detailing their osteology, functional anatomy, and inferred patterns of locomotion and behavior. Based on the latest research and field work, Mammoths, Sabertooths, and Hominids transforms our understanding of how mammals evolved and changed the face of the planet.

    Enjoy illustrated descriptions of the animals from the Pleistocene time and learn why so many of these animals are now extinct.

    The last decade has seen the emergence of a vast quantity of data on the subject and there is now a perceived need among both teachers and undergraduate students for a new textbook that incorporates the numerous recent advances made in the field. The book is intended for use by advanced level undergraduate and beginning graduate students, taking related courses in wider ecology degree programmes. Very few books cover this subject and those that do are out of date.

    Since its inceptions more than ten years ago, GP has been used to solve practical problems in a variety of application fields. Along with this ad-hoc engineering approaches interest increased in how and why GP works. This book provides a coherent consolidation of recent work on the theoretical foundations of GP. A concise introduction to GP and genetic algorithms (GA) is followed by a discussion of fitness landscapes and other theoretical approaches to natural and artificial evolution. Having surveyed early approaches to GP theory it presents new exact schema analysis, showing that it applies to GP as well as to the simpler GAs. New results on the potentially infinite number of possible programs are followed by two chapters applying these new techniques.

    We now know that male marmosets help take care of their offspring. Is this heartening news for today's stay-at-home dads? Recent studies show that many female birds once thought to be monogamous actually have chicks that are fathered outside the primary breeding pair. Does this information spell doom for traditional marriages? And bonobo apes take part in female-female sexual encounters. Does this mean that human homosexuality is natural? This highly provocative book clearly shows that these are the wrong kinds of questions to ask about animal behavior. Marlene Zuk, a respected biologist and a feminist, gives an eye-opening tour of some of the latest developments in our knowledge of animal sexuality and evolutionary biology. Sexual Selections exposes the anthropomorphism and gender politics that have colored our understanding of the natural world and shows how feminism can help move us away from our ideological biases.As she tells many amazing stories about animal behavior--whether of birds and apes or of rats and cockroaches--Zuk takes us to the places where our ideas about nature, gender, and culture collide. Writing in an engaging, conversational style, she discusses such politically charged topics as motherhood, the genetic basis for adultery, the female orgasm, menstruation, and homosexuality. She shows how feminism can give us the tools to examine sensitive issues such as these and to enhance our understanding of the natural world if we avoid using research to champion a feminist agenda and avoid using animals as ideological weapons.Zuk passionately asks us to learn to see the animal world on its own terms, with its splendid array of diversity and variation. This knowledge will give us a better understanding of animals and can ultimately change our assumptions about what is natural, normal, and even possible.

    Learn how to tune in to nature's biophonies, or creature symphonies; how to use simple microphones to hear more; and how to record, mix, and play with sounds you gather. Keep it simple or launch yourself into a new creative field. Whether you're an amateur naturalist, novice field recordist, musician, want to create your own natural sound library, or just want to gain further appreciate of the natural world, this is the book for you. Bernie Krause, a professional field recordist and bioacoustician, shares his expertise in exploring nature's sonic landscapes. Wild Soundscapes comes with a full-length CD, narrated by Krause, sampling a variety of natural sounds: the crashing sea, the singing of ants, the bugling of Yellowstone elk, the plop of falling Costa Rican crabs, and more. With the help of this CD, Krause demonstrates techniques and tricks for field recording success.

    Ludwig's eighteen-year investigation into why people want to rule. The answer may seem obvious -- power, privilege, and perks -- but any adequate answer also needs to explain why so many rulers cling to power even when they are miserable, trust nobody, feel besieged, and face almost certain death. Ludwig's results suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule.Profiling every ruler of a recognized country in the twentieth century -- over 1,900 people in all -- Ludwig establishes how rulers came to power, how they lost power, the dangers they faced, and the odds of their being assassinated, committing suicide, or dying a natural death. Then, concentrating on a smaller sub-set of 377 rulers for whom more extensive personal information was available, he compares six different kinds of leaders, examining their characteristics, their childhoods, and their mental stability or instability to identify the main predictors of later political success.Ludwig's penetrating observations, though presented in a lighthearted and entertaining way, offer important insight into why humans have engaged in war throughout recorded history as well as suggesting how they might live together in peace.

    Andrew Berry’s anthology rescue’s Wallace’s legacy, showing Wallace to be far more than just the co-discoverer of natural selection. Wallace was a brilliant and wide-ranging scientist, a passionate social reformer and a gifted writer. The eloquence that has made his The Malay Archipelago a classic of travel writing is a prominent feature too of his extraordinarily forward-thinking writing on socialism, imperialism and pacifism. Wallace’s opinions on women’s suffrage, on land reform, on the roles of the church and aristocracy in a parliamentary democracy, on publicly funded education—to name a few of the issues he addressed—remain as fresh and as topical today as they were when they were written.

    

    Now, one of the giants of biological science, Christian de Duve, discusses what we've learned in this half century, ranging from the tiniest cells to the future of our species and of life itself. With wide-ranging erudition, De Duve takes us on a dazzling tour of the biological world, beginning with the invisible workings of the cell, the area in which he won his Nobel Prize. He describes how the first cells may have arisen and suggests that they may have been like the organisms that exist today near deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Contrary to many scientists, he argues that life was bound to arise and that it probably only took millennia--maybe tens of thousands of years--to move from rough building blocks to the first organisms possessing the basic properties of life. With equal authority, De Duve examines topics such as the evolution of humans, the origins of consciousness, the development of language, the birth of science, and the origin of emotion, morality, altruism, and love. He concludes with his conjectures on the future of humanity--for instance, we may evolve, perhaps via genetic engineering, into a new species--and he shares his personal thoughts about God and immortality. In Life Evolving, one of our most eminent scientists sums up what he has learned about the nature of life and our place in the universe. An extraordinarily wise and humane volume, it will fascinate readers curious about the world around them and about the impact of science on philosophy and religion.

    The new edition features: * Increased coverage of whole-genome sequencing technologies and enhanced treatment of bioinformatics. * Clear, two-colour diagrams throughout. * A dedicated website including all figures. Noted for its outstanding balance between clarity of coverage and level of detail, this book provides an excellent introduction to the fast moving world of molecular genetics.

    However, he overlooked the creative importance of living interactions, whether symbioses between different species or as cooperation within species, particularly among humans. In this book the reader is taken on a journey through the conflicting ideas of evolutionary theory in the 19th and 20th centuries, including not only Darwinism but notably the hugely important symbiosis and the planet-wide forces of Gaia. Ryan gives a plethora of examples of his broader view of evolution, from the union with bacteria that still powers our living cells to the retroviruses that live in the human chromosomes and emerge to play their part in every pregnancy. He shows how the genome of life lies at the heart of all evolutionary change, a force of symbiotic creativity that is far more widespread and powerful than modern Darwinism. Ryan sees human society evolving to a more civilized stage as our genetic hardwiring, in favour of co-operation, increasingly influences our behaviour.

    Each chapter emphasizes three key components of the record of primate evolution: history of discovery, taxonomy of the fossils, and evolution of the adaptive radiations they represent. The volume objectively summarizes the many intellectual debates surrounding the fossil record and provides a foundation of reference information on the last two decades of astounding discoveries and worldwide field research for physical anthropologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists.