Books by Subject
Books by Subject
Biological and Evolutionary Analysis
From
the Back Cover
Designed to help readers learn how to think like evolutionary
biologists, this 4-color book approaches evolutionary biology as a dynamic field
of inquiry and as a process. Using a theme-based approach, it illustrates the
interplay between theory, observation, testing and interpretation. It offers
commentary on strengths and weaknesses of data sets, gives detailed examples
rather than a broad synoptic approach, includes many data graphics and boxes
regarding both sides of controversies. Introduces each major organizing theme in
evolution through a question--e.g., How has HIV become drug resistant? Why did
the dinosaurs, after dominating the land vertebrates for 150 million years,
suddenly go extinct? Are humans more closely related to gorillas or to
chimpanzees? Focuses on many applied, reader-relevant topics--e.g., evolution
and human health, the evolution of senescence, sexual selection, social
behavior, eugenics, and biodiversity and conservation. Then develops the
strategies that evolutionary biologists use for finding an answers to such
questions. Then considers the observations and experiments that test the
predictions made by competing hypotheses, and discusses how the data are
interpreted. For anyone interested in human evolution, including those working
in human and animal health care, environmental management and conservation,
primary and secondary education, science journalism, and biological and medical
research.
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Editorial Reviews
Book
Description
Applying current theory and research, this book links the development
of sex differences in cognition to biological foundations, multiple social
processes, and contextual factors. Areas covered include evolutionary biology,
neuroscience, social roles, and cultural contextualism and the issues of the
onset, causes, developmental trajectories, and patterns in children's and
adolescents' thinking, problem-solving, academic performance, and social
conditions that are related to behaviors in each of these areas.
About
the Author
ANN McGILLICUDDY-DE LISI is the Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of
Psychology at Lafayette College.
RICHARD DE LISI is a Professor of Educational Psychology at Rutgers University.
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The Biology of Belief: How Our Biology
Biases Our Beliefs and Perceptions
by Joseph Giovannoli
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Editorial Reviews
Book
Description
For more than two decades the concept of phenotypic plasticity has
allowed researchers to go beyond the nature-nurture dichotomy to gain deeper
insights into how organisms are shaped by the interaction of genetic and
ecological factors. Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture is the
first work to synthesize the burgeoning area of plasticity studies, providing a
conceptual overview as well as a technical treatment of its major components.
Phenotypic plasticity integrates the insights of ecological genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. Plasticity research asks foundational questions about how living organisms are capable of variation in their genetic makeup and in their responses to environmental factors. For instance, how do novel adaptive phenotypes originate? How do organisms detect and respond to stressful environments? What is the balance between genetic or natural constraints (such as gravity) and natural selection? The author begins by defining phenotypic plasticity and detailing its history, including important experiments and methods of statistical and graphical analysis. He then provides extended examples of the molecular basis of plasticity, the plasticity of development, the ecology of plastic responses, and the role of costs and constraints in the evolution of plasticity. A brief epilogue looks at how plasticity studies shed light on the nature/nurture debate in the popular media.
Phenotypic Plasticity: Beyond Nature and Nurture thoroughly reviews more than two decades of research, and thus will be of interest to both students and professionals in evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.
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Editorial
Reviews
Book
Description
A major new textbook.
A concise and clear introduction to evolutionary biology.
This book introduces what is essential and exciting in evolutionary biology. It covers whole field and emphasises the important concepts for the student. Care has been taken to express complex and stimulating ideas in simple language, while the frequent examples and running summaries make reading fun. Its logical structure means that it can be read straight through, one chapter per sitting.
* Concise, clear, and states what is important
* Concentrates on the central concepts and illustrates them with telling examples
* Running summaries in the margins make navigation easy
* Suitable for a one-year or one-semester course in evolution
* Summaries at chapter ends
* Each chapter's links to neighbouring chapters are explained
Evolution: an introduction takes a fresh approach to classical topics such as population genetics and natural selection, and gives an overview of recent advances in hot areas such as sexual selection, genetic conflict, life history evolution, and phenotypic plasticity.
Detail of contents
The Prologue is unique and uniquely motivating. It makes four central points about evolution in the form of four case studies told as brief stories.
Chapters 1-3 describe natural selection and the essential difference between adaptive and neutral evolution with unmatched clarity and simplicity.
Chapter 4 emphasizes the essential message of population genetics without burdening the students with any of the unessential details and places unique emphasis on the role of the genetic system in constraining the response to selection.
Chapter 6 is not found in any other evolution textbook, although there are a number of recent books on the subject, and it therefore provides an introductory overview of a topic that has been the object of much recent interest and promises to generate much more insight: the expression of genetic variation analysed with the concept of reaction norms.
Chapters 7-9 cover sex, life histories, and sexual selection in greater depth than they are dealt with in any other introductory textbook but without introducing advanced technical language and analysis.
Chapters 6-9 thus give unprecedented coverage to phenotypic evolution in an introductory text.
Chapter 10 on multilevel selection and genetic conflict is unique in introductory textbooks. Rolf Hoekstra has achieved a wonder of clarity and concision on the essentials of this exciting topic.
Chapters 11 and 12 on speciation and systematics are, by comparison, pretty standard, but they continue the policy of clarity and concision with the focus on essentials.
Chapter 13 on the history of the planet and of life is a completely new approach unabashedly designed to motivate students to think about deep time, geology, paleontology, and fossils.
Chapter 14 on the major transitions in evolution is also not found in any other introductory textbook. It documents the conceptual issues raised in the history of life briefly and in a form that will stimulate the gifted.
Chapter 15 profiles the chief insights made possible by molecular systematics in the form of four case studies ranging from deep time to recent European history. It has standard content but unique structure. A strong point is the way mitochondrial Eve is contrasted with transpecies polymorphism to show students how to think about inferences with molecular evidence.
Chapter 16 briefly presents the principle comparative methods and the kinds of insights that can be achieved with them. It is not unique - Ridley covers this ground well - but the examples used are new and the essential features of the methods - including potential pitfalls - are quite clearly described.
Chapter 17 places evolutionary thought into the context both of the
natural sciences and of society at large.
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Editorial ReviewsEditorial
Reviews
Amazon.com
E.O. Wilson defines sociobiology as "the systematic study of the
biological basis of all social behavior," the central theoretical problem
of which is the question of how behaviors that seemingly contradict the
principles of natural selection, such as altruism, can develop. Sociobiology:
A New Synthesis, Wilson's first attempt to outline the new field of study,
was first published in 1975 and called for a fairly revolutionary update to the
so-called Modern Synthesis of evolutionary biology. Sociobiology as a new field
of study demanded the active inclusion of sociology, the social sciences, and
the humanities in evolutionary theory. Often criticized for its apparent message
of "biological destiny," Sociobiology set the stage for such
controversial works as Richard Dawkins's The
Selfish Gene and Wilson's own
Consilience.
Sociobiology defines such concepts as society, individual,
population, communication, and regulation. It attempts to
explain, biologically, why groups of animals behave the way they do when finding
food or shelter, confronting enemies, or getting along with one another. Wilson
seeks to explain how group selection, altruism, hierarchies, and sexual
selection work in populations of animals, and to identify evolutionary trends
and sociobiological characteristics of all animal groups, up to and including
man. The insect sections of the books are particularly interesting, given
Wilson's status as the world's most famous entomologist.
It is fair to say that as an ecological strategy eusociality has been overwhelmingly successful. It is useful to think of an insect colony as a diffuse organism, weighing anywhere from less than a gram to as much as a kilogram and possessing from about a hundred to a million or more tiny mouths.
It's when Wilson starts talking about human beings that the furor starts.
Feminists have been among the strongest critics of the work, arguing that humans
are not slaves to a biological destiny, forever locked in "primitive"
behavior patterns without the ability to reason past our biochemical nature.
Like The
Origin of Species, Sociobiology has forced many biologists and
social scientists to reassess their most cherished notions of how life works. --Therese
Littleton
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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye
View of the World
by Michael Pollan
Hardcover - 256 pages (May 8,
2001)
Random House; ISBN: 0375501290
; Dimensions (in inches): 1.07 x 9.56 x 5.72
Book
Description
In 1637, one Dutchman paid as much for a single tulip bulb as the going
price of a town house in Amsterdam. Three and a half centuries later, Amsterdam
is once again the mecca for people who care passionately about one particular
plant — thought this time the obsessions revolves around the intoxicating effects
of marijuana rather than the visual beauty of the tulip. How could flowers,
of all things, become such objects of desire that they can drive men to financial
ruin?
In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan argues that the answer lies at the heart
of the intimately reciprocal relationship between people and plants. In telling
the stories of four familiar plant species that are deeply woven into the fabric
of our lives, Pollan illustrates how they evolved to satisfy humankinds’s most
basic yearnings — and by doing so made themselves indispensable. For, just as
we’ve benefited from these plants, the plants, in the grand co-evolutionary
scheme that Pollan evokes so brilliantly, have done well by us. The sweetness
of apples, for example, induced the early Americans to spread the species, giving
the tree a whole new continent in which to blossom. So who is really domesticating
whom?
Weaving fascinating anecdotes and accessible science into gorgeous prose, Pollan
takes us on an absorbing journey that will change the way we think about our
place in nature.
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Book
Description
The study of strategic action (game theory) is moving from a formal
science of rational behavior to an evolutionary tool kit for studying behavior
in a broad array of social settings. In this problem-oriented introduction to
the field, Herbert Gintis exposes students to the techniques and applications of
game theory through a wealth of sophisticated and surprisingly fun-to-solve
problems involving human (and even animal) behavior.
Game Theory Evolving is innovative in several ways. First, it reflects game theory's expansion into such areas as cooperation in teams, networks, the evolution and diffusion of preferences, the connection between biology and economics, artificial life simulations, and experimental economics. Second, the book--recognizing that students learn by doing and that most game theory texts are weak on problems--is organized around problems, and introduces principles through practice. Finally, the quality of the problems is simply unsurpassed, and each chapter provides a study plan for instructors interested in teaching evolutionary game theory.
Reflecting the growing consensus that in many important contexts outside of anonymous markets, human behavior is not well described by classical "rationality," Gintis shows students how to apply game theory to model how people behave in ways that reflect the special nature of human sociality and individuality. This book is perfect for upper undergraduate and graduate economics courses as well as a terrific introduction for ambitious do-it-yourselfers throughout the behavioral sciences. --This text refers to the paperback edition of this title
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Evolutionary Perspectives on Human
Reproductive Behavior (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, V. 907)
by Dori Lecroy (Editor), Peter Moller (Editor)
Paperback (May 2000)
New York Academy of Sciences;
ISBN: 1573312541
Other Editions: Hardcover
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