Covering diverse species from garter snakes to Komodo dragons, this book delves into the evolutionary origins and fascinating details of the mysterious social lives of reptiles. Reptiles have been too often dismissed as dull animals with tiny brains and simple, "asocial" lives. In reality, reptiles engage in a remarkable diversity of complex social behavior. They can live in families; communicate with one another while still in the egg; and hunt, feed, migrate, court, mate, nest, and hatch in groups. In The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles, J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, and Gordon M. Burghardt-three of the world's leading experts on reptiles-bring together a wave of new research with a synthesis of classic studies to produce the only authoritative look at the social behaviors of the most provocative animals on the planet. The book covers turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, and the enigmatic tuatara. Enhanced with dozens of images, it takes readers through a myriad of social interactions, tendencies, and intimacies ranging from fierce territorial battles to delicate paternal care and from promiscuous pairings to monogamous partnerships. This unique text * explains why reptiles have been neglected as subjects of social behavior studies; * provides numerous examples across all major reptilian groups that overturn the false paradigm of "solitary" reptiles; * explores the sensory, genetic, physiological, life history, and other factors underlying social behavior in reptiles; * presents the case that evolutionary "experiments" found among reptiles offer unparalleled opportunities for understanding how and why social behavior evolves in animals; and * identifies new and developing areas of research helping to reshape our view of reptiles. Revealing the secrets of reptilian social relationships through original quantitative research, field studies, laboratory experiments, and careful analysis of the literature, The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles elevates these fascinating animals to key players in the science of behavioral ecology.

This book puts multilevel selection theory into a much needed historical perspective. This is achieved by discussing multilevel selection in the first half of the twentieth century, the reasons for the energetic rejection of Wynne-Edwards' group selectionist stance in the 1960s, Elisabeth Lloyd's contribution to the units of selection debate, Price's hierarchical equation and its possible interpretations and, finally, species selection in macroevolutionary contexts. Another idea also seems to emerge from these studies; namely, that perhaps a more sure-footed position for multilevel selection theory would be acquired if we were to show a renewed interest in 'old group selection', i.e. in scenarios in which the differential reproduction of the groups themselves affects the frequencies of either individual-level or group-level traits. This book will be of interest to philosophers and historians of biology, as well as to theoretically inclined biologists who have an interest in multilevel selection theory.

Physics underlies all complexity, including our own existence: how is this possible? How can our own lives emerge from interactions of electrons, protons, and neutrons? This book considers the interaction of physical and non-physical causation in complex systems such as living beings, and in particular in the human brain, relating this to the emergence of higher levels of complexity with real causal powers. In particular it explores the idea of top-down causation, which is the key effect allowing the emergence of true complexity and also enables the causal efficacy of non-physical entities, including the value of money, social conventions, and ethical choices.

Advances in morphological and molecular methods continue to uncover new information on the origin and evolution of bats. Presenting some of the most remarkable discoveries and research involving living and fossil bats, this book explores their evolutionary history from a range of perspectives. Phylogenetic studies based on both molecular and morphological data have established a framework of evolutionary relationships that provides a context for understanding many aspects of bat biology and diversification. In addition to detailed studies of the relationships and diversification of bats, the topics covered include the mechanisms and evolution of powered flight, evolution and enhancement of echolocation, feeding ecology, population genetic structure, ontogeny and growth of facial form, functional morphology and evolution of body size. The book also examines the fossil history of bats from their beginnings over 50 million years ago to their diversification into one of the most globally wide-spread orders of mammals living today.

Charles Darwin is well-known throughout the world for his revolutionary work from 1859; The Origin of Species, the foundational study of evolution which greatly challenged the near-universal belief in the Christian world, at that time, of creationism. Originally published in 1928, Dorsey attempts to provide a detailed account of the scientist's life and personality informed by letters, published works and an autobiography written by Darwin. Darwin's life was full of challenges both in his personal life as well as his career and The Evolution of Charles Darwin explores all aspects of his life from birth to death emphasising the great impact his work had in the scientific community and humanity as a whole.

Recent empirical and philosophical research into the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, the origins of the mind/brain, and the development of human culture has sparked heated debates about what it means to be human and how knowledge about humans from the sciences and humanities should be understood. Conversations on Human Nature, featuring 20 interviews with leading scholars in biology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and theology, brings these debates to life for teachers, students, and general readers. The book-outlines the basic scientific, philosophical and theological issues involved in understanding human nature;-organizes material from the various disciplines under four broad headings: (1) evolution, brains and human nature; (2) biocultural human nature; (3) persons, minds and human nature, (4) religion, theology and human nature; -concludes with Fuentes and Visala's discussion of what researchers into human nature agree on, what they disagree on, and what we need to learn to resolve those differences.

The annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseilles serve to gather leading scientists, promote the exchange of ideas and encourage the formation of international collaborations.

This book contains the most essential contributions presented at the 14th Evolutionary Biology Meeting, which took place in September 2010. It comprises19 chapters organized according to the following categories:

. Evolutionary Biology Concepts

. Biodiversity and Evolution

. Macroevolution

. Genome Evolution

Offering an up-to-date overview of recent results in the field of evolutionary biology, this book is an invaluable source of information for scientists, teachers and advanced students. "

Are humans by nature hierarchical or egalitarian? "Hierarchy in the Forest" addresses this question by examining the evolutionary origins of social and political behavior. Christopher Boehm, an anthropologist whose fieldwork has focused on the political arrangements of human and nonhuman primate groups, postulates that egalitarianism is in effect a hierarchy in which the weak combine forces to dominate the strong.

The political flexibility of our species is formidable: we can be quite egalitarian, we can be quite despotic. "Hierarchy in the Forest" traces the roots of these contradictory traits in chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, and early human societies. Boehm looks at the loose group structures of hunter-gatherers, then at tribal segmentation, and finally at present-day governments to see how these conflicting tendencies are reflected.

"Hierarchy in the Forest" claims new territory for biological anthropology and evolutionary biology by extending the domain of these sciences into a crucial aspect of human political and social behavior. This book will be a key document in the study of the evolutionary basis of genuine altruism.

First published in 1909, this book collects the author's lectures on the 'problem of evolution' and the resultant debate. The first considers the validity of the Theory of Evolution and whether it is in opposition to the Christian view of creation. The second examines the assertion that evolution harmonises only with Monism rather than Theism and which of the two views is preferable. It also looks at the popular identification of Darwinism with evolution, if it is scientific and the results this leads to. The third looks at man's position in the problem of evolution - whether we are bound to bring in considerations higher than the zoological - and the evidence for our descent from 'brutes'.

When the famous South African fish scientist Professor JLB Smith published Old Fourlegs - The Story of the Coelacanth in 1956 he created an international sensation. After all, this 400-million-year-old fish, known only from fossil remains, was thought to have become extinct around 66 million years ago! JLB Smith’s dramatic account of the discovery of the first and second coelacanths in 1938 and 1952 turned him into a cult figure and put South African science on the world map. His book was eventually published in six English editions and translated into nine foreign languages.

Mike Bruton’s The Annotated Old Fourlegs includes a facsimile reprint of the original book, to which he has added notes and images in the margins that provide an interesting and revealing commentary on Smith’s text, as well as new introductory and explanatory chapters that bring the coelacanth story up to date.

This book brings Soren Kierkegaard's nineteenth-century existentialist project into our contemporary age, applying his understanding of "freedom" and "despair" to science and science studies, queer, decolonial and critical race theory, and disability studies. The book draws out the materialist dimensions of belief, examining the existential dynamics of phenomena like placebos, epigenetics, pedagogy, and scientific inquiry itself. Each chapter dramatizes the ways in which abstractions like "race" or "genes" and even "belief" are sites of contested practices with pressing political significance. Focusing on the existential dangers posed by neo-liberal and finance capitalist systems, the book brings to life the resources for resistance found within science studies and critical approaches to race, secularity, and disability. Throughout the book, Kierkegaard becomes an ally with ecological and developmental evolutionary theorists, as well as with science studies, critical race, and crip theorists who foreground the relational and impassioned nature of existence.

This book provides an overview of our current understanding of polyembryony in insects. The study of polyembronic insects has advanced considerably over the last several decades.The book shows the exciting potential of polyembryonic insects and their impact on life sciences. It describes the mechanisms of polyembryogenesis; tissue-compatible invasion of the host, which is the first case of compatible cellular interaction between phylogenetically distant organisms without rejection; the sex differences in defense; and the environmental regulation of caste structure. The first book devoted to polyembryony in insects, it draws on the author's research on polyembryonic wasps from 1990 to the present day, covering various topics such as polyembryogenesis in vitro, host-parasite interaction, sex differences in soldier function/humoral toxic factor, and the transcription analysis of polyembryogenesis.It is intended not only for researchers in the field of entomology, parasitology, ontogeny, reproductive biology, developmental biology, sociobiology, and evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo), but also for postgraduate students in these fields.

Why life?' Questions of this type were for a long time the prerogative of philosophers who left the how' question to scientists. Nowadays, Darwin's successors no longer have any qualms about addressing the why' as well as the how'. Over a century ago, Darwin modestly admitted having 'thrown some light on the origin of species - this mystery of mysteries'. Two major advances in the following decades helped biologists answer many of the questions he left unsolved. The first was the discovery of the laws of heredity, the second that of DNA. Both provided Darwinian theory with the foundations that were lacking and led to the all-embracing neo-Darwinian synthesis. Since then, Theodosius Dobzhansky's aphorism nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution' has proven true more than once. This does not suit everyone, as evolutionist ideas have not lost their power to cause a scandal.

Darwin toppled man from his pedestal. Evolutionary genetics - the subject of this book - sends the individual crashing. Considered until recently to be the target of selection and the focus of evolution, the individual has been usurped by the gene. The individual is nothing but the gene's avatar.

An adamant fan of Darwin, F.W. Headley attempts to argue the difficulties of believing in Socialism and Darwinism simultaneously and highlights issues which could prevent Socialism from being put into practice. Originally published in 1909, this study uses examples of communities in countries such as England and India to illustrate Headley's key belief that societies only function well if they do not interfere with the fight for existence and natural selection. This title will be of interest to students of Philosophy, Sociology and Anthropology.

You can hardly open a paper or read an academic journal without some attempt to explain an aspect of human behaviour or experience by reference to neuroscience, biological or evolutionary processes. This 'biologising' has had rather a free ride until now, being generally accepted by the public at large. However, there is a growing number of scholars who are challenging the assumption that we are little more than our bodies and animal origins. This volume brings together a review of these emerging critiques expressed by an international range of senior academics from across the social sciences. Their arguments are firmly based in the empirical, scientific tradition. They show the lack of logic or evidence for many 'biologising' claims, as well as the damaging effects these biological assumptions can have on issues such as dealing with dyslexia or treating alcoholism. This important book, originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Social Science, contributes to a crucial debate on what it means to be human. "This collection of articles by David Canter and his colleagues, rigorously argued and richly informative [...] are of immense importance. It is astonishing that, as Canter puts it in his brilliant overview of biologising trends [...] there are those in the humanities who need to be reminded "that human beings can talk and interact with each other, generating cultures and societies that have an existence that cannot be reduced to their mere mechanical parts". Professor Raymond Tallis FRCP FMedSci DLitt LittD in the Preface.

Since 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.

The cerebellum is an intriguing component of the brain. In humans it occupies only 10% of the brain volume, yet has approximately 69 billion neurons; that is 80% of the nerve cells in the brain. The cerebellum first arose in jawed vertebrates such as sharks, and early vertebrates also have an additional cerebellum-like structure in the hindbrain. Shark cerebellum-like structures function as adaptive filters to discriminate 'self' from 'other' in sensory inputs. It is likely that the true cerebellum evolved from these cerebellum-like precursors, and that their adaptive filter functionality was adopted for motor control; paving the way for the athleticism and movement finesse that we see in swimming, running, climbing and flying vertebrates. This book uses an evolutionary perspective to open up the exciting body of work that is cerebellar research to a wide audience. Understanding the brain is of interest to many people, from many different backgrounds, and for many different reasons. Therefore, understanding cerebellum is a significant step towards the wider challenge of understanding the brain. This book will be of interest to neuroscientists, neurologists and psychologists, in addition to computer scientists, and engineers concerned with machine/human interactions and robotics.

'Packed with fresh and clear insights that will change the way you think about the world' Uri Gneezy 'One of those books that you pick up and then can't put down' Steve Stewart-Williams 'This is a book I will come back to again and again' Nichola Raihani How game theory - the ultimate theory of rationality - explains irrational behaviour. In Hidden Games, MIT economists Moshe Hoffman and Erez Yoeli find a surprising middle ground between the hyperrationality of classical economics and the hyper-irrationality of behavioural economics. They call it hidden games. Reviving game theory, Hoffman and Yoeli use it to explain our most puzzling behaviour, from the mechanics of Stockholm syndrome and internalised misogyny to why we help strangers and have a sense of fairness. Fun and powerfully insightful, Hidden Games is an eye-opening argument for using game theory to explain all the irrational things we think, feel, and do and will change how you think forever.

Darwin famously proposed that sexual competition and courtship is (or at least was) the driving force of "art" production not only in animals, but also in humans. The present book is the first to reveal that Darwin's hypothesis, rather than amounting to a full-blown antidote to the humanist tradition, is actually strongly informed both by classical rhetoric and by English and German philosophical aesthetics, thereby Darwin's theory far richer and more interesting for the understanding of poetry and song.The book also discusses how the three most discussed hypothetical functions of the human arts--competition for attention and (loving) acceptance, social cooperation, and self-enhancement--are not mutually exclusive, but can well be conceived of as different aspects of the same processes of producing and responding to the arts. Finally, reviewing the current state of archeological findings, the book advocates a new hypothesis on the multiple origins of the human arts, posing that they arose as new variants of human behavior, when three ancient and largely independent adaptions--sensory and sexual selection-driven biases regarding visual and auditory beauty, play behavior, and technology--joined forces with, and were transformed by, the human capacities for symbolic cognition and language.

When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the -Cambrian explosion, - many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life--a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found, but because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal. During the last half century, biologists have come to appreciate the central importance of biological information--stored in DNA and elsewhere in cells--to building animal forms.Expanding on the compelling case he presented in his last book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer argues that the origin of this information, as well as other mysterious features of the Cambrian event, are best explained by intelligent design, rather than purely undirected evolutionary processes.

Ten years ago, Darwin's Black Box launched the Intelligent Design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. Today the movement is stronger than ever, and the book is a classic and an international bestseller. At last, Michael Behe has updated the book with a major new afterword on the state of the debate. The Intelligent Design movement was born when a handful of scientists realized that nature exhibits characteristics that could not have evolved by random mutation. Prominent among them was Michael Behe, a microbiologist working in a field that Darwin could not even have imagined existing. Microbiology has discovered staggering complexity at the cellular level of life and during his research Behe made a stunning discovery: Some parts of life are irreducibly complex. They cannot function without all of their parts. Yet step-by-step genetic mutations would never produce all of those parts together at once. Some parts of the biological world must have been designed. From one end of the spectrum to the other, DARWIN'S BLACK BOX has established itself as the key text in the intelligent design movement, the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it, or not.

A portable and pocket-sized guide to foundational bioscience and biomedical science laboratory skills The newly revised Second Edition of Basic Bioscience Laboratory Techniques: A Pocket Guide delivers a foundational and intuitive pocket reference text that contains essential information necessary to prepare reagents, perform fundamental laboratory techniques, and analyze and interpret data. This latest edition brings new updates to health and safety considerations, points of good practice, and explains the basics of molecular work in the lab. Perfect for first year undergraduate students expected to possess or develop practical laboratory skills, this reference is intended to be accessed quickly and regularly and inform the reader's lab techniques and methods. It assumes no prior practical knowledge and offers additional material that can be found online. The book also includes: A thorough introduction to the preparation of solutions in bioscience research Comprehensive explorations of microscopy and spectrophotometry and data presentation Practical discussions of the extraction and clarification of biological material, as well as electrophoresis of proteins and nucleic acids In-depth examinations of chromatography, immunoassays, and cell culture techniques Basic Bioscience Laboratory Techniques: A Pocket Guide is an indispensable reference for first year students at the BSc level, as well as year one HND/Foundation degree students. It's also a must-read resource for international masters' students with limited laboratory experience. In addition, it is a valuable aide-memoire to UG and PG students during their laboratory project module.

In a stirring exploration of human nature recalling his foundational work Consilience, Edward O. Wilson offers a "luminous" (Kirkus Reviews) reflection on the humanities and their integral relationship to science. Both endeavors, Wilson argues, have their roots in human creativity-the defining trait of our species. By studying fields as diverse as paleontology, evolution, and neurobiology, Wilson demonstrates that creative expression began not 10,000 years ago, as we have long assumed, but more than 100,000 years ago in the Paleolithic Age. A provocative investigation into what it means to be human, The Origins of Creativity reveals how the humanities have played an unexamined role in defining our species. With the eloquence, optimism, and pioneering inquiry we have come to expect from our leading biologist, Wilson proposes a transformational "Third Enlightenment" in which the blending of science and humanities will enable a deeper understanding of our human condition, and how it ultimately originated.

This book approaches two behavioral domains involved with human nature and actions related to dominance, an ancient animal, survival-linked, behavioral drive anchored in basal neural brain circuits. These domains result in latent or manifest conflicts among components of human animal nature and cultural profiles. The first domain refers to evolutive animal behavioral inertias that affect the basic construction of our brain/mind and social behavioral spectrum, underneath cultural and political enclosures. The second domain is considered a consequence of the previous one and involves the concept that the basic animal behavioral drive of dominance interferes with the expression of a truly human, cooperative social construction, and fosters conflicts (based on profit or comparative advantage). This drive tints or conditions our behavior in all its expressions (parochial, social, political, financial, religious, cognitive development). It also fosters social detachment of elite minorities -financially powerful and drivers of human evolutionary trends- from general concerns and collective needs of legions of subdued populations. Additionally, the latter promotes Star Wars factual chimeras and expanding dominance/prevalence and power grip beyond earthbound objectives that promote spatial exploration and scientific objectives. The quest for knowledge is embedded in our behavioral construction but employed by opportunistic - political - strategies that seek dominance/prevalence. Basic, ancestral, animal drives, here focused on dominance, lie underneath our sociocultural expressions, and feed construction of survival, ideology, class prejudices, submissiveness, cooperativity, and technological development. On top of this basic drive, humans have construed additional relational levels (whether of cognitive or emotional nature) expressed as cultural constructions that provide means to attempt to approach a socially acceptable format and public support. Whenever these processes collide or collapse, individual and collective standings tend to generate social changes or individual or collective pathologies. This book should be an exciting read for all those enthusiasts of the human mind, behavior, and cultural evolution ranging from fields such as neuroscience and biology to political sciences and anthropology. Given the breadth of studies as well as the clear language used by the author, students will find this book as a resourceful material for the undergraduate and graduate studies.

Darwin's Footprint examines the impact of Darwinism in Greece, investigating how it has shaped Greece in terms of its cultural and intellectual history, and in particular its literature. The book demonstrates that in the late 19th to early 20th centuries Darwinism and associated science strongly influenced celebrated Greek literary writers and other influential intellectuals, which fueled debate in various areas such as 'man's place in nature', eugenics, the nature-nurture controversy, religion, as well as class, race and gender. In addition, the study reveals that many of these individuals were also considering alternative approaches to these issues based on Darwinian and associated biological post-Darwinian ideas. Their concerns included the Greek "race" or nation, its culture, language and identity; also politics and gender equality. Zarimis's monograph devotes considerable space to Xenopoulos (1867-1951), notable novelist, journalist and playwright.