This volume presents a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in symbiosis research. It covers molecular, organellar, cellular, immunologic, genetic and evolutionary aspects of symbiotic interactions in humans and other model systems. The book also highlights new approaches to interdisciplinary research and therapeutic applications. Symbiosis refers to any mutually beneficial interaction between different organisms. The symbiotic origin of cellular organelles and the exchange of genetic material between hosts and their bacterial and viral symbionts have helped shaped the current diversity of life. Recently, symbiosis has gained a new level of recognition, due to the realization that all organisms function as a holobiome and that any kind of interference with the hosts influences their symbionts and vice versa, and can have profound consequences for the survival of both. For example, in humans, the microbiome, i.e., the entirety of all the microorganisms living in association with the intestines, oral cavity, urogenital system and skin, is partially inherited during pregnancy and influences the maturation and functioning of the human immune system, protects against pathogens and regulates metabolism. Symbionts also regulate cancer development, wound healing, tissue regeneration and stem cell function. The medical applications of this new realization are vast and largely uncharted. The composition and robustness of human symbionts could make them a valuable diagnostic tool for predicting impending diseases, and the manipulation of symbionts could yield new strategies for the treatment of incurable diseases.

Upon publication, Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species excited much debate and controversy, challenging the foundations of Christianity, nonetheless underpinning the Victorian concept of progress. It still evokes powerful and contradictory responses today. Peter Bowler's study of Darwin's life, first published in 1990, combines biography and cultural history. Emphasizing in particular the impact of Darwin's work, he shows how Darwin's contemporaries were unable to appreciate precisely those aspects of his thinking that are considered scientifically important today. He also demonstrates that Darwin was a product of his time, but he also transcended it by creating an idea capable of being exploited by twentieth-century scientists and intellectuals who had very different values from his own.

Philosophy in Reality offers a new vision of the relation between science and philosophy in the framework of a non-propositional logic of real processes, grounded in the physics of the real world. This logical system is based on the work of the Franco-Romanian thinker Stephane Lupasco (1900-1988), previously presented by Joseph Brenner in the book Logic in Reality (Springer, 2008). The present book was inspired in part by the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (I Ching) and its scientific-philosophical discussion of change. The emphasis in Philosophy in Reality is on the recovery of dialectics and semantics from reductionist applications and their incorporation into a new synthetic paradigm for knowledge. Through an original re-interpretation of both classical and modern Western thought, this book addresses philosophical issues in scientific fields as well as long-standing conceptual problems such as the origin, nature and role of meaning, the unity of knowledge and the origin of morality. In a rigorous transdisciplinary manner, it discusses foundational and current issues in the physical sciences - mathematics, information, communication and systems theory and their implications for philosophy. The same framework is applied to problems of the origins of society, the transformation of reality by human subjects, and the emergence of a global, sustainable information society. In summary, Philosophy in Reality provides a wealth of new perspectives and references, supporting research by both philosophers and physical and social scientists concerned with the many facets of reality.

All humans share three origins: the beginning of our individual lives, the appearance of life on Earth, and the formation of our planetary home. Life through Time and Space brings together the latest discoveries in both biology and astronomy to examine our deepest questions about where we came from, where we are going, and whether we are alone in the cosmos. A distinctive voice in the growing field of astrobiology, Wallace Arthur combines embryological, evolutionary, and cosmological perspectives to tell the story of life on Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere in the universe. He guides us on a journey through the myriad events that started with the big bang and led to the universe we inhabit today. Along the way, readers learn about the evolution of life from a primordial soup of organic molecules to complex plants and animals, about Earth's geological transformation from barren rock to diverse ecosystems, and about human development from embryo to infant to adult. Arthur looks closely at the history of mass extinctions and the prospects for humanity's future on our precious planet. Do intelligent aliens exist on a distant planet in the Milky Way, sharing the three origins that characterize all life on Earth? In addressing this question, Life through Time and Space tackles the many riddles of our place and fate in the universe that have intrigued human beings since they first gazed in wonder at the nighttime sky.

The discovery in the 1920s of a huge cache of fossils in the Gobi Desert fuelled a mania for dinosaurs that continues to the present. But the original goal of the expedition was to search for the origins of man. Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935), director of the American Museum of Natural History, stood at the forefront of the debate over human evolution and the expedition aimed to prove his theory of human origins. Osborn rejected the idea of primate ancestry and constructed a non-Darwinian theory that the evolution of man was the long adventurous story of individuals and groups exerting personal will-power and inborn characteristics to achieve both biological and spiritual success. It is an idea that still echoes today. Study of Osborn's thinking, however, has been obscured by the perception that racism influenced his theories. Brian Regal paints a different and more textured picture in this book - he shows that Osborn's views on race, like his political ideas, were motivated by his science, itself grounded in religious doctrine. His belief in the Central Asian origins of man, his role as an activist for eugenic reform and immigration controls, his support for Nordicism, his place in the 'New' versus 'Old' biology debate, his role in the Christian Fundamentalist controversy, the Scopes Monkey trial, and finally his construction of the 'Dawn Man' hypothesis - all stemmed from his desire to support his human evolution theory, and point the way to salvation. This biography charts Osborn's intellectual development, from its roots in the eclectic Christianity of his mother, through his student days with Arnold Guyot, James McCosh, and T.H. Huxley, to his mature work at the American Museum. It examines his trials and tribulations, friendships and conflicts, and the world in which he lived: all contributed to the construction of his theory. It is the dramatic story of a man holding onto ideas that for him represented the very meaning of life itself.

Here is a book for everyone who has an interest in how our planet works, what has happened during its 4,550 million year history and what might happen in the future. It tells how Earth scientists study the pattern of events that have shaped the planet and guided the evolution of life on Earth. In clear and simple language it describes how the effects of these events are measured and the careful detective work needed to unravel the extraordinary complexity of Earth history. The latest advances in dating methods, including the detection of regular patterns of global climate change, are explained and illustrated with real case histories. Our environment is unexpectedly unstable.
Dramatic and catastrophic changes in the environment have directed the evolution of life and the rise of Man, and we can expect similar events in the future. If we are to control their effects, we will have to understand what to expect - and what could happen if we try to intervene in the 'natural' development of our home, the Earth.

This book includes 16 selected contributions presented at the 23rd Evolutionary Biology Meeting, which took place in Marseille in September 2019. The annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseille serve to gather leading evolutionary biologists and other scientists using evolutionary biology concepts, e.g. for medical research. The aim of these meetings is to promote the exchange of ideas to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. Offering an up-to-date overview of recent findings in the field of evolutionary biology, this book is an invaluable source of information for scientists, teachers and advanced students.

Exploring Genome's Junkyard: In the Labyrinth of Evolution narrates the progress of biological evolution, beginning with the conceptual introspection of gene and continuing with the contemporary understanding of the structural and function aspects of the human genome. Recent advances in human genome research have led scientists to the term "biological dark matter," which refers to genetic material whose functionalities are not yet properly understood. Such "dark matter" has been recognized as non-coding, or "junk DNA," and non-coding RNA, which was thought to be devoid of protein encrypting potential but contained 98-99% of the human genome. The mysteries of missing genes from its "Dark DNA" region are a hotbed of recurrent mutations. Hence, the presence of "missing genes" in evolutionary sibling species has indicated that the "missing genes" are not really missing but rather hidden in the mutational hotbeds of "Dark DNA" where they have steered the continuation of life's evolutionary journey.

Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam discusses theoretical ideas, interpretations, and paleontological evidence to narrate the origin and evolutionary story of Sapiens through the transitional stages of archaic human species involved in the evolutionary pilgrimage, from the great apes and to modern humans. Author Subir Ranjan Kundu investigates the DNA footprints of primates - great apes, archaic humans, and anatomically modern human beings - to stretch out the missing links between evolutionary milestones to define and redefine the progress of life. The origin and evolution of Humans have always remained a source of debate between the creationists and evolutionists, in terms of recognizing the results of such researches on biological evolution and its credible interpretation of the evolutionists who upheld the origin and evolution of "Sapiens" resulting from great apes in course of the gradual evolutionary progress of life. Kundu analyzes interpretations of molecular and evolutionary geneticists over the last four decades and presents detailed illustrations on the matrilineal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (represented by mitochondrial Eve as primordial mother), patrilineal inheritance of Y-chromosomal DNA (represented by Y-chromosomal Adam as primordial father). He also presents elaborate structural aspects of the human genome and molecular aspects of the DNA footprint of Sapiens. This book is addressed to heterogeneous readers, graduate, and post-graduate students, research scientists and the general public interested in the origins and biological evolution of humans in view of molecular phylogenetics.

The unique and diverse hair and eye colours often found in northern and eastern Europe are relatively new and have emerged over a short span of evolutionary time-less than ten thousand years. Why? How? This work explores the latest science to answer these puzzling questions.

The Tropics are home to the greatest biodiversity in the world, but tropical species are at risk due to anthropogenic activities, mainly land use change, habitat loss, invasive species, and pathogens. Over the past 20 years, the avian malaria and related parasites (Order: Haemosporida) systems have received increased attention in the tropical regions from a diverse array of research perspectives. However, to date no attempts have been made to synthesize the available information and to propose new lines of research. This book provides such a synthesis by not only focusing on the antagonistic interactions, but also by providing conceptual chapters on topics going from avian haemosporidians life cycles and study techniques, to chapters addressing current concepts on ecology and evolution. For example, a chapter synthesizing basic biogeography and ecological niche model concepts is presented, followed by one on the island biogeography of avian haemosporidians. Accordingly, researchers and professionals interested in these antagonistic interaction systems will find both an overview of the field with special emphasis on the tropics, and access to the necessary conceptual framework for various topics in ecology, evolution and systematics. Given its conceptual perspective, the book will appeal not only to readers interested in avian haemosporidians, but also to those more generally interested in the ecology, evolution and systematics of host-parasite interactions.

Darwin's nineteenth-century writings laid the foundations for modern studies of evolution, and theoretical developments in the mid-twentieth century fostered the Modern Synthesis. Since that time, a great deal of new biological knowledge has been generated, including details of the genetic code, lateral gene transfer, and developmental constraints. Our improved understanding of these and many other phenomena have been working their way into evolutionary theory, changing it and improving its correspondence with evolution in nature. And while the study of evolution is thriving both as a basic science to understand the world and in its applications in agriculture, medicine, and public health, the broad scope of evolution--operating across genes, whole organisms, clades, and ecosystems--presents a significant challenge for researchers seeking to integrate abundant new data and content into a general theory of evolution. This book gives us that framework and synthesis for the twenty-first century. The Theory of Evolution presents a series of chapters by experts seeking this integration by addressing the current state of affairs across numerous fields within evolutionary biology, ranging from biogeography to multilevel selection, speciation, and macroevolutionary theory. By presenting current syntheses of evolution's theoretical foundations and their growth in light of new datasets and analyses, this collection will enhance future research and understanding.

This book introduces the value of a Darwinian social evolutionary approach to understanding social change. The chapters discuss several different perspectives on social evolutionary theory, and go on to link these with comparative and historical sociological theory, and two case-studies. Kerr brings together social change theory and theories on nationalism, whilst also providing concrete examples of the theories at work. The book offers a vision of rapprochement between these different areas of theory and study, and to where this could lead future studies of comparative history and sociology. As such, it should be useful to scholars and students of nationalism and social change, sociologists, political scientist and historians.

Parasites and infectious diseases are everywhere and represent some of the most potent forces shaping the natural world. They affect almost every aspect imaginable in the life of their hosts, even as far as the structure of entire ecosystems. Hosts, in turn, have evolved complex defences, with immune systems being among the most sophisticated processes known in nature. In response, parasites have again found ways to manipulate and exploit their hosts. Ever since life began, hosts and parasites have taken part in this relentless co-evolutionary struggle with far-reaching consequences for us all. Today, concepts borrowed from evolution, ecology, parasitology, and immunology have formed a new synthesis for the study of host-parasite interactions. Evolutionary parasitology builds on these established fields of scientific enquiry but also includes some of the most successful inter-disciplinary areas of modern biology such as evolutionary epidemiology and ecological immunology. The first edition of this innovative text quickly became the standard reference text for this new discipline. Since then, the field has progressed rapidly and an update is now required. This new edition has been thoroughly revised to provide a state-of-the-art overview, from the molecular bases to adaptive strategies and their ecological and evolutionary consequences. It includes completely new material on topics such as microbiota, evolutionary genomics, phylodynamics, within-host evolution, epidemiology, disease spaces, and emergent diseases. Evolutionary Parasitology is suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate level students, and interdisciplinary researchers from a variety of fields including immunology, genetics, sexual selection, population ecology, behavioural ecology, epidemiology, and evolutionary biology. Those studying and working in adjacent fields such as conservation biology, virology, medicine, and public health will also find it an invaluable resource for connecting to the bases of their science.

Are we now entering a mass extinction event? What can mass extinctions in Earth's history tell us about the Anthropocene? What do mass extinction events look like and how does life on Earth recover from them? The fossil record reveals periods when biodiversity exploded, and short intervals when much of life was wiped out in mass extinction events. In comparison with these ancient events, today's biotic crisis hasn't (yet) reached the level of extinction to be called a mass extinction. But we are certainly in crisis, and current parallels with ancient mass extinction events are profound and deeply worrying. Humanity's actions are applying the same sorts of pressures - on similar scales - that in the past pushed the Earth system out of equilibrium and triggered mass extinction events. Analysis of the fossil record suggests that we still have some time to avert this disaster: but we must act now.

Civilization, Beyond Our Fall explores the realities behind the rise and fall of historic civilizational ideals, especially on the fate of the Western vision. The book begins with the rise, durability, and fall of the historic civilizational profiles of humankind. It continues with the decline of the West, which from our perspective began with World War I and has continued at a faster pace in the 21st century. Itzkoff's prognosis for the next century or two is one of a dismal world of chaos, war, and deep pessimism throughout the world. The book concludes with a prediction of a world of scientific rationalism that will discard the ideologies, irrationalism, and selfishness that now characterize our elites. Here we leave dystopian realities for the perennial human hope of reason and for highly creative communities.

"Fascinating and exhilarating-Sean B. Carroll at his very best."-Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things-any of which might never have occurred-had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.

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 traces the evolutionary trajectory of language and teaching from the earliest periods of human evolution to the present day. The author argues that teaching is unique to humans and our ancestors, and that the evolution of teaching, language, and culture are the inextricably linked results of gene-culture coevolutionary processes. Drawing on related fields including archaeology, palaeontology, cultural anthropology, evolutionary psychology and linguistics, he makes the case that the need for joint attention and shared goals in complex adaptive strategies is the underlying driver for the evolution of language-like communication. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of these disciplines, as well as lay readers with an interest in human origins.

The second edition of this widely cited textbook continues to provide a concise but comprehensive introduction to cave and subterranean biology, describing this fascinating habitat and its biodiversity. It covers a range of biological processes including ecosystem function, evolution and adaptation, community ecology, biogeography, and conservation. The authors draw on a global range of examples and case studies from both caves and non-cave subterranean habitats. One of the barriers to the study of subterranean biology has been the extraordinarily large number of specialized terms used by researchers; the authors explain these terms clearly and minimize the number that they use. This new edition retains the same 10 chapter structure of the original, but the content has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout to reflect the huge increase in publications concerning subterranean biology over the last decade.

Charles Darwin s "On the Origin of Species" is the most important and yet least read scientific work in the history of science. Now James T. Costa experienced field biologist, theorist on the evolution of insect sociality, and passionate advocate for teaching Darwin in a society in which a significant proportion of adults believe that life on earth has been created in its present form within the last 10,000 years has given a new voice to this epochal work. By leading readers line by line through the "Origin," Costa brings evolution s foundational text to life for a new generation. "The Annotated Origin" is the edition of Darwin s masterwork used in Costa s course at Western Carolina University and in Harvard s Darwin Summer Course at Oxford. A facsimile of the first edition of 1859 is accompanied by Costa s extensive marginal annotations, drawing on his extensive experience with Darwin s ideas in the field, lab, and classroom. This edition makes available an accessible, useful, and practical resource for anyone reading the "Origin" for the first time or for those who want to reread it with the insights and perspective that a working biologist can provide.

Astrobiology not only investigates how early life took hold of our planet but also life on other planets - both in our Solar System and beyond - and their potential for habitability. The book take readers from the scars on planetary surfaces made by space rocks to the history of the Solar System narrated by those space rocks as well as exoplanets in other planetary systems. But the true question is how life arose here or elsewhere. Modern comparative genomics has revealed that Darwin was correct; a set of highly conserved genes and cellular functions indicate that all life is related by common ancestry. The Last Universal Common Ancestor or LUCA sits at the base of the Tree of Life. However, once that life took hold, it started to diversify and form complex microbial communities that are known as microbial mats and stromatolites. Due to their long evolutionary history and abundance on modern Earth, research on the biological, chemical and geological processes of stromatolite formation has provided important insights into the field of astrobiology. Many of these microbialite-containing ecosystems have been used as models for astrobiology, and NASA mission analogs including Shark Bay, Pavilion and Kelly Lakes. Modern microbialites represent natural laboratories to study primordial ecosystems and provide proxies for how life could evolve on other planets. However, few viral metagenomic studies (i.e., viromes) have been conducted in microbialites, which are not only an important part of the community but also mirror its biodiversity. This book focuses on particularly interesting sites such as Andean lake microbialites, a proxy of early life since they are characterized by very high UV light, while Alchichica and Bacalar lakes are characterized by high-salt and oligotrophic waters that nurture stromatolites. However, it is only the oasis of Cuatro Cienegas Basin in Mexico that stored past life in its marine sediments of the Sierra de San Marcos. This particular Sierra has a magmatic pouch that moves the deep aquifer to the surface in a cycle of sun drenched life and back to the depths of the magmatic life in an ancient cycle that now is broken by the overexploitation of the surface water as well as the deep aquifer in order to irrigate alfalfa in the desert. The anthropocene, the era of human folly, is killing this unique time machine and with it the memory of the planet.

In Darwinian Heresies, which was originally published in 2004, prominent historians and philosophers of science trace the history of evolutionary thought, and challenge many of the assumptions that have built up over the years. Covering a wide range of issues starting in the eighteenth century, Darwinian Heresies brings us through the time of Charles Darwin and the Origin, and then through the twentieth century to the present. It is suggested that Darwin's true roots lie in Germany, not his native England, that Russian evolutionism is more significant than many are prepared to allow, and that the true influence on twentieth-century evolution biology was not Charles Darwin at all, but his often-despised contemporary, Herbert Spencer. The collection was intended to interest, to excite, to infuriate, and to stimulate further work.

This book presents an evolutionary biogeographic analysis of the Mexican Transition Zone, which is situated in the overlap of the Nearctic and Neotropical regions. It includes a comprehensive review of previous track, cladistic and molecular biogeographic analyses and is illustrated with full color maps and vegetation photographs of the respective areas covered. Given its scope, the book will be of interest to students and researchers whose work involves systematic and biogeographic analyses of plant and animal taxa of the Mexican Transition Zone or other transition zones of the world, and to ecologists working in biodiversity conservation, who will be able to appreciate the evolutionary relevance of the Mexican Transition Zone for establishing conservation areas..

It is widely acknowledged that life has adapted to its environment, but the precise mechanism remains unknown since Natural Selection, Descent with Modification and Survival of the Fittest are metaphors that cannot be scientifically tested. In this unique text, invertebrate and vertebrate biologists illuminate the effects of physiologic stress on epigenetic responses in the process of evolutionary adaptation from unicellular organisms to invertebrates and vertebrates, respectively. This book offers a novel perspective on the mechanisms underlying evolution. Capacities for morphologic alterations and epigenetic adaptations subject to environmental stresses are demonstrated in both unicellular and multicellular organisms. Furthermore, the underlying cellular-molecular mechanisms that mediate stress for adaptation will be elucidated wherever possible. These include examples of 'reverse evolution' by Professor Guex for Ammonites and for mammals by Professor Torday and Dr. Miller. This provides empiric evidence that the conventional way of thinking about evolution as unidirectional is incorrect, leaving open the possibility that it is determined by cell-cell interactions, not sexual selection and reproductive strategy. Rather, the process of evolution can be productively traced through the conservation of an identifiable set of First Principles of Physiology that began with the unicellular form and have been consistently maintained, as reflected by the return to the unicellular state over the course of the life cycle.