An authoritative introduction to the latest comparative methods in evolutionary biology Phylogenetic comparative methods are a suite of statistical approaches that enable biologists to analyze and better understand the evolutionary tree of life, and shed vital new light on patterns of divergence and common ancestry among all species on Earth. This textbook shows how to carry out phylogenetic comparative analyses in the R statistical computing environment. Liam Revell and Luke Harmon provide an incisive conceptual overview of each method along with worked examples using real data and challenge problems that encourage students to learn by doing. By working through this book, students will gain a solid foundation in these methods and develop the skills they need to interpret patterns in the tree of life. Covers every major method of modern phylogenetic comparative analysis in R Explains the basics of R and discusses topics such as trait evolution, diversification, trait-dependent diversification, biogeography, and visualization Features a wealth of exercises and challenge problems Serves as an invaluable resource for students and researchers, with applications in ecology, evolution, anthropology, disease transmission, conservation biology, and a host of other areas Written by two of today's leading developers of phylogenetic comparative methods

How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other explanations with which they are more comfortable. In the book Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book explores the many fascinating inquiries being pursued that put the science of evolution to work in preventing and treating human disease, developing new agricultural products, and fostering industrial innovations. The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes. Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith. For educators, students, teachers, community leaders, legislators, policy makers, and parents who seek to understand the basis of evolutionary science, this publication will be an essential resource. Table of Contents Front Matter 1 Evolution and the Nature of Science 2 The Evidence for Biological Evolution 3 Creationist Perspectives 4 Conclusion Frequently Asked Questions Additional Readings Committee Member Biographies Staff and Consultant Biographies Index Photo and Illustration Credits

The forgotten garden that inspired Charles Darwin becomes the modern-day setting for an exploration of memory, family, and the legacy of genius. Darwin's childhood garden at The Mount in Shrewsbury was the site of some of the great scientist's earliest experiments. It was where, under the tutelage of his green-fingered mother and sisters, and the house's knowledgeable gardeners, he first examined the reproductive life of flowers, collected birds' eggs, and began to note down the ideas that would lead to his groundbreaking theory of evolution. In The Ghost in the Garden, Jude Piesse uncovers the lost histories that inspired Darwin's work and how his legacy, and the legacies of those around him, live on today.

The cognitive abilities of birds are remarkable: hummingbirds integrate spatial and temporal information about food sources, day-old chicks have a sense of numbers, parrots can make and use tools, and ravens have sophisticated insights in social relationships. This volume describes the full range of avian cognitive abilities, the mechanisms behind such abilities and how they relate to the ecology of the species. Synthesising the latest research in avian cognition, a range of experts in the field provide first-hand insights into experimental procedures, outcomes and theoretical advances, including a discussion of how the findings in birds relate to the cognitive abilities of other species, including humans. The authors cover a range of topics such as spatial cognition, social learning, tool use, perceptual categorization and concept learning, providing the broader context for students and researchers interested in the current state of avian cognition research, its key questions and appropriate experimental approaches.

Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path -- and how we are united by our common humanity. For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions - our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations - we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society. In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples -- including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own - Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness. In a world of increasing political and economic polarisation, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilisation, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped and are still shaping, our genes today.

"Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton who has become the spokeswoman for human evolution. She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged.""-"From "Lucy's Legacy
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In his "New York Times" bestseller, "Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, " renowned paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson told the incredible story of his discovery of a partial female skeleton that revolutionized the study of human origins. Lucy literally changed our understanding of our world and who we come from. Since that dramatic find in 1974, there has been heated debate and-most important-more groundbreaking discoveries that have further transformed our understanding of when and how humans evolved.
In "Lucy's Legacy," Johanson takes readers on a fascinating tour of the last three decades of study-the most exciting period of paleoanthropologic investigation thus far. In that time, Johanson and his colleagues have uncovered a total of 363 specimens of Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy's species, a transitional creature between apes and humans), spanning 400,000 years. As a result, we now have a unique fossil record of one branch of our family tree-that family being humanity-a tree that is believed to date back a staggering 7 million years.
Focusing on dramatic new fossil finds and breakthrough advances in DNA research, Johanson provides the latest answers that post-Lucy paleoanthropologists are finding to questions such as: How did Homo sapiens evolve? When and where did our species originate? What separates hominids from the apes? What was the nature of Neandertal and modern human encounters? What mysteries about human evolution remain to be solved?
Donald Johanson is a passionate guide on an extraordinary journey from the ancient landscape of Hadar, Ethiopia-where Lucy was unearthed and where many other exciting fossil discoveries have since been made-to a seaside cave in South Africa that once sheltered early members of our own species, and many other significant sites. Thirty-five years after Lucy, Johanson continues to enthusiastically probe the origins of our species and what it means to be human.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Bone is ubiquitous and versatile, and uniquely repairs itself without scarring. However, we rarely see bone in its living state-and even then, mostly in two-tone images that only hint at its marvels. After it serves and protects vertebrate lives, bone reveals itself in surprising ways, sometimes hundreds of millions of years later. In Bones, orthopaedic surgeon Roy Meals explores and extols this amazing material that both supports and records vertebrate life. He demystifies the biological makeup of bones; how they grow, break and heal; and how medical innovations-from the first X-rays to advanced surgical techniques-enhance our lives. With enthusiasm and humour, Meals also reveals the enduring presence of bone outside the body-as fossils, ossuaries, tools, musical instruments-and celebrates allusions to bone in history, religion and idiom. Approachable and entertaining, Bones richly illuminates our bodies' essential framework.

Current knowledge of the genetic, epigenetic, behavioural and symbolic systems of inheritance requires a revision and extension of the mid-twentieth-century, gene-based, 'Modern Synthesis' version of Darwinian evolutionary theory. We present the case for this by first outlining the history that led to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution. In the second section we describe and compare different types of inheritance, and in the third discuss the implications of a broad view of heredity for various aspects of evolutionary theory. We end with an examination of the philosophical and conceptual ramifications of evolutionary thinking that incorporates multiple inheritance systems.

The Development of an Extraordinary Species

We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet -- having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art -- while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . and the means to irrevocably destroy it.

The flock of greylag geese established by Konrad Lorenz in Austria in 1973 has become an influential model animal system and one of the few worldwide with complete life-history data spanning several decades. Based on the unique records of nearly 1000 free-living greylag geese, this is a synthesis of more than twenty years of behavioural research. It provides a comprehensive overview of a complex bird society, placing it in an evolutionary framework and drawing on a range of approaches, including behavioural (personality, aggression, pair bonding and clan formation), physiological, cognitive and genetic. With contributions from leading researchers, the chapters provide valuable insight into historic and recent research on the social behaviour of geese. All aspects of goose and bird sociality are discussed in the context of parallels with mammalian social organisation, making this a fascinating resource for anyone interested in integrative approaches to vertebrate social systems.

Reproduction is a fundamental feature of life, it is the way life persists across the ages. This book offers new, wider vistas on this fundamental biological phenomenon, exploring how it works through the whole tree of life. It explores facets such as asexual reproduction, parthenogenesis, sex determination and reproductive investment, with a taxonomic coverage extended over all the main groups - animals, plants including 'algae', fungi, protists and bacteria. It collates into one volume perspectives from varied disciplines - including zoology, botany, microbiology, genetics, cell biology, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, animal and plant physiology, and ethology - integrating information into a common language. Crucially, the book aims to identify the commonalties among reproductive phenomena, while demonstrating the diversity even amongst closely related taxa. Its integrated approach makes this a valuable reference book for students and researchers, as well as an effective entry point for deeper study on specific topics.

Humans are complex social beings. To understand human behaviour, an integrated perspective is required - one which considers both what we regularly do (our personality traits) and what motivates us (our values). Personality, Values, Culture uses an evolutionary perspective to look at the similarities and differences in personality and values across modern societies. Integrating research on personality and human values into a functional framework that highlights their underlying compatibilities (driven by shared genetic and brain mechanisms), Fischer describes how personality is shaped by the complex interplay between genes and the environment, both over the course of human evolution and within the lifespan of individuals. He proposes a gene-culture coevolution model of personality and values to explain how and why people differ around the world and how genes, economics, social conditions, and climate jointly shape personality.

The rapidly increasing human pressure on the biosphere is pushing biodiversity into the sixth mass extinction event in the history of life on Earth. The organisms being exterminated are integral working parts of our planet's life support system, and their loss is permanent. Like climate change, this irreversible loss has potentially devastating consequences for humanity. As we come to recognise the many ways in which we depend on nature, this can pave the way for a new ethic that acknowledges the importance of co-existence between humans and other species. Biological Extinction features chapters contributed by leading thinkers in diverse fields of knowledge and practice, including biology, economics, geology, archaeology, demography, architecture and intermediate technology. Drawing on examples from various socio-ecological systems, the book offers new perspectives on the urgent issue of biological extinction, proposing novel solutions to the problems that we face.

The principles of game theory apply to a wide range of topics in biology. This book presents the central concepts in evolutionary game theory and provides an authoritative and up-to-date account. The focus is on concepts that are important for biologists in their attempts to explain observations. This strong connection between concepts and applications is a recurrent theme throughout the book which incorporates recent and traditional ideas from animal psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning that provide a mechanistic basis for behaviours shown by players of a game. The approaches taken to modelling games often rest on idealized and unrealistic assumptions whose limitations and consequences are not always appreciated. The authors provide a novel reassessment of the field, highlighting how to overcome limitations and identifying future directions. Game Theory in Biology is an advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers (both empiricists and theoreticians) in the fields of behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. It will also be of relevance to a broader interdisciplinary audience including psychologists and neuroscientists.

Goodenough couples lucid and concise descriptions of the workings of nature with spiritual reflections that are non-denominational and non-theistic but deeply respectful of traditional religions and written in their idiom. She unites timeless spiritual sensibilities with our present-day understanding of genes, cells, brains, sex, and biological evolution.

Everything mammals ever wanted to know about the theory of evolution-but were afraid to ask
This important new book by award-winning science writer Cynthia Mills clearly explains one of the most crucial, and most misunderstood, concepts of modern science-the theory of evolution. After examining Darwin, his precursors, and how the theory of evolution developed, Mills answers key questions, including: How successful is the theory at explaining the natural world, and what does it fail to explain? What are some of the competing ideas and theories about the origin of the species? How will the theory of evolution likely hold up over time, as our understanding of genetics grows?
Cynthia L. Mills (Portland, OR) is an award-winning science writer and veterinarian. Her article ""Breeding and Discontents,"" originally published in The Sciences, was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2001, guest-edited by E. O. Wilson. Also in the same series: The Big Bang Theory (0-471-39452-1) by Karen C. Fox

Oceanic islands are storehouses for unique creatures. Zoologists have long been fascinated by island animals because they break all the rules. Speedy, nervous, little birds repeatedly evolve to become plump, tame and flightless on islands. Equally strange and wonderful plants have evolved on islands. However, plants are very poorly understood relative to animals. Do plants repeatedly evolve similar patterns in dispersal ability, size and defence on islands? This volume answers this question for the first time using a modern quantitative approach. It not only reviews the literature on differences in defence, loss of dispersal, changes in size, alterations to breeding systems and the loss of fire adaptations, but also brings new data into focus to fill gaps in current understanding. By firmly establishing what is currently known about repeated patterns in the evolution of island plants, this book provides a roadmap for future research.

Chronic diseases have rapidly become the leading global cause of morbidity and mortality, yet there is poor understanding of this transition, or why particular social and ethnic groups are especially susceptible. In this book, Wells adopts a multidisciplinary approach to human nutrition, emphasising how power relations shape the physiological pathways to obesity, diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Part I reviews the physiological basis of chronic diseases, presenting a 'capacity-load' model that integrates the nutritional contributions of developmental experience and adult lifestyle. Part II presents an evolutionary perspective on the sensitivity of human metabolism to ecological stresses, highlighting how social hierarchy impacts metabolism on an intergenerational timescale. Part III reviews how nutrition has changed over time, as societies evolved and coalesced towards a single global economic system. Part IV integrates these physiological, evolutionary and politico-economic perspectives in a unifying framework, to deepen our understanding of the societal basis of metabolic ill-health.

This book considers evolution at different scales: sequences, genes, gene families, organelles, genomes and species. The focus is on the mathematical and computational tools and concepts, which form an essential basis of evolutionary studies, indicate their limitations, and give them orientation. Recent years have witnessed rapid progress in the mathematics of evolution and phylogeny, with models and methods becoming more realistic, powerful, and complex. Aimed at graduates and researchers in phylogenetics, mathematicians, computer scientists and biologists, and including chapters by leading scientists: A. Bergeron, D. Bertrand, D. Bryant, R. Desper, O. Elemento, N. El-Mabrouk, N. Galtier, O. Gascuel, M. Hendy, S. Holmes, K. Huber, A. Meade, J. Mixtacki, B. Moret, E. Mossel, V. Moulton, M. Pagel, M.-A. Poursat, D. Sankoff, M. Steel, J. Stoye, J. Tang, L.-S. Wang, T. Warnow, Z. Yang, this book of contributed chapters explains the basis and covers the recent results in this highly topical area.

Evolution: The Whole Story contains everything you need to know about the development and survival of life on Earth. Each chapter of this accessible and lavishly illustrated book takes a major living group and presents thematic essays discussing the evolution of particular subgroups as they appeared on Earth with reference to detailed comparative anatomy, evolutionary legacies, and the breakthrough theories of eminent scientists. Accompanying the essays are amazing photographic features that investigate the characteristics of individual organisms in detail: in some, remarkable fossils, assembled skeletons, and lifelike reconstructions are presented and analyzed; while in others, living species are depicted and compared in detail to their direct ancestors, creatures that may have lived millions of years ago.

'A new approach to mental disorder. Randolph Nesse's insightful book suggests that conditions such as anxiety and depression have a clear evolutionary purpose ... This intriguing book turns some age-old questions about the human condition upside down' Tim Adams, Observer One of the world's most respected psychiatrists provides a much-needed new evolutionary framework for making sense of mental illness With his classic book Why We Get Sick, Randolph Nesse established the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us with fragile minds at all. Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations, yet can become excessive. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low mood prevents us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but it often escalates into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the mismatch between modern environments and our ancient human past. Taken together, these insights and many more help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering, and show us new paths for relieving it. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings will fascinate anyone who wonders how our minds can be so powerful, yet so fragile, and how love and goodness came to exist in organisms shaped to maximize Darwinian fitness.

The Indispensable Excess of the Aesthetic: Evolution of Sensibility in Nature traces the evolution of sensibility from the most primal indications detectable at the level of cellular receptors and plant tendril sensitivity, animal creativity and play to cultural ramifications. Taking on Darwin's insistence against Wallace that animals do have a sense of beauty, and on recent evolutionary observations, this book compellingly argues that sensibility is a biological faculty that emerges together with life. It argues that there is appreciation and discernment of quality, order, and meaning by organisms in various species determined by their morphological adaptations and environmental conditions. Drawing upon Baumgarten's foundational definition of aesthetics as scientia cognitionis sensitivae, this book proposes a non-anthropocentric approach to aesthetics as well as the use of empirical evidence to sustain its claims updating aesthetic understanding with contemporary biosemiotic and evolutionary theory. The text leads us along three distinct but entwined areas: from the world of matter to that of living matter to the realm of cultivated living matter for exploring how and why sensibility could have evolved. It points out that aspects traditionally used to demarcate and characterize human aesthetics-such as appreciation of symmetry, proportion and color, as well as pleasure, valuation and empathy, sensory seduction, creativity, and skills for representation, even fiction-are present not only in humans but among a variety of plant and animal species.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was a monumental achievement, but there was much he did not know. In his ‘survival of the fittest’ model each step must go forward, life always progressing up the slope towards an evolutionary peak. There is no turning back. So what happens when there is more than one slope, and life finds itself on the wrong one? World-leading biologist Andreas Wagner reveals that life does not, as Darwin believed, only walk – it also leaps.

Drawing on pioneering research, Wagner explores life’s creative process and how, with all the stops and starts, and knowing that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, it bears a striking resemblance to how we humans work. A beguiling symmetry links Picasso struggling through forty versions of Guernica and the way evolution transformed a dinosaur’s claw into a condor’s wing. This new understanding is already revolutionising our approach to problem-solving across the sciences. In the near future, applied in spheres as diverse as the economy and education, it will enable us to do so much more. Thought-provoking and deeply hopeful, Life Finds a Way reminds us that no matter how many times we have to turn back, we can still reach the highest peaks.