How is meaning in our bodies constructed? To what extent is meaning in bodies innate, evolved through biological adaptations? To what extent is meaning in bodies culturally constructed? Does it change when we adorn ourselves in dress? In Adorning Bodies, Marilynn Johnson draws on evolutionary theory and philosophy in order to think about art, beauty, and aesthetics. Considering meaning in bodies and bodily adornment, she explores how the ways we use our bodies are similar to — yet at other times different from — animals. Johnson engages with the work of evolutionary theorists, philosophers of language, and cultural theorists — Charles Darwin, H. P. Grice, and Roland Barthes respectively — to examine both natural and non-natural meanings. She addresses how both systems of meaning signify relevant information to other humans, with respect to both bodies and clothes. Johnson also demonstrates that how we dress could negatively influence the way our bodies can be read, and how some humans and animals use their bodies to deceive.

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 comprises 19 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.

Directed Evolution Library Creation: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition presents user-friendly protocols for both proven strategies and cutting-edge approaches for the creation of mutant gene libraries for directed evolution. As well as experimental methods, information on current computational approaches is provided in a user-friendly format that will allow researchers to make informed choices without needing to comprehend the full technical details of each algorithm. Directed evolution has become a fundamental approach for engineering proteins to enhance activity and explore structure-function relationships, and has supported the rapid development of the field of synthetic biology over the last decade. Divided into three convenient sections, topics include point mutagenesis strategies, recombinatorial methods wherein genetic diversity is sourced from multiple parental genes that are combined via either homology-dependent or -independent techniques and a variety of computational methods to guide the design and analysis of mutant libraries. Written in the successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols and notes on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and easily accessible, Directed Evolution Library Creation: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition will serve as a reliable manual for both novice and experienced protein engineers and synthetic biologists and will enable further technical innovation and the exploitation of directed evolution for a deeper understanding of protein design and function.

In recent years, progress in fish biology has advanced at an unprecedented rate and has led to many breakthroughs in the field. This book provides a wealth of information on the strategies that fish adopt with respect to waters with markedly different physical and chemical characteristics. It shows how their physiology, behaviour and lifestyles are adapted to exploit particular niches and gives comprehensive insight into fish life under extreme conditions. The readers are introduced to the ways in which fish exemplify many phenomena of general biological interest - the existence of competitors, chaos, and predator-prey interaction. Fish pathology as well as the components of the immune system are addressed. In this book, original and at times controversial views are presented, areas which have so far received inadequate attention are highlighted and avenues for further research are suggested.

This volume integrates the latest findings on earliest life forms, identified and characterised in some of the oldest rocks on Earth. New material from prominent researchers in the field is presented and evaluated in the context of previous work. Emphasis is placed on the integration of analytical methods with observational techniques and experimental simulations. The opening section focuses on submarine hot springs that the majority of researchers postulates served as the cradle of life on Earth. In subsequent sections, evidence for life in strongly metamorphosed rocks such as those in Greenland is evaluated and early ecosystems identified in the well preserved Barberton and Pilbara successions in Southern Africa and Western Australia. The final section includes a number of contributions from authors with alternate perspectives on the evidence and record of early life on Earth. Audience This volume will be valuable to researchers and graduate students in biogeosciences, geochemistry, paleontology and geology interested in the origin of life on earth.

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior highlights, through concise summaries, the most important discoveries and scientific revolutions in animal behavior. These are assessed for their relative impact on the field and their significance to the forward motion of the science of animal behavior. Eighty short essays capture the moment when a new concept emerged or a publication signaled a paradigm shift. How the new understanding came about is explained, and any continuing controversy or scientific conversation on the issue is highlighted. Behavior is a rich and varied field, drawing on genetics, evolution, physiology, and ecology to inform its principles, and this book embraces the wealth of knowledge that comes from the unification of these fields around the study of animals in motion. The chronological organization of the essays makes this an excellent overview of the history of animal behavior, ethology, and behavioral ecology. The work includes such topics as Darwin's role in shaping the study of animal behavior, the logic of animal contests, cognition, empathy in animals, and animal personalities. Succinct accounts of new revelations about behavior through scientific investigation and scrutiny reveal the fascinating story of this field. Similar to Dr. John Avise's Contemporary Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Genetics, the work is structured into vignettes that describe the conceptual revolution and assess the impact of the conceptual change, with a score, which ranges from 1-10, providing an assessment of the impact of the new findings on contemporary science.

Animals perform many athletic tasks to an amazing degree of accomplishment: not only spectacular feats of running and jumping but also routine actions that ensure survival such as feeding, vocalization, diving, flying, and many more. The study of performance capacity (defined as the ability of an animal to conduct a key task) is of great interest to both ecologists and evolutionary biologists. At an ecological level, how well individuals perform often dictates opportunities for reproduction, occupation of preferred territories, or capturing prey. Therefore, variation in performance capacities can be a key determinant of variation in fitness within animal populations. At an evolutionary level, variation in function often follows closely from variation in form, and therefore enables animals to invade novel habitats, or to overtake other species. This novel book examines how and why animal athletes have evolved. It uses examples from across the animal kingdom and integrates them in the broader context of ecology and evolution, thereby identifying common themes that transcend taxonomic divisions. Animal Athletes is an accessible textbook of particular relevance to undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and professionals in the fields of evolutionary biology, ecology, vertebrate morphology, and functional morphology, and will also appeal to the interested layperson.

Hopefully, this book will be taken off of the shelf frequently to be studied carefully over many years. More than 40 researchers were involved in this project, which examines respiration, circulation, and metabolism from ?sh to the land vertebrates, including human beings. A breathable and stable atmosphere ?rst appeared about 500 million years ago. Oxygen levels are not stable in aquatic environments and exclusively water-breathing ?sh must still cope with the ever-changing levels of O 2 and with large temperature changes. This is re?ected in their sophisticated count- current systems, with high O extraction and internal and external O receptors. 2 2 The conquest for the terrestrial environment took place in the late Devonian period (355-359 million years ago), and recent discoveries portray the gradual transitional evolution of land vertebrates. The oxygen-rich and relatively stable atmospheric conditionsimpliedthatoxygen-sensingmechanismswererelativelysimpleandl- gain compared with acid-base regulation. Recently, physiology has expanded into related ?elds such as biochemistry, molecular biology, morphology and anatomy. In the light of the work in these ?elds, the introduction of DNA-based cladograms, which can be used to evaluate the likelihood of land vertebrates and lung?sh as a sister group, could explain why their cardio-respiratory control systems are similar. The diffusing capacity of a duck lung is 40 times higher than that of a toad or lung?sh. Certainly, some animals have evolved to rich high-performance levels.

Friedrich Nietzsche's complex connection to Charles Darwin has been much explored, and both scholarly and popular opinions have tended to assume a convergence in their thinking. In this study, Dirk Johnson challenges that assumption and takes seriously Nietzsche's own explicitly stated 'anti-Darwinism'. He argues for the importance of Darwin for the development of Nietzsche's philosophy, but he places emphasis on the antagonistic character of their relationship and suggests that Nietzsche's mature critique against Darwin represents the key to understanding his broader (anti-)Darwinian position. He also offers an original reinterpretation of the Genealogy of Morals, a text long considered sympathetic to Darwinian naturalism, but which he argues should be taken as Nietzsche's most sophisticated critique of both Darwin and his followers. His book will appeal to all who are interested in the philosophy of Nietzsche and its cultural context.

Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences explores the meaning of consilience and considers the unity of human evolution, human nature, social dynamics, art, and narrative. The term "consilience" in its modern usage was first established by co-editor Edward O. Wilson in his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Wilson's original thesis had two parts: that nature forms a unitary order of causal forces, hierarchically organized, and that scientific knowledge, because it delineates nature, also forms a unitary order, providing a unity of knowledge across a variety of fields. Bringing together cutting-edge scientists and scholars across this range, this volume gives an expert account of consilience and makes it possible to see how far we have come toward unifying knowledge about the human species, what major issues are still in contention, and which areas of research are most likely to produce further progress. The essays in Darwin's Bridge raise and give substantial answers to questions such as: What is the precise trajectory of human evolution? What were the main factors driving the evolution of the human brain and human motivational system? How closely does life among contemporary hunter-gatherers mirror conditions of ancestral life? In what ways have genes and culture co-evolved, reciprocally influencing one another? How does selection at the level of individuals interact with selection among groups? How complete and adequate are our current models of human nature? How well do these models integrate ideas about human universals, individual identity, and specific cultures? How well can we now delineate the causal chains leading from elementary principles of evolutionary biology to specifically human forms of social organization, individual identity, and imaginative culture? Are human proclivities to make and consume works of art by-products of adaptations, or are they themselves adaptations? Can evolutionary thinking guide us in giving close analytic and explanatory attention to individual works of art?

Jean Octave Edmond Perrier was a French zoologist who lived through the tumult of British Darwinism and Lyellism, and reminds us in this revealing account that French scientists had much to contribute to such perennial topics as evolution, catastrophism and creationism. While very much a product of the Third Republic, Perrier's account also aimed to outline timeless issues and permanent advances in taxonomic and developmental biology since classical Greece and Rome. In this aim he succeeds with surprisingly modern perspectives for a book first published in 1884. Perrier was born May 9, 1844 at Tulle, the son of the principal of a school which now bears his name, Lycee Edmond Perrier. In 1864 he was accepted to the Ecole Normale Superieure, where he was strongly influenced by Louis Pasteur and Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers. After working for three years at a high school in Agen, he obtained a post of naturalist-aid at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (1868), advancing in that institution to Chair of Natural History of Molluscs, Worms and Corals (1876-1903) and then Director of the museum (1900-1919) and Chair of Comparative Anatomy (1903-1921). Previous directors of the museum included many of the scientists he discusses in this book: George Cuvier (1822-1823, 1826-1827, 1830-1831), Isidore Geoffrey St Hilaire (1860- 1861), and Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1891-1900). Perrier's own research on echinoderms and earthworms took him on several expeditions in 1880-1885, mostly to Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, but also to the Caribbean.

Heterogeneous Enantioselective Hydrogenation: Theory and Practice reviews the development of enantioselective hydrogenation reaction catalysts. It looks at the first relatively ineffective catalysts right through to modern highly effective enantioselective catalytic systems, comparable in their efficiency to chiral metal complexes and enzymatic systems. The book begins with a summary of the first work on heterogeneous metal catalysts, which showed only the principal possibilities of enantioselective reactions. It then elaborates on metal catalysts which have enantioselectivities close to 100%. Finally, the practical utilization of chiral catalytic systems in processes of hydrogenation is described. The alpha- and beta-hydroxy carboxylic acid esters produced are precursors for manufacturing many synthones used for medicines as well as for monomers used for biodegradable polyesters, both of which have important practical applications. The volume summarizes more than 800 scientific papers in the field of enantioselective catalytic hydrogenation reactions, mainly those using heterogeneous metal catalysts. It provides detailed explanations of special techniques for the preparation of effective dissymmetric catalysts which provide highly efficient catalytic systems.

Radiations, or Evolution in Action We have just celebrated the "Darwin Year" with the double anniversary of his 200th birthday and 150th year of his masterpiece, "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection". In this work, Darwin established the factual evidence of biological evolution, that species change over time, and that new organisms arise by the splitting of ancestral forms into two or more descendant species. However, above all, Darwin provided the mechanisms by arguing convincingly that it is by natural selection - as well as by sexual selection (as he later added) - that organisms adapt to their environment. The many discoveries since then have essentially con?rmed and strengthened Darwin's central theses, with latest evidence, for example, from molecular genetics, revealing the evolutionary relationships of all life forms through one shared history of descent from a common ancestor. We have also come a long way to progressively understand more on how new species actually originate, i. e. on speciation which remained Darwin's "mystery of m- teries", as noted in one of his earliest transmutation notebooks. Since speciation is the underlying mechanism for radiations, it is the ultimate causation for the biological diversity of life that surrounds us.

Converging evidence from disciplines including sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and human biology forces us to adopt a new idea of what it means to be a human. As cherished concepts such as free will, naive realism, humans as creation's crowning glory fall and our moral roots in ape group dynamics become clearer, we have to take leave of many concepts that have been central to defining our humanness. What emerges is a new human, the homo novus, a human being without illusions. Leading authors from many different fields explore these issues by addressing a range of illusions and providing evidence for the need, despite considerable reluctance, to relinquish some of our most cherished ideas about ourselves.

All animals and plants form associations with hundreds or thousands of different beneficial microorganisms. These symbiotic microbes play an important role in the development, adaptation, health and evolution of their hosts. This book brings together a group of diverse biologists to discuss microbial interactions with multicellular life forms including insects, corals, plants, and mammals, including humans. The various mechanisms by which microorganisms benefit their hosts are discussed, including providing essential nutrients, preventing disease, inducing the immune system, and combating stress. Since the microbiota can be transferred from parent to offspring, it plays an important role in the origin and evolution of animal and plant species. This book should be of interest to the widest range of biological scientists, merging the studies of host and microbial physiology, symbiosis, and the ecology and evolution of symbiotic partners.

The annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseilles serve to gather leading evolutionary biologists and other scientists using evolutionary biology concepts, e.g. for medical research. The aims of these meetings are to promote the exchange of ideas and to encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. This book collects 19 selected contributions presented at the 15th meeting, which took place in September 2011. It starts with a description of the life and work of J.B.S. Haldane, a remarkable evolutionary biologist of the 20th century. The remaining chapters are grouped under the following three themes: * New Concepts in Evolutionary Biology * Macroevolution: Mechanisms and Trends * 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.

The annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseille aim to bring together leading scientists, promoting an exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge and the formation of inter-group collaborations. This book presents the most representative contributions to the 13th meeting, which was held in September 2009. It comprises 21 chapters, which are organized into the following three categories: * Evolutionary Biology Concepts * Genome/Molecular Evolution * Morphological Evolution/Speciation This book offers an up-to-date overview of evolutionary biology concepts and their use in the biology of the 21st century.

This volume is the result of a research project entitled "Evolutionary Continuity - Human Specifics - The Possibility of Objective Knowledge" that was carried out by representatives of six academic disciplines (evolutionary biology, evolutionary anthropology, brain research, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology and philosophy) over a period of three and a half years. The starting point for the project was the newly emerging riddle of human uniqueness: though the uniqueness of human beings is undisputable, all explanations for this fact have successively been discarded or refuted in recent decades. There is no special factor that could explain the particularities of human existence. Rather, all human skills derive from a continuous relation to pre-human skills, that is to say, to elements that were developed earlier in the phylogeny and were later inherited. But starting from abilities that are anything but special, how could the particularity of human beings have evolved? This was the guiding question of the project. In this work we try to answer it by addressing the following problems: How strong is evolutionary continuity in human beings? How can we understand that it gave way to cultural discontinuity? Which aspect of cultural existence is really unique to humans? Can the possibility of objective knowledge be seen as a (admittedly extreme) case in point? - The answers are meant to help clarify the central issue of contemporary scientific anthropology.

This book encapsulates over three decades of the author's work on comparative functional respiratory morphology. It provides insights into the mechanism(s) by which respiratory means and processes originated and advanced to their modern states. Pertinent cross-disciplinary details and facts have been integrated and reexamined in order to arrive at more robust answers to questions regarding the basis of the functional designs of gas exchangers. The utilization of oxygen for energy production is an ancient process, the development and progression of which were underpinned by dynamic events in the biological, physical, and chemical worlds. Many books that have broached the subject of comparative functional respiratory biology have only described the form and function of the 'end-product,' the gas exchanger; they have scarcely delved into the factors and the conditions that motivated and steered the development from primeval to modern respiratory means and processes. This book addresses and answers broad questions concerning the critical synthesis of multidisciplinary data, and clarifies previously cryptic aspects of comparative respiratory biology.

This book describes the interlaced histories of life and oxygen. It opens with the generation of oxygen in ancient stars and its distribution to newly formed planets like the Earth. Free O2 was not available on the early Earth, so the first life forms had to be anaerobic. Life introduced free O2 into the environment through the evolution of photosynthesis, which must have been a disaster for many anaerobes. Others found ways to deal with the toxic reactive oxygen species and even developed a much more efficient oxygen-based metabolism. The authors vividly describe how the introduction of O2 allowed the burst of evolution that created today's biota. They also discuss the interplay of O2 and CO2, with consequences such as worldwide glaciations and global warming. On the physiological level, they present an overview of oxidative metabolism and O2 transport, and the importance of O2 in human life and medicine, emphasizing that while oxygen is essential, it is also related to aging and many disease states.

Although birds have a rather uniform body plan and physiology, they exhibit marked variation in development type, parental care, and rate of growth. This makes them ideal for studying and understanding evolutionary adaptation. Presenting an integrative perspective of organism biology, ecology, and evolution, this book is a case study in evolutionary diversification of life histories.

Since 1997, scientists of different disciplines sharing a deep interest in concepts and knowledge related to evolutionary biology have held the annual Evolutionary Biology Meetings in Marseille in order to discuss their research and promote collaboration. Lately scientists especially focusing on applications have also joined the group. This book starts with the report of the "12th Evolutionary Biology Meeting", which gives a general idea of the meeting's epistemological stance. This is followed by 22 chapters, a selection of the most representative contributions, which are grouped under the following four themes: Part I Concepts and Knowledge - Part II Modelization - Part III Applied Evolutionary Biology - Part IV Applications in Other Fields -Part IV transcends the field of biology, presenting applications of evolutionary biology in economics and astronomy.

Mitochondria and chloroplasts are eukaryotic organelles that evolved from bacterial ancestors and harbor their own genomes. The gene products of these genomes work in concert with those of the nuclear genome to ensure proper organelle metabolism and biogenesis. This book explores the forces that have shaped the evolution of organelle genomes and the expression of the genes encoded by them. Some striking examples of trends in organelle evolution explored here are the reduction in genome size and gene coding content observed in most lineages, the complete loss of organelle DNA in certain lineages, and the unusual modes of gene expression that have emerged, such as the extensive and essential mRNA editing that occurs in plant mitochondria and chloroplasts. This book places particular emphasis on the current techniques used to study the evolution of organelle genomes and gene expression.

In this monograph, new combinatorial and computational approaches in the study of RNA structures are presented which enhance both mathematics and computational biology. It begins with an introductory chapter, which motivates and sets the background of this research. In the following chapter, all the concepts are systematically developed. The reader will find * integration of more than forty research papers covering topics like, RSK-algorithm, reflection principle, singularity analysis and random graph theory * systematic presentation of the theory of pseudo-knotted RNA structures including their generating function, uniform generation as well as central and discrete limit theorems * computational biology of pseudo-knotted RNA structures, including dynamic programming paradigms and a new folding algorithm * analysis of neutral networks of pseudo knotted RNA structures and their random graph theory, including neutral paths, giant components and connectivity All algorithms presented are freely available through springer.com and implemented in C. A proofs section at the end contains the necessary technicalities. This book will serve graduate students and researchers in the fields of discrete mathematics, mathematical and computational biology. It is suitable as a textbook for a graduate course in mathematical and computational biology.

Sometimes referred to as 'the grand old man of science', Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) was a naturalist, evolutionary theorist, and friend of Charles Darwin. In this study of tropical flora and fauna, he takes the reader on a tour of the equatorial forest belt - the almost continuous band of forest that stretches around the world between the tropics. There, chameleon-like caterpillars alter the colours of their cocoons, parasitical trees override their hosts with spectacular aerial root systems, and some of the most pressing questions of Victorian evolutionary science arise: how do animals and plants come to be brightly coloured? Can their adaptations provide clues about past geological eras? And was Darwin wholly correct in his theory of sexual selection? First published in 1878, Wallace's book is a skilfully written reflection of contemporary naturalism, still highly readable and relevant to students in the history of science.