Describes the lives of three generations of the first family of palaeoanthropology, and their quest for fossil evidence of human origins Three generations of Leakeys have dug in East Africa for fossil evidence that answers questions about human origins. Louise and Mary, husband and wife, began what would turn into decades of research and fieldwork, often disproving common theories and beliefs of the time. Son Richard would follow in his father's footsteps, along with his wife Meave, and would make spectacular finds as well. Louise, oldest daughter of Richard and Meave, continues the family tradition today with fieldwork in northern Kenya. The Leakey family's achievements have had an enormous impact on our knowledge of human origins and evolution. This biography describes their life in detail, including their discoveries, publications, controversies, and legacy.

Professor Linda M. Fedigan, Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, has made major contributions to our understanding of the behavioural ecology of primates. Furthermore, Linda Fedigan pioneered and continues to advance scholarship on the role of women in science, as well as actively promoting the inclusion of women in the academy. A symposium in honour of her career was held in Banff (Alberta, Canada) in December 2016, during which former and current students and collaborators, as well as scientists with similar research interests, presented and discussed their work and their connections to Linda Fedigan. These presentations and discussions are here presented as chapters in this festschrift. The original works presented in this book are organized around four major research areas that have been greatly advanced and influenced by Linda Fedigan: Primate life histories Sex roles, gender, and science Primate-environment interactions Primate adaptation to changing environments

Birds catch the public imagination like no other group of animals; in addition, birders are perhaps the largest non-professional naturalist community. Genomics and associated bioinformatics have revolutionised daily life in just a few decades. At the same time, this development has facilitated the application of genomics technology to ecological and evolutionary studies, including biodiversity and conservation at all levels. This book reveals how the exciting toolbox of genomics offers new opportunities in all areas of avian biology. It presents contributions from prominent experts at the intersection of avian biology and genomics, and offers an ideal introduction to the world of genomics for students, biologists and bird enthusiasts alike. The book begins with a historical perspective on how genomic technology was adopted by bird ecology and evolution research groups. This led, as the book explains, to a revised understanding of avian evolution, with exciting consequences for biodiversity research as a whole. Lastly, these impacts are illustrated using seminal examples and the latest discoveries from avian biology laboratories around the world.

This volume brings together evidence that animal behaviour varies geograhically, and explores some of the richness in phenomena, interpretations, and problems which can arise in such studies. The authors summarize advances in the field to date, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, and give a clear and balanced overview of this area.

Biodiversity and Evolution includes chapters devoted to the evolution and biodiversity of organisms at the molecular level, based on the study of natural collections from the Museum of Natural History. The book starts with an epistemological and historical introduction and ends with a critical overview of the Anthropocene epoch.

Environmental and specific diversity in the Chihuahuan desert in general, and in the Cuatro Cienegas Basin in particular, has long been recognized as outstanding. This book provides a global ecological overview, together with in-depth studies of specific processes. The Chihuahuan desert is the warmest in North America, and has a complex geologic, climatic and biogeographical history, which affects today's distribution of vegetation and plants and generates complex phylogeographic patterns. The high number of endemic species reflects this complex set of traits. The modern distribution of environments, including aquatic and subaquatic systems, riparian environments, gypsum dunes and gypsum-rich soils, low levels of phosphorous and organic matter, and high salinity combined with an extreme climate call for a range of adaptations. Plants are distributed in a patchy pattern based on punctual variations, and many of them respond to different resources and conditions with considerable morphological plasticity. In terms of physiological, morphological and ecological variability, cacti were identified as the most important group in specific environments like bajadas, characterized by high diversity values, while gypsophytes and gypsovagues of different phylogenies, including species with restricted distribution and endemics.

Though the United States is the world leader in science and technology, many of its citizens display a shocking ignorance regarding basic scientific facts. Recent surveys have revealed that only about half of Americans realise that humans have never lived side by side with dinosaurs, and about the same number reject the idea that humans developed from earlier species of animals. This lack of knowledge in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution springs from a number of negative influences in contemporary society: poor secondary education in some regions of the country, misinformation in the mass media, and deliberate obfuscation by supporters of Creationism and Intelligent Design. In this concise, accessible, myth-buster's handbook, educators Cameron M. Smith and Charles Sullivan clearly dispel the ten most common myths about evolution, which continue to mislead average Americans. Using a refreshing, jargon-free style, they set the record straight on claims that evolution is just a theory, that Darwinian explanations of life undercut morality, that Intelligent Design is a legitimate alternative to conventional science, that humans come from chimpanzees, and six other popular but erroneous notions. Smith and Sullivan's reader-friendly, solidly researched text will serve as an important tool, both for teachers and laypersons seeking accurate information about evolution.

The present book aims to examine how sexual selection works in the human species. Almost all scholarly effort focuses on sexual selection in non-human species and extrapolates the findings to the human one. However, human mating has a unique pattern not found in any other species, namely parental influence over mate choice. Across preindustrial societies, the typical pattern of long-term mating is arranged marriage, where parents choose spouses for their children. By doing so, parents effectively become a sexual selection force. Traits that enhance an individual's chance to be selected as a son- or a daughter-in-law confer important reproductive advantages to those who are endowed with them, increasing in frequency in the population. The author has coined the term parental choice to describe the sexual selection force that arises from parental control over mating. He synthesizes extensive theoretical and empirical work in order to understand and model this force. The aim is to understand which factors give rise to parental choice and to combine these insights into constructing a more formal model. It also aims to further examine whether the predictions of the model fit the patterns of mating found across different types of human societies, and how the model can be used to understand the evolution of behavioral traits involved in mating. By synthesizing the various arguments put forward and published across the literature, the book offers a comprehensive argument and overview of an aspect of sexual selection unique to our species. Furthermore, the book revises and extends previously made arguments and models, while it provides useful insights on how the proposed revision of sexual selection theory can enable us to understand a wide range of human behavioral phenomena. It should be key reading for those interested in studying sexual selection in general and in the Homo sapiens species in particular.

Many people have written biographies of Charles Darwin, but the story of his family and roots in Shrewsbury is little known. This book, containing original research, fills that gap. The key player is Charles' father, Dr Robert Darwin, a larger-than-life character whose financial acumen enabled Charles to spend his whole life on research unencumbered by money worries. Through Susannah, Charles' mother, we are introduced to the Wedgwood family, whose history was so closely interwoven with the Darwins. The stories of Charles' five siblings are detailed, and there is a wealth of local material, such as information on Shrewsbury School and its illustrious headmaster, Samuel Butler. The book is fully illustrated with contemporary and modern pictures, and will be of interest to anyone wanting to discover more about the development of Shrewsbury's most famous son.

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.

The origin of life is one of the biggest unsolved scientific questions. This book deals with the formation and first steps of the chemical evolution of nucleic acids, including the chemical roots behind the origin of their components from the simplest sources in a geochemical context. Chemical evolution encompasses the chemical processes and interactions conducive to self-assembly and supramolecular organization, leading to an increase of complexity and the emergence of life. The book starts with a personal account of the pioneering work of Stanley Miller and Jeffrey Bada on the Chemistry of Origins of Life and how the development of organic chemistry beginning in the 19th century led to the emergence of the field of prebiotic chemistry, situated at the frontier between organic, geo- and biochemistry. It then continues reviewing in tutorial manner current central topics regarding the organization of nucleic acids: the origin of nucleobases and nucleosides, their phosphorylation and polymerization and ultimately, their self-assembly and supramolecular organization at the inception of life.

The leading scholars in the rapidly-growing field of language evolution give readable accounts of their theories on the origins of language and reflect on the most important current issues and debates. As well as providing a guide to their own published research in this area they highlight what they see as the most relevant research of others. The authors come from a wide range of disciplines involved in language evolution including linguistics, cognitive science, computational science, primatology, and archaeology.

Over the past decade, a group of prolific and innovative evolutionary biologists has sought to reinvent historical linguistics through the use of phylogenetic and phylogeographical analysis, treating cognates like genes and conceptualizing the spread of languages in terms of the diffusion of viruses. Using these techniques, researchers claim to have located the origin of the Indo-European language family in Neolithic Anatolia, challenging the near-consensus view that it emerged in the grasslands north of the Black Sea thousands of years later. But despite its widespread celebration in the global media, this new approach fails to withstand scrutiny. As languages do not evolve like biological species and do not spread like viruses, the model produces incoherent results, contradicted by the empirical record at every turn. This book asserts that the origin and spread of languages must be examined primarily through the time-tested techniques of linguistic analysis, rather than those of evolutionary biology.

The abiotic stresses like drought, temperature, cold, salinity, heavy metals etc. affect a great deal on the yield performance of the agricultural crops. To cope up with these challenges, plant breeding programs world-wide are focussing on the development of stress tolerant varieties in all crop species. Significant genomic advances have been made for abiotic stress tolerance in various crop species in terms of availability of molecular markers, QTL mapping, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), genomic selection (GS) strategies, and transcriptome profiling. The broad-range of articles involving genomics and breeding approaches deepens our existing knowledge about complex traits. The chapters are written by authorities in their respective fields. This book provides comprehensive and consolidated account on the applications of the most recent findings and the progress made in genomics assisted breeding for tolerance to abiotic stresses in many important major crop species with a focus on applications of modern strategies for sustainable agriculture. The book is especially intended for students, molecular breeders and scientists working on the genomics-assisted genetic improvement of crop species for abiotic stress tolerance.

This second edition textbook offers an expanded conceptual synthesis of microbial ecology with plant and animal ecology. Drawing on examples from the biology of microorganisms and macroorganisms, this textbook provides a much-needed interdisciplinary approach to ecology. The focus is the individual organism and comparisons are made along six axes: genetic variation, nutritional mode, size, growth, life cycle, and influence of the environment. When it was published in 1991, the first edition of Comparative Ecology of Microorganisms and Macroorganisms was unique in its attempt to clearly compare fundamental ecology across the gamut of size. The explosion of molecular biology and the application of its techniques to microbiology and organismal biology have particularly demonstrated the need for interdisciplinary understanding. This updated and expanded edition remains unique. It treats the same topics at greater depth and includes an exhaustive compilation of both the most recent relevant literature in microbial ecology and plant/animal ecology, as well as the early research papers that shaped the concepts and theories discussed. Among the completely updated topics in the book are phylogenetic systematics, search algorithms and optimal foraging theory, comparative metabolism, the origins of life and evolution of multicellularity, and the evolution of life cycles. From Reviews of the First Edition: "John Andrews has succeeded admirably in building a bridge that is accessible to all ecologists." -Ecology "I recommend this book to all ecologists. It is a thoughtful attempt to integrate ideas from, and develop common themes for, two fields of ecology that should not have become fragmented." -American Scientist "Such a synthesis is long past due, and it is shameful that ecologists (both big and little) have been so parochial." -The Quarterly Review of Biology

Over the last few centuries, science has usurped domains of knowledge that were once the province of religion. At the same time, however, both science and religion have enforced strict boundaries throughout. Science can describe the world to us, but it cannot tell us about meaning or values. This is a compelling case for breaching this barrier - in effect, for a reunification of science and religion.

This second edition integrates the more technical and mathematical aspects of bioinformatics with concrete examples of their application to current research problems in molecular, cellular and evolutionary biology. This broad, unified approach is made possible, in large part, by the very wide scope of Dr. Xia's own research experience. The integration of genomics, proteomics and transcriptomics into a single volume makes this book required reading for anyone entering the new and emerging fields of Systems Biology and Evolutionary Bioinformatics.

This fully updated second edition explores protocols that address the most challenging aspects of experimental work in ancient DNA, such as preparing ancient samples for DNA extraction, the DNA extraction itself, and transforming extracted ancient DNA molecules for sequencing library preparation. The volume also examines the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data recovered from ancient specimens, which, because of the degraded nature of ancient DNA and common co-extraction of contaminant DNA, has challenges that are unique compared to data recovered from modern specimens.Written in the highly 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 laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Ancient DNA: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition aims to serve both experts and beginners by presenting protocols in a manner that makes them easily accessible for everyday use in the lab.

Evolutionary ecology includes aspects of community structure, trophic interactions, life-history tactics, and reproductive modes, analyzed from an evolutionary perspective. Freshwater environments often impose spatial structure on populations, e.g. within large lakes or among habitat patches, facilitating genetic and phenotypic divergence. Traditionally, freshwater systems have featured prominently in ecological research and population biology.

This book brings together information on diverse freshwater taxa, with a mix of critical review, synthesis, and case studies. Using examples from bryozoans, rotifers, cladocerans, molluscs, teleosts and others, the authors cover current conceptual issues of evolutionary ecology in considerable depth.

The book can serve as a source of critically evaluated ideas, detailed case studies, and open problems in the field of evolutionary ecology. It is recommended for students and researchers in ecology, limnology, population biology, and evolutionary biology.

This book focuses on the morphology, exine ornamentation and the associated evolutionary trends of crabapple pollen and anatomical developmental patterns. To examine the genetic evolutionary patterns of crabapple pollen traits, we constructed an interval distribution function based on characteristic pollen parameters and used a binary trivariate data matrix (Xi Yi Zi) to reflect the exine ornamentation regularity of the pollen. Our findings should inform the taxonomic status of the genus Malus. Pollen electron micrographs from a total of 26 species and 81 cultivars of Malus were recorded in this book. All 107 figures and 642 scanned pollen images constitute primary data obtained by the authors. The images in this book are clear, three-dimensional, and aesthetically pleasing. They are accompanied with text descriptions and provided a method for the indication of the different types of information that can be expected. This book can provide a reference for scientific researchers, students, and teachers in tertiary institutions that are engaged in research concerning crabapple production.

Nature's Machines: An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics presents the fundamental principles of biomechanics in a concise, accessible way while maintaining necessary rigor. It covers the central principles of whole-organism biomechanics as they apply across the animal and plant kingdoms, featuring brief, tightly-focused coverage that does for biologists what H. M. Frost's 1967 Introduction to Biomechanics did for physicians. Frequently encountered, basic concepts such as stress and strain, Young's modulus, force coefficients, viscosity, and Reynolds number are introduced in early chapters in a self-contained format, making them quickly available for learning and as a refresher. More sophisticated, integrative concepts such as viscoelasticity or properties of hydrostats are covered in the later chapters, where they draw on information from multiple earlier sections of the book. Animal and plant biomechanics is now a common research area widely acknowledged by organismal biologists to have broad relevance. Most of the day-to-day activities of an animal involve mechanical processes, and to the extent that organisms are shaped by adaptive evolution, many of those adaptations are constrained and channelized by mechanical properties. The similarity in body shape of a porpoise and a tuna is no coincidence. Many may feel that they have an intuitive understanding of many of the mechanical processes that affect animals and plants, but careful biomechanical analyses often yield counterintuitive results: soft, squishy kelp may be better at withstanding pounding waves during storms than hard-shelled mollusks; really small swimmers might benefit from being spherical rather than streamlined; our bones can operate without breaking for decades, whereas steel surgical implants exhibit fatigue failures in a few months if not fully supported by bone.