Do our genes determine our behavior? Do education and environment have any influence at all? Do humans occupy a unique position in evolution? To clarify these provoking questions, the author takes the reader on an ambitious and entertaining journey through a variety of scientific disciplines. In doing so, he creates an image of human evolution that says that our entire individual knowledge is determined - to the smallest detail - by phylogeny. " ... before shocked humanists discard such radical theses as mere nonsense, they should not completely close their minds to the explanations of a biologist who says that we still know very little about the genetic determination of human behavior and that the invariance of many forms of behavior present in all cultures nourish the suspicion that the determining role of genes is probably far more comprehensive than we have ever dreamed."Wolfgang Wieser, translated from his review in "Merkur" (Sept./Oct. 1999)

After volume 33, this book series was replaced by the journal "Evolutionary Biology." Please visit www.springer.com/11692 for further information.

Volume 30 brings readers up to date on the investigation of eminent evolutionary biologists and paleobiologists. Contributions explore such topics as

• Adaptation in Drosophila and the role of cytochrome P450s
• Population genetics and species conservation of the cheetah
• germ-layer theory
• assymetry in the mammalian skeleton
• genetic diversity of marine fish
• the phenomenon of industrial melanism
• the variation in lizard cranal kinesis.

Although the field of quantitative genetics - the study of the genetic basis of variation in quantitative characteristics such as body size, or reproductive success - is almost 100 years old, its application to the study of evolutionary processes in wild populations has expanded greatly over the last few decades. During this time, the use of 'wild quantitative genetics' has provided insights into a range of important questions in evolutionary ecology, ranging from studies conducting research in well-established fields such as life-history theory, behavioural ecology and sexual selection, to others addressing relatively new issues such as populations' responses to climate change or the process of senescence in natural environments. Across these fields, there is increasing appreciation of the need to quantify the genetic - rather than just the phenotypic - basis and diversity of key traits, the genetic basis of the associations between traits, and the interaction between these genetic effects and the environment. This research activity has been fuelled by methodological advances in both molecular genetics and statistics, as well as by exciting results emerging from laboratory studies of evolutionary quantitative genetics, and the increasing availability of suitable long-term datasets collected in natural populations, especially in animals. Quantitative Genetics in the Wild is the first book to synthesize the current level of knowledge in this exciting and rapidly-expanding area. This comprehensive volume also offers exciting perspectives for future studies in emerging areas, including the application of quantitative genetics to plants or arthropods, unraveling the molecular basis of variation in quantitative traits, or estimating non-additive genetic variance. Since this book deals with many fundamental questions in evolutionary ecology, it should be of interest to graduate, post-graduate students, and academics from a wide array of fields such as animal behaviour, ecology, evolution, and genetics.

This volume will lay out the best methods for measuring net primary productivity (NPP) in ecological research. Primary productivity is the rate at which energy is stored in the organic matter of plants per unit area of the earth's surface. NPP is the beginning point of the carbon cycle, so our ability to accurately measure NPP is important. The book includes chapters for each of the critical biome types to offer special techniques that work best in each biome. For example, there are chapters that discuss grassland ecosystems, urban ecosystems, marine pelagic ecosystems, forest ecosystems, and salt marsh ecosystems, among others. All 26 LTER sites will be expected to collect and report data using these methods, but ecologists more generally should also find these methods useful and authoritative. Currently no standard methods or standards exist. Measuring NPP is fundamental to many ecosystem studies at thousands of sites, and having identified standards and methods would be extremely useful for comparing measurements among sites and for compiling a broad scale understanding of the environmental, biological, and nutrition controls on NPP. This book would resemble the Standard Soil Measurement volume in the LTER series in that it reaches well beyond any single LTER site to apply to any ecosystem. It should be rather more widely used than the soil measurements volume, in that measuring productivity is so fundamental to any ecological analyses as well as agronomy, forestry, fisheries, limnology and oceanography.

Conversations on the Edge of Apocalypse is a collection of interviews with some of the leading thinkers of our time about the future of the human race, and the mystery of consciousness, from scientific, philosophical and spiritual perspectives. It explores such topics as the future evolution of technology and consciousness, the relationship between science and religion, ecology and human values, altered states of consciousness, the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life, psychic phenomena, life after death, and the fate of the human race. Included are contributions from Noam Chomsky,Deepak Chopra, George Carlin, Ram Dass and Rupert Sheldrake. Part scientific exploration and part philosophical speculation, Conversations on the Edge of Apocalypse is a valuable and entertaining resource for our species' survival.

After volume 33, this book series was replaced by the journal "Evolutionary Biology." Please visit www.springer.com/11692 for further information.

This volume is the 33rd in this series, which includes 32 numbered volumes and an unnumbered supplement. Several special volumes have also been published as separate monographs. This volume, like the others in the series, has chapters devoted to a broad spectrum of topics. Indeed, the editors continue to solicit manuscripts on subjects covered by the encompassing rubric of Evolutionary Biology.

"Volume 33 continues the grand tradition of Evolutionary Biology in being the most comprehensive series in the field. The chapters are always up-to-date, informative, and stimulating; sometimes infuriating. Just what good scientific literature should be Particularly attractive is the free-wheeling spirit of the series: no style or length is imposed. If you want to remain cognizant of contemporary evolutionary advances in general and have time to read only one volume a year outside your own specialty, make it Evolutionary Biology."
(Jeffrey R. Powell, Ph.D., Yale University)

Leading researchers in the area of the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe contributed to Exobiology: Matter, Energy, and Information in the Origin and Evolution of Life in the Universe. This volume provides a review of this interdisciplinary field. In 50 chapters many aspects that contribute to exobiology are reviewed by 90 authors. These include: historical perspective of biological evolution; cultural aspects of exobiology, cosmic, chemical and biological evolution, molecular biology, geochronology, biogeochemistry, biogeology, and planetology. Some of the current missions are discussed. Other subjects in the frontier of exobiology are reviewed, such as the search for planets outside the solar system, and the possible manifestation of intelligence in those new potential environments. The SETI research effort is well represented in this general overview of exobiology. This book is the proceedings of the Fifth Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution that took place in September 1997. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam who suggested the initiation of the Trieste conferences on chemical evolution and the origin of life. Audience: Graduate students and researchers in the many areas of basic, earth, and life sciences that contribute to the study of chemical evolution and the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe.

There are many different types of organisms in the world: they differ in size, physiology, appearance, and life history. The challenge for evolutionary biology is to explain how such diversity arises. The Evolution of Life Histories does this by showing that natural selection is the principal underlying force molding life history variation. The book describes in particular the ways in which variation can be analyzed and predicted. It covers both the genetic and optimization approaches to life history analysis and gives an overview of the general framework of life history theory and the mathematical tools by which predictions can be made and tested. Factors affecting the age schedule of birth and death and the costs of reproduction are discussed. The Evolution of Life Histories concentrates on those theoretical developments that have been tested experimentally. It will interest both students and professionals in evolution, evolutionary ecology, mathematical and theoretical biology, and zoology and entomology.

Elie Metchnikoff (1845-1916), winner of the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his contributions to immunology, was first a comparative zoologist, who, working in the wake of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, made seminal contributions to evolutionary biology. His work in comparative embryology is best known in regard to the debates with Ernst Haeckel concerning animal genealogical relationships and the theoretical origins of metazoans. But independent of those polemics, Metchnikoff developed his phagocytosis theory' of immunity as a result of his early comparative embryology research, and only in examining the full breadth of his work do we appreciate his signal originality. Metchnikoff's scientific papers have remained largely untranslated into English. Assembled here, annotated and edited, are the key evolutionary biology papers dating from Metchnikoff's earliest writings (1865) to the texts of his mature period of the 1890s, which will serve as an invaluable resource for those interested in the historical development of evolutionary biology.

Developmental Instability: Its Origins and Evolutionary Implications is a collection of papers and transcribed discussions from a conference held in Tempe, Arizona in June 1993. The papers represent a wide range of contributions, from the empirical to the theoretical, and include methods for measuring developmental instability across a variety of taxa and traits. This volume presents contrasting views on how to assess developmental instability as well as on the relationship of instability to genotypic factors, environmental factors and the action of natural and sexual selection. Readers will derive a working knowledge of the best way to assess developmental instability and will be able to design future work in an authoritative way.

Current theories about human memory have been shaped by clinical observations and animal experiments. This doctrine holds that the medial temporal lobe subserves one memory system for explicit or declarative memories, while the basal ganglia subserves a separate memory system for implicit or procedural memories, including habits. Cortical areas outside the medial temporal lobe are said to function in perception, motor control, attention, or other aspects of executive function, but not in memory. 'The Evolution of Memory Systems' advances dramatically different ideas on all counts. It proposes that several memory systems arose during evolution and that they did so for the same general reason: to transcend problems and exploit opportunities encountered by specific ancestors at particular times and places in the distant past. Instead of classifying cortical areas in terms of mutually exclusive perception, executive, or memory functions, the authors show that all cortical areas contribute to memory and that they do so in their own ways-using specialized neural representations. The book also presents a proposal on the evolution of explicit memory. According to this idea, explicit (declarative) memory depends on interactions between a phylogenetically ancient navigation system and a representational system that evolved in humans to represent one's self and others. As a result, people embed representations of themselves into the events they experience and the facts they learn, which leads to the perception of participating in events and knowing facts. 'The Evolution of Memory Systems' is an important new work for students and researchers in neuroscience, psychology, and biology.

In this examination of problems in the modern world, Michio Kitahara argues that a logical inconsistency in the philosophy of Enlightenment has caused humans to approach their environment in a way that is inconsistent with their biological background. Human biological and cultural evolution has created a form of suffering that derives in part from Western civilization's simultaneous acceptance and rejection of human variation. Both specialists and the general public assume that evolution is good and desirable, but Kitahara's analysis suggests the opposite: that evolution itself is tragic.

In his analysis of human evolution, Kitahara discusses deviant and criminal behavior, social conflict, liberalism, and the nature of Western civilization. He holds two axiomatic assumptions: that humans are characterized by stimulus seeking behavior accompanied by the manipulatory drive, and that humans are characterized by physical, psychological and cultural variation. He argues that the tyranny of the majority and the technology we have developed deny human variation, and that the drive to manipulate the environment is the wellspring of modern, sociocultural phenomena. This book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, political science, and environmental studies.

This volume is based upon the seventeenth series of lectures delivered at Yale University on the Foundation established by the late Dwight H. Terry of Plymouth, Connecticut, through his gift of an endowment fund for the delivery and subsequent publication of "Lectures on Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy." The deed of gift declares that "the object of this Foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. Dr. Millikan believes "modern science of the real sort is slowly learning to walk humbly with its God."

This book aims at defining and reassessing the role of population genetics in conservation biology and seeks to identify the progress made in the field during the last decade. It deals with conservation genetics from several currently researched points of view, namely, ecological and demographic measures of rarity or population persistence, loss of genetic variation, inbreeding, reduced migration rates and increased selective pressures under stress and the role of social behaviour and metapopulation structure. The use of molecular variation as the basis of naming or selecting target taxa and some strategic decisions about genetic variance maximization in the conserved population or community units are analysed. Several case studies and scenarios illustrate the application of genetic information in conservation practices.

'Steve Brusatte, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, brings mammals out from the shadow of their more showy predecessors in a beautifully written book that . . . makes the case for them as creatures who are just as engaging as dinosaurs.' - The Sunday Times, 'Best Books For Summer' 'In this terrific new book, Steve Brusatte . . . brings well-known extinct species, the sabre-toothed tigers and the woolly mammoths, thrillingly back to life' - The Times The passing of the age of the dinosaurs allowed mammals to become ascendant. But mammals have a much deeper history. They - or, more precisely, we - originated around the same time as the dinosaurs, over 200 million years ago; mammal roots lie even further back, some 325 million years. Over these immense stretches of geological time, mammals developed their trademark features: hair, keen senses of smell and hearing, big brains and sharp intelligence, fast growth and warm-blooded metabolism, a distinctive line-up of teeth (canines, incisors, premolars, molars), mammary glands that mothers use to nourish their babies with milk, qualities that have underlain their success story. Out of this long and rich evolutionary history came the mammals of today, including our own species and our closest cousins. But today's 6,000 mammal species - the egg-laying monotremes including the platypus, marsupials such as kangaroos and koalas that raise their tiny babies in pouches, and placentals like us, who give birth to well-developed young - are simply the few survivors of a once verdant family tree, which has been pruned both by time and mass extinctions. In The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, palaeontologist Steve Brusatte weaves together the history and evolution of our mammal forebears with stories of the scientists whose fieldwork and discoveries underlie our knowledge, both of iconic mammals like the mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers of which we have all heard, and of fascinating species that few of us are aware of. For what we see today is but a very limited range of the mammals that have existed; in this fascinating and ground-breaking book, Steve Brusatte tells their - and our - story.

In the preface to Sir Vincent B. Wigglesworth's classic 1939 book on insect physiology he asserted that insects provide an ideal medium in which to study all the problems of physiology. A strong case can be made as well for the use of insects as significant systems for the study of behavior and genetics. Contributions to genetics through decades of research on Drosophila species have made this small fly the most important metazoan in genetics research. At the same time, population and behavioral research on insects and other invertebrates have provid ed new perspectives that can be combined with the genetics approach. Through such in tegrated research we are able to identify evolutionary genetics of behavior as a highly signifi cant emerging area of interest. These perspectives are ably described by Dr. Guy Bush in the introductory chapter of this book. During March 21-24, 1983, many of the world's leading scientists in invertebrate behavioral genetics were drawn together in Gainesville, Florida, for a colloquium entitled "Evolutionary Genetics of Invertebrate Behavior." This conference was sponsored jointly by the Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of Florida, chaired by Dr. Daniel Shankland, and the Insect Attractants, Behavior and Basic Biology Research Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture, directed then by Dr. Derrell Chambers."

The increasing interest during recent years in vegetation history, long-term climatic changes and the development of biotic communities has resulted in a growth of the literature in this field and has provided an incentive for scientists to use palaeo-ecology concepts to clarify contemporary ecological issues. Quaternary ecology offers the perspective of time, in using "natural experiments of the past" to evaluate the responses of population, communities and ecosystems to climatic and environmental changes on a time scale extending back over the past two million years of the quaternary period. Examples from the palaeo-ecological literature demonstrate how quaternary ecology interfaces with other branches of ecology, including plant demography, ecological genetics, limnology and landscape ecology. The book provides an integrated overview of this interdisciplinary area. The authors examine the validity of space for time substitution in studies of plant succession, the individualistic nature of species migrations and invasions of pre-existing communities, the disassembly and reassembly of communities following major environmental change and the applications of quaternary ecology to predicting biotic responses to future global climatic change. By examining key ecological issues and controversies that can be approached fruitfully using palaeo-ecological methods, this book is intended to complement rather than replace traditional textbooks in ecology and palaeo-ecology.

When faced with new challenges, it's easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake? In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioural science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow's challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday's solutions - often in the most unexpected ways. Just as millions of years of evolution have helped craft the wing and dorsal fin, thousands of engineers, designers, marketers and advertisers have toiled to solve many of the problems you face today. Over time, through intent, design, social learning and sheer luck, we have found what works. Armed with an enhanced ability to see these patterns in human innovation, we can now systematically approach the creative process to develop more effective ideas more readily and rapidly. Just as Japanese engineers reduced bullet train noise by studying the evolved biology of the owl and kingfisher, today we can see how Disney improved the queueing experience in the same way Houston airport made arrivals feel faster (while making people walk further). We'll learn how the chocolate at the bottom of a Cornetto ice cream can improve an Error 404 message, and what a bowl of M&Ms has in common with a canary in a coal mine. These are Evolutionary Ideas. Exploring five of the most critical challenges we face today, we learn how to 'breed' more effective solutions from those that have survived. The result is a dynamic and exciting way of solving problems and supercharging creativity - for anyone in any endeavour.

This two-volume work is a testament to the abiding interest and human fascination with ammonites. We offer a new model to explain the morphogenesis of septa and the shell, we explore their habitats by the content of stable isotopes in their shells, we discuss the origin and later evolution of this important clade, and we deliver hypotheses on its demise. The Ammonoidea produced a great number of species that can be used in biostratigraphy and possibly, this is the macrofossil group, which has been used the most for that purpose. Nevertheless, many aspects of their anatomy, mode of life, development or paleobiogeographic distribution are still poorly known. Themes treated are biostratigraphy, paleoecology, paleoenvironment, paleobiogeography, evolution, phylogeny, and ontogeny. Advances such as an explosion of new information about ammonites, new technologies such as isotopic analysis, tomography and virtual paleontology in general, as well as continuous discovery of new fossil finds have given us the opportunity to present a comprehensive and timely "state of the art" compilation. Moreover, it also points the way for future studies to further enhance our understanding of this endlessly fascinating group of organisms.

The evolution versus creationism conflict is here to stay. Even after their devastating defeat in the "Kitzmiller v. Dover" decision, advocates of intelligent design and other forms of creationism continue to revise their strategies for undermining the teaching of evolution-and thus of science in general-in American schools. In this revision of "Evolution vs. Creationism," Eugenie Scott, one of the leading proponents of teaching evolution in the schools, describes these ever-changing efforts to undermine science education and shows what students, parents, and teachers should be aware of to help ensure that American science education prepares our students to compete in the 21st century.

This second edition of "Evolution vs. Creationism" will help readers better understand the issues involved in these debates. It expands and updates the original work with an insider's look at the "Kitzmiller v. Dover" trial, a new selection of primary source documents on the Creationism/Evolution controversy in the media, and an up-to-date analysis of the most recent creationist challenges across the country.

The revision also expands and updates the collection of primary source documents that address cosmology, law, education, popular culture, and religious issues from all sides of the debate, as well as the resources for further information.

The dicynodonts, an important group of permo-triassic reptiles, were the first really successful herbivorous tetrapods. Moreover they provided the bulk of the prey species for the ecosystem in which the mammals evolved, which makes them interesting in a wider context. The dicynodonts left an abundant fossil record, mainly in what is now southern and eastern Africa. This abundance enables investigation of their community structure and permits observations to be made on the changes in diversity that the group underwent throughout history. Such palaeoecological studies are becoming increasingly important since they have direct bearing on the evolution of other fossil groups. Their detailed preservation allows functional considerations to be derived from structure, providing evidence for discussion of reproduction, thermoregulation and social behaviour - all important aspects of the study of the evolution of mammals. These studies are summarized by a recognized expert in the field and should be valuable to those interested in evolution, palaeoecology and palaeobiology, as well as geologists and zoologists. This book should be of interest to evolutionary biologists, palaeoecologists, palaeobiologists, geologists and zoologists.

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.

Modern approaches to microbial classification and identification, particularly those based on nucleic acid analysis, have raised the awareness and interest of microbiologists in systematics during the past decade. The extended scope of the subject has revolutionized microbial ecology with the demonstration of uncultivable microorganisms as a major component of the biosphere and evolution, with the ribosomal RNA phylogenetic tree as the basis of current classifications. However, advances in microbial systematics have also had enormous impact on other, diverse aspects of microbiology such as animal pathogenicity, plant-microbe interactions and relationships with food. In this book, we survey and discuss in depth the contribution of modern taxonomic approaches to our understanding of the microbiology of these various systems. The book does not concentrate on methods - these have been well reported elsewhere - instead it provides a unique insight into the application and value of modern systematics in diverse branches of microbiology. It will be of value to microbiologists at both research and technical levels who need to appreciate the range of organisms with which they work and the diversity within them. It will also be of value to teachers and students of microbiology courses who want to understand how systematics can enhance microbiology beyond the routine of classification, nomenclature, and identification.

The topics of style and function within evolutionary archaeology have been the subject of great debate in the field of archaeology in general over the past two decades. Evolutionary archaeologists have a unique perspective on these concepts-one that has sometimes been misunderstood by archaeologists working within other theoretical perspectives.

The dichotomy between style and function was first formulated in the late 1970s by Robert Dunnell and remains axiomatic within the theoretical perspective of evolutionary archaeology. The original definitions of style and function were grounded in biological evolutionary concepts regarding neutral variation versus variation that is subject to natural selection. Several chapters expand upon these concepts, and explore how Darwinian evolutionary theory may be used to understand the archaeological record. Other chapters demonstrate this application through empirical case studies. Dunnell provides a foreword introducing and re-examining his original thesis.

This volume is the only text devoted to the topic of style and function within the literature of evolutionary archaeology. It provides not only theoretical discussions and augmentation, but also significant historical background regarding the development of the style/function distinction within archaeology. Moreover, it presents several case studies that provide examples of how evolutionary style and function may be applied to the prehistoric record.

Molecular approaches have opened new windows on a host of ecological and evolutionary disciplines, ranging from population genetics and behavioral ecology to conservation biology and systematics. Molecular Markers, Natural History and Evolution summarizes the multi-faceted discoveries about organisms in nature that have stemmed from analyses of genetic markers provided by polymorphic proteins and DNAs. The first part of the book introduces rationales for the use of molecular markers, provides a history of molecular phylogenetics, and describes a wide variety of laboratory methods and interpretative tools in the field. The second and major portion of the book provides a cornucopia of biological applications for molecular markers, organized along a scale from micro-evolutionary topics (such as forensics, parentage, kinship, population structure, and intra-specific phylogeny) to macro-evolutionary themes (including species relationships and the deeper phylogenetic structure in the tree of life). Unlike most prior books in molecular evolution, the focus is on organismal natural history and evolution, with the macromolecules being the means rather than the ends of scientific inquiry. Written as an intellectual stimulus for the advanced undergraduate, graduate student, or the practicing biologist desiring a wellspring of research ideas at the interface of molecular and organismal biology, this book presents material in a manner that is both technically straightforward, yet rich with concepts and with empirical examples from the world of nature.