Current Ornithology publishes authoritative, up-to-date, scholarly reviews of topics selected from the full range of current research in avian biology. Topics cover the spectrum from the molecular level of organization to population biology and community ecology. The series seeks especially to review (1) fields in which an abundant recent literature will benefit from synthesis and organization, or (2) newly emerging fields that are gaining recognition as the result of recent discoveries or shifts in perspective, or (3) fields in which students of vertebrates may benefit from comparisons of birds with other classes. All chapters are invited, and authors are chosen for their leadership in the subjects under review.

`A graceful, refreshing and enlightening book, applied philosophy that is relevant, timely and metaphysical in the best sense.' - New York Times Book Review

'Midgley is one of the most acute and penetrating voices in current moral philosophy. Her great gift is clarity, both of thought and, especially, of expression. To follow her reasoning is like watching a ballet dancer walking in the street: there is a litheness, a gracefulness, an ease of articulation, which attest to years of learning lightly worn.' - John Banville, Irish Times

This volume provides insight into gibbon diet and community ecology, the mating system and reproduction, and conservation biology, all topics which represent areas of substantial progress in understanding socio-ecological flexibility and conservation needs of the hylobatid family. This work analyzes hylobatid evolution by synthesizing recent and ongoing studies of molecular phylogeny, morphology, and cognition in a framework of gibbon and siamang evolution. With its clearly different perspective, this book is written to be read, referenced, and added to the bookshelves of scientists, librarians, and the interested public.

How did life begin on the early Earth? We know that life today is driven by the universal laws of chemistry and physics. By applying these laws over the past ?fty years, en- mous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are the foundations of the living state. For instance, just a decade ago, the ?rst human genome was published, all three billion base pairs. Using X-ray diffraction data from crystals, we can see how an enzyme molecule or a photosynthetic reaction center steps through its catalytic function. We can even visualize a ribosome, central to all life, translate - netic information into a protein. And we are just beginning to understand how molecular interactions regulate thousands of simultaneous reactions that continuously occur even in the simplest forms of life. New words have appeared that give a sense of this wealth of knowledge: The genome, the proteome, the metabolome, the interactome. But we can't be too smug. We must avoid the mistake of the physicist who, as the twentieth century began, stated con?dently that we knew all there was to know about physics, that science just needed to clean up a few dusty corners. Then came relativity, quantum theory, the Big Bang, and now dark matter, dark energy and string theory. Similarly in the life sciences, the more we learn, the better we understand how little we really know. There remains a vast landscape to explore, with great questions remaining.

Now updated for its second edition, Population Genetics is the classic, accessible introduction to the concepts of population genetics. Combining traditional conceptual approaches with classical hypotheses and debates, the book equips students to understand a wide array of empirical studies that are based on the first principles of population genetics. Featuring a highly accessible introduction to coalescent theory, as well as covering the major conceptual advances in population genetics of the last two decades, the second edition now also includes end of chapter problem sets and revised coverage of recombination in the coalescent model, metapopulation extinction and recolonization, and the fixation index.

When and how did the brains of our hominin ancestors become human minds? When and why did our capacity for language or art, music and dance evolve? It is the contention of this pathbreaking and provocative book that it was the need for early humans to live in ever-larger social groups, and to maintain social relations over ever-greater distances - the ability to `think big' - that drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind. This `social brain hypothesis', put forward by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar, one of the authors of this book, can be tested against archaeological and fossil evidence, as archaeologists Clive Gamble and John Gowlett show in the second part of Thinking Big. Along the way, the three authors touch on subjects as diverse and diverting as the switch from finger-tip grooming to vocal grooming or the crucial importance of making fire for the lengthening of the social day. As this remarkable book shows, it seems we still inhabit social worlds that originated deep in our evolutionary past - by the fireside, in the hunt and on the grasslands of Africa.

This book presents cutting edge methods that provide insights into the pathways by which salt and water traverse cell membranes and flow in an orchestrated fashion amongst the many compartments of the body. It focuses on a number of molecular, cellular and whole animal studies that involve multiple physiological systems and shows how the internal milieu is regulated by multifactorial gene regulation, molecular signaling, and cell and organ architecture. Topics covered include: water channels, the urinary concentrating mechanism, angiotensin, the endothelin system, miRNAs and MicroRNA in osmoregulation, desert-adapted mammals, the giraffe kidney, mosquito Malpighian tubules, and circadian rhythms. The book highlights how different approaches to explaining the same physiological processes greatly increase our understanding of these fundamental processes. Greater integration of comparative, evolutionary and genetic animal models in basic science and medical science will improve our overall grasp of the mechanisms of sodium and water balance.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the major key concepts common to economics and evolutionary biology. Written by a group of philosophers of science, biologists and economists, it proposes analyses of the meaning of twenty-five concepts from the viewpoint respectively of economics and of evolutionary biology -each followed by a short synthesis emphasizing major discrepancies and commonalities. This analysis is surrounded by chapters exploring the nature of the analogy that connects evolution and economics, and chapters that summarize the major teachings of the analyses of the keywords. Most scholars in biology and in economics know that their science has something in common with the other one, for instance the notions of competition and resources. Textbooks regularly acknowledge that the two fields share some history - Darwin borrowing from Malthus the insistence on scarcity of resources, and then behavioral ecologists adapting and transforming game theory into evolutionary game theory in the 1980s, while Friedman famously alluded to a Darwinian process yielding the extant firms. However, the real extent of the similarities, the reasons why they are so close, and the limits and even the nature of the analogy connecting economics and biological evolution, remain inexplicit. This book proposes basis analyses that can sustain such explication. It is intended for researchers, grad students and master students in evolutionary and in economics, as well as in philosophy of science.

Evolutionary Psychiatry challenges a medical model which has supplied few effective answers to long-standing conundrums. A comprehensive introduction to the new science of Darwinian Psychiatry, this second edition includes important fresh material on a number of disorders, along with an entirely new chapter on research.
Anthony Stevens and John Price argue that psychiatric symptoms are manifestations of ancient adaptive strategies which are no longer necessarily appropriate but which can best be understood and treated in an evolutionary and developmental context. Particularly important are the Stevens and Price propose to account for the worldwide existence of mood disorders and schizophrenia, as well as offering solutions for such puzzles as paedophilia, sado masochism and the function of dreams.
Readily accessible to both the specialist and non-specialist reader, Evolutionary Psychiatry describes in detail the disorders and conditions commonly encountered in psychiatric practice and shows how evolutionary theory can account for their biological origins and functional nature.

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In this new fourth edition, Campbell has revised and updated his classic introduction to the field. "Human Evolution "synthesizes the major findings of modern research and theory and presents a complete and integrated account of the evolution of human beings. New developments in microbiology and recent fossil records are incorporated into the enormous range of this volume, with the resulting text as lucid and comprehensive as earlier editions. The fourth edition retains the thematic structure and organization of the third, with its cogent treatment of human variability and speciation, primate locomotion, and nonverbal communication and the evolution of language, supported by more than 150 detailed illustrations and an expanded and updated glossary and bibliography. As in prior editions, the book treats evolution as a concomitant development of the main behavioral and functional complexes of the genus "Homo" - among them motor control and locomotion, mastication and digestion, the senses and reproduction. It analyzes each complex in terms of its changing function, and continually stresses how the separate complexes evolve "interdependently" over the long course of the human journey. All these aspects are placed within the context of contemporary evolutionary and genetic theory, analyses of the varied extensions of the fossil record, and contemporary primatology and comparative morphology. The result is a primary text for undergraduate and graduate courses, one that will also serve as required reading for anthropologists, biologists, and nonspecialists with an interest in human evolution.

This book is a socio-philosophical journey across several aspects of our society's focus on individual freedom, taking cues from some of the most prominent thinkers of our time. The auhtor posits that the human quest for freedom (mostly dominated by the Western culture but by no means confined to the West) has reached its ultimate paradox of making contemporary humans fundamentally unable to act as ecosystems (thus cooperate and collaborate). They have become egosystems, completely centred on the attainment of their own individual satisfaction. The author sees this as the culmination of a rightful quest for self-affirmation, which has been a key driver of progress across human history and by no means a negative one. But the paradox is that such a human-centred notion of freedom and individual accomplishment results in a much reduced ability to operate in sync with others, at the time when mankind would need more cooperation, collaboration and selflessness to address the key challenges it faces (from climate change to inequalities). Through the examination of the broad and interdisciplinary themes typical of social philosophy and the most recent cultural studies, in direct confrontation with the thought of authors such as Lipovetsky and Bauman, Lasch and Beck, Ehrenberg and Han, this book examines shifts in cultural norms at the possible end of a millenary civilization.

Dysfunction of nuclear-cytoplasmic transport systems has been associated with many human diseases. Thus, understanding of how functional this transport system maintains, or through dysfunction fails to maintain remains the core question in cell biology. In eukaryotic cells, the nuclear envelope (NE) separates the genetic transcription in the nucleus from the translational machinery in the cytoplasm. Thousands of nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) embedded on the NE selectively mediate the bidirectional trafficking of macromolecules such as RNAs and proteins between these two cellular compartments. In this book, the authors integrate recent progress on the structure of NPC and the mechanism of nuclear-cytoplasmic transport system in vitro and in vivo.

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

The nature of science is to work on the boundaries between the known and the unknown. These boundaries shift as new methods are developed and as new concepts are elaborated (e.g., the theory of the gene, or more recently, the coalescence framework in population genetics). These tools allow us to address questions that were previously outside the realm of science, and, as a consequence, the boundary between the knowable and unknowable has shifted. A study of limits should reveal and clarify the boundaries and make sharper the set of questions. This book examines and analyzes these new limits as they are applied to evolutionary biology and population genetics. It does this by framing the analysis within four major classes of problems - establishing the fact of evolution; understanding the evolutionary pathways that led to today's biological world; mechanisms of evolutionary change (e.g., models of social behavior, sexual selection, macro evolution); and, finally, prediction.

After volume 33, this book series was replaced by the journal "Evolutionary Biology." Please visit www.springer.com/11692 for further information. In Volume 29, internationally acclaimed researchers address a broadrange of topics including the organization of eukaryotic genes, evolution of Drosophila mating systems, and evolutionary-developmental approaches to fin/limb transformation.

An Open Letters Review Best Book of the Year A leading expert in animal behavior takes us into the wild to better understand and manage our fears. Fear, honed by millions of years of natural selection, kept our ancestors alive. Whether by slithering away, curling up in a ball, or standing still in the presence of a predator, humans and other animals have evolved complex behaviors in order to survive the hazards the world presents. But, despite our evolutionary endurance, we still have much to learn about how to manage our response to danger. For more than thirty years, Daniel Blumstein has been studying animals’ fear responses. His observations lead to a firm conclusion: fear preserves security, but at great cost. A foraging flock of birds expends valuable energy by quickly taking flight when a raptor appears. And though the birds might successfully escape, they leave their food source behind. Giant clams protect their valuable tissue by retracting their mantles and closing their shells when a shadow passes overhead, but then they are unable to photosynthesize, losing the capacity to grow. Among humans, fear is often an understandable and justifiable response to sources of threat, but it can exact a high toll on health and productivity. Delving into the evolutionary origins and ecological contexts of fear across species, The Nature of Fear considers what we can learn from our fellow animals—from successes and failures. By observing how animals leverage alarm to their advantage, we can develop new strategies for facing risks without panic.

Astrobiology is a very broad interdisciplinary field covering the origin, evolution, distribution, and destiny of life in the universe, as well as the design and implementation of missions for solar system exploration. A review covering its complete spectrum has been missing at a level accessible even to the non-specialist.
The last section of the book consists of a supplement, including a glossary, notes, and tables, which represent highly condensed windows' into research ranging from basic sciences to earth and life sciences, as well as the humanities.
These additions should make The New Science of Astrobiology accessible to a wide readership: scientists, humanists, and the general reader will have an opportunity to participate in one of the most rewarding activities of contemporary culture.

What a pity it would have been if biologists had refused to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection, which has been essential in helping biologists understand a wide range of phenomena in many animal species. These days, to study any animal species while refusing to consider the evolved adaptive significance of their behavior would be considered pure folly--unless, of course, the species is "homo sapiens." Graduate students training to study this particular primate species may never take a single course in evolutionary theory, although they may take two undergraduate and up to four graduate courses in statistics. These methodologically sophisticated students then embark on a career studying human aggression, cooperation, mating behavior, family relationships, or altruism with little or no understanding of the general evolutionary forces and principles that shaped the behaviors they are investigating. This book hopes to redress that wrong.
It is one of the first to apply evolutionary theories to mainstream problems in personality and social psychology that are relevant to a wide range of important social phenomena, many of which have been shaped and molded by natural selection during the course of human evolution. These phenomena include selective biases that people have concerning how and why a variety of activities occur. For example:
* information exchanged during social encounters is initially perceived and interpreted;
* people are romantically attracted to some potential mates but not others;
* people often guard, protect, and work hard at maintaining their closest relationships;
* people form shifting and highly complicated coalitions with kin and close friends; and
* people terminate close, long-standing relationships.
"Evolutionary Social Psychology" begins to disentangle the complex, interwoven patterns of interaction that define our social lives and relationships.

For most of us, the story of mammal evolution starts after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, but over the last 20 years scientists have uncovered remarkable fossils and new technologies that have upended this story. In Beasts Before Us, palaeontologist Elsa Panciroli charts the emergence of the mammal lineage, the Synapsida, beginning with their murky split from the reptiles in the Carboniferous period, more than three-hundred million years ago; these animals made the world theirs long before the rise of dinosaurs. Travelling forward into the Permian and then Triassic periods, we learn how our ancient mammal ancestors evolved from large, hairy beasts with fast metabolisms to exploit miniaturisation, the key to unlocking the traits that define mammals as we now know them. Elsa criss-crosses the globe to explore the sites where discoveries are being made and to meet the people who make them. In Scotland, she traverses the desert dunes of prehistoric Moray, where quarry workers unearthed the footprints of Permian synapsids; in South Africa, she introduces us to animals that gave scientists the first hints that our furry kin evolved from a lineage of egg-laying burrowers; and in China, new and astounding fossil finds reveal a suite of ancient mammals including gliders, shovel-pawed moles, and flat-tailed swimmers. This brilliantly written book radically reframes the narrative of our mammalian ancestors, providing a counterpoint to the stereotype of cowering Mesozoic mammals hiding away from their mighty dinosaur overlords. The earliest mammals weren't just precursors - they were pioneers.

How better than to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book on human evolution than by challenging his theory with an updated version which instead places the female species at the centre of the theory. Sexual selection may have created us, but by refusing to take a good hard look at ourselves and our impact on the planet, we may be granting natural selection the power to eliminate us. A fascinating book which is both controversial and entertaining and which will deepen your understanding of human evolution like you would never have imagined. Heather deepens our understanding of human evolution by including genetic discoveries that were unavailable in 1871 when Darwin wrote The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. She offers an updated version of the theory by viewing the courtship dance through a female lens. Darwin was correct in acknowledging that sexual selection is driven by female choice, but he was seriously mistaken in granting a female no active influence and depicting her as passively succumbing to the charms of the triumphant male who had bested another in a competition to win her favour or to the one who had tickled her fancy with his feathers. In the process of her doctoral research, Heather analysed hundreds of hours of tape-recorded interviews in which women identified the traits that made specific men in their lives sexually and reproductively attractive. Their insights help us make sense of recent studies that leave researchers scratching their heads when the species they study don't appear to be playing by the rules, according to Darwin. We are in the midst of two immediate existential crises-climate change and growing economic inequality-caused by human behaviour. If we are to be successful in addressing these challenges, Remoff argues that we need to come to terms with the double-edged sword at the heart of all that makes us special. Who are we? What selection pressures forged our species specific traits? Of all the trillions of species that have ever existed on this planet only one, Homo sapiens, has mastered language, the art of symbolic communication. Did female passions play a role in triggering our way with words? Absolutely. Our choice of reproductive partners shaped not only language ability but also many of the other traits that define us today.

In this book Graeme Snooks has set himself the highly ambitious task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The author also employs his dynamic strategy model to discuss future outcomes for human society, controversially arguing that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth-inducing technological change is both necessary and liberating. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

Graeme Snooks has set himself the ambitious and original task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The book outlines and explains the biological development of life, going on to develop a fully dynamic model, not just of genetic change, but of the broader process of life on earth. Snooks also provides a critical review of current interpretations about the course of history and the forces driving it. Finally, he develops an entirely new interpretation of the dynamics of human society, arguing that the rise and fall of societies is an outcome of the development and exhaustion of these strategies.
This dynamic strategy model is employed to discuss likely future outcomes for society. Controversially, Snooks argues that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth--including technological change--is both natural and necessary. "The Dynamic Society" demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

This text incorporates modern molecular knowledge of the structure and regulation of genes into an evolutionary framework, stressing the importance of genomic integration as a selectable feature in the evolution of multicellular phenotypes. It reinterprets important subjects in the new framework, including transposable elements, epigenetics, the evolution of sex, phenotypic plasticity and the evolution and regulation of longevity assurance systems.