A facsimile of the 1859 first edition of Charles Darwin's classic work, On the Origin of Species.

This book examines how the growing knowledge of the huge range of protist-, animal-, and plant-bacterial interactions, whether in shared ecosystems or intimate symbioses, is fundamentally altering our understanding of biology. The establishment and maintenance of these interactions and their contributions to the health and survival of all partners relies on continuous cell-to-cell communication between them. This dialogue may be concerned with all aspects of the biology of both partners. The book includes chapters devoted to exploring, explaining, and exposing these dialogues across a broad spectrum of plant and animal eukaryotes to a broad field of biologists. Key Features Explores the nature of the interactions between eukaryotic hosts and their microbial symbionts Examines the links between prostist, animal, and plant evolution and microbial communities Reviews specific taxa and the microbial diversity associated with these taxa Illustrates the role microbes play in the physiology and etiology of several model species Includes chapters by an international team of leading scholars

Darwin's discovery of evolution is as celebrated as Galileo's laws of motion or Newton's discovery of gravity. But this was only half the story. Not content to prove that evolution had happened, Darwin sought to convey its full humbling implications. Thus he formulated the theory of natural selection. Contrary to popular belief, this theory ran exactly counter to scientific reason and was consequently rejected by the scientific community of the time. This wasn't the only reason Darwin's critics recoiled. His theory robbed the ruling orders of any easy recourse to consolatory tales of nature's harmony and design. The fate of his ideas, for the time being at least, would be left to the heretics he inspired in other domains. Darwin's radical thought anticipated Nietzsche's Godless philosophy, Marx's class-based economics and Freud's psychological theories of the unconscious. It would take a further 80 years for Darwinism to become accepted as mainstream science, but it came at the expense of its counter-scientific core. For the remainder of the twentieth century a popularized Darwinism would become the touchstone for backlash movements in philosophy, economics and psychology-disciplines he once so radicalized. This is the story of how the most revolutionary idea of the nineteenth century became the most reactionary idea of the twentieth.

This volume critically reviews all previously published work of parasites that interact with krill (order Euphausiacea) updating misconceptions and summarizing the diversity of epibionts, ectoparasites, mesoparasites and endoparasites that interact with these crustaceans. As far as we know, there is a lack of books about parasites of marine crustaceans not targeted to fisheries and aquaculture. Thus, this would be the most complete and integrative monograph of parasites of marine zooplankton and micro nektonic organisms worldwide. Krill form immense aggregations and serve as food for multiple planktonic and nektonic predators playing a crucial role in pelagic food web. Besides, several species are also used for human consumption. For these reasons there is a growing concern about the health issues that krill parasites may impose on other species, including us. This book provides a comprehensive review of parasites of a crustacean order that can extrapolate to potential parasites in other crustacean taxa worldwide.

The Tropics are home to the greatest biodiversity in the world, but tropical species are at risk due to anthropogenic activities, mainly land use change, habitat loss, invasive species, and pathogens. Over the past 20 years, the avian malaria and related parasites (Order: Haemosporida) systems have received increased attention in the tropical regions from a diverse array of research perspectives. However, to date no attempts have been made to synthesize the available information and to propose new lines of research. This book provides such a synthesis by not only focusing on the antagonistic interactions, but also by providing conceptual chapters on topics going from avian haemosporidians life cycles and study techniques, to chapters addressing current concepts on ecology and evolution. For example, a chapter synthesizing basic biogeography and ecological niche model concepts is presented, followed by one on the island biogeography of avian haemosporidians. Accordingly, researchers and professionals interested in these antagonistic interaction systems will find both an overview of the field with special emphasis on the tropics, and access to the necessary conceptual framework for various topics in ecology, evolution and systematics. Given its conceptual perspective, the book will appeal not only to readers interested in avian haemosporidians, but also to those more generally interested in the ecology, evolution and systematics of host-parasite interactions.

This book traces the history of life-concepts, with a focus on the vegetable souls of Aristotle, investigating how they were interpreted and eventually replaced by evolutionary biology. Philosophers have long struggled with the relationship between physics, physiology, and psychology, asking questions of organization, purpose, and agency. For two millennia, the vegetable soul, nutrition, and reproduction were commonly used to understand basic life and connect it to "higher" animal and vegetable life. Cartesian dualism and mechanism destroyed this bridge and left biology without an organizing principle until Darwin. Modern biology parallels Aristotelian vegetable life-concepts, but remains incompatible with the animal, rational, subjective, and spiritual life-concepts that developed through the centuries. Recent discoveries call for a second look at Aristotle's ideas - though not their medieval descendants. Life remains an active, chemical process whose cause, identity, and purpose is self-perpetuation.

"Building the Most Complex Structure on Earth" provides readers with a basic biological education an easy and understandable introduction into a new epigenetic theory of development and evolution. This is a novel theory that describes the epigenetic mechanisms of the development and evolution of animals and explains the colossal evolution and diversification of animals from a new post-genetic perspective. Modern biology has demonstrated the existence of a common genetic toolkit in the animal kingdom, but neither the number of genes nor the evolution of new genes is responsible for the development and evolution of animals. The failure to understand how the same genetic toolkit is used to produce millions of widely different animal forms remains a perplexing conundrum in modern biology. The novel theory shows that the development and evolution of the animal kingdom are functions of epigenetic mechanisms, which are the competent users of the genetic toolkit.
Provides a comprehensive view of the epigenetic aspects of reproduction, development, and evolution.Highly rigorous, but simple enough for readers with only a basic knowledge of biology.

"Hydrogenosomes and Mitosomes: Mitochondria of Anaerobic Eukaryotes" provides a summary of the current knowledge of these organelles which occur in unicellular, often parasitic organisms, including human pathogens. These organelles exhibit a variety of structures and functions. This work describes properties such as protein import, structure, metabolism, adaptation, proteome and their role in drug activation and resistance. Further topics include organelle evolution and biogenesis.

What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory was the ability to flex their reproductive and social strategies in response to changing environmental conditions. Exploring new cross-disciplinary research that links this capacity to critical changes in the organization of the primate brain, Social DNA presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins - challenging models that trace our beginnings to traits shaped by ancient hunting economies, or to genetic platforms shared with contemporary apes.

This book offers a vision of how evolutionary life processes can be modelled. It presents a mathematical description that can be used not only for the full evolution of life on Earth from RNA to modern human societies, but also the possible evolution of life on exoplanets, thus leading to SETI, the current Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.   The main premise underlying this mathematical theory is that the Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) can be applied as a key stochastic process to model the evolution of life. In the resulting Evo-SETI Theory, the life of any living thing (a cell, an animal, a human, a civilization of humans, or even an ET civilization) is represented by a b-lognormal, i.e., a lognormal probability density function starting at a precise instant (b, birth) then increasing up to a peak time, then decreasing to senility time and then continuing as a straight line down to the time of death. Using this theory, Claudio Maccone arrives at remarkable hypotheses on the development of life and civilizations, the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and when computers will take over the reins from us humans (Singularity). The book develops the mathematical Evo-SETI Theory by integrating a set of articles that the author has published in various journals on Astrobiology and Astronautical Research.

Evolution is the single unifying principle of biology and core to everything in the life sciences. More than a century of work by scientists from across the biological spectrum has produced a detailed history of life across the phyla and explained the mechanisms by which new species form. This textbook covers both this history and the mechanisms of speciation; it also aims to provide students with the background needed to read the research literature on evolution. Students will therefore learn about cladistics, molecular phylogenies, the molecular-genetical basis of evolutionary change including the important role of protein networks, symbionts and holobionts, together with the core principles of developmental biology. The book also includes introductory appendices that provide background knowledge on, for example, the diversity of life today, fossils, the geology of Earth and the history of evolutionary thought. Key Features Summarizes the origins of life and the evolution of the eukaryotic cell and of Urbilateria, the last common ancestor of invertebrates and vertebrates. Reviews the history of life across the phyla based on the fossil record and computational phylogenetics. Explains evo-devo and the generation of anatomical novelties. Illustrates the roles of small populations, genetic drift, mutation and selection in speciation. Documents human evolution using the fossil record and evidence of dispersal across the world leading to the emergence of modern humans.

Originally published in 1913, The Theory of Evolution in the Light of Facts examines the theory of Descent; the book is a time capsule of information, providing a record of the explorations into Darwinian theory during the first half of the 20th century. The book examines the contradictions which arose between technical work of the period and the assumptions surrounding the theory of evolution. The book aims to address that which is considered 'certain' or 'probable' from postulation in order to explain and clearly define the theory of evolution. It does this through hypothesising on the development of animals and plants using the systems of Darwin and Lamarck. This book will be of interest to anthropologists and historians of natural science alike.

This innovative collection of original essays focuses on the ways in which geography, gender, race, and religion influenced the reception of Darwinism in the English-speaking world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The contributions to this volume collectively illustrate the importance of local social, physical, and religious arrangements, while revealing that neither distance from Darwin's home at Down nor size of community greatly influenced how various regions responded to Darwinism. Essays spanning the world from Great Britain and North America to Australia and New Zealand explore the various meanings for Darwinism in these widely separated locales, while other chapters focus on the difference it made in the debates over evolution.

Important breakthroughs have recently been made in our understanding of the cognitive and sensory abilities of pollinators, such as how pollinators perceive, memorize, and react to floral signals and rewards; how they work flowers, move among inflorescences, and transport pollen. These new findings have obvious implications for the evolution of floral display and diversity, but most existing publications are scattered across a wide range of journals in very different research traditions. This book brings together outstanding scholars from many different fields of pollination biology, integrating the work of neuroethologists and evolutionary ecologists to present a multidisciplinary approach.

In Blind Evolution?: The Nature of Humanity and the Origin of Life, Professor David Frost challenges the dominant worldview derived from Darwin's evolutionary theories and perpetuated in Richard Dawkins's atheistic propaganda for Neo-Darwinism: that our universe has 'at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference'. Frost deploys recent findings from a range of scientific studies that shake Neo-Darwinism to its foundation. Citing entertaining examples, from the inner workings of a single cell to the animal kingdom at large, from elephants and giraffes to the Japanese pufferfish, Frost maintains that Darwinian premises are wholly inadequate to engage with life or to provide a framework for our experiences of joy and sorrow, the problem of suffering, and the stark realities of good and evil. Reflecting on the nature of existence, Frost points to a mode of human understanding parallel to scientific enquiry through the path of 'vision' accessed via the nous (or spiritual intellect). He argues that 'vision' is as much essential to our understanding of creation as is scientific enquiry - reality is best approached through a complementary partnership of both.

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. Today this question is as fascinating as ever, especially since religion has moved to the centre of socio-political relationships. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology. They employ accepted research results that remove all need for speculation. Decisive factors for the earliest demonstrations of religion are thus territorial behaviour and ranking, coping with existential fears, and conflict solution with the help of rituals. These in turn, in a process of cultural evolution, are shown to be the roots of the historical and contemporary religions.

Playback is the technique of rebroadcasting natural or synthetic signals to animals and observing their response. The ability to present a putative signal in isolation, without the potential confounding effects of other activities of the signaller, is the main reason for the depth and range of our knowledge of communication systems. To date, playback of sound signals has predominated, but playback of electric signals and even video playback of visual signals suggests that playback will become just as prevalent in studies of communication in other sensory modalities. This book is one of the outcomes of a workshop on playback held at Thombridge Hall in the Peak District National Park, England during August 1991. There were two reasons for organising the workshop. First, the considerable and lively debate in the literature about the design and analysis of playback experiments -the pseudoreplication debate -was in danger of generating more heat than light. A workshop forum seemed the obvious place to clarify and, if possible, resolve the debate. Second, with the number of new playback and analysis techniques increasing rapidly, it seemed an opportune moment to discuss these techniques and to review some rapidly developing areas of interest in sound communication.

This highly interdisciplinary book discusses the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution, against the background of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Among the central themes is the seeming contradiction between the second law of thermodynamics and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems. As the author shows, this paradox has its resolution in the information content of the Gibbs free energy that enters the biosphere from outside sources. Another focus of the book is the role of information in human cultural evolution, which is also discussed with the origin of human linguistic abilities. One of the final chapters addresses the merging of information technology and biotechnology into a new discipline - bioinformation technology.This third edition has been updated to reflect the latest scientific and technological advances. Professor Avery makes use of the perspectives of famous scholars such as Professor Noam Chomsky and Nobel Laureates John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edward Moser to cast light on the evolution of human languages. The mechanism of cell differentiation, and the rapid acceleration of information technology in the 21st century are also discussed.With various research disciplines becoming increasingly interrelated today, Information Theory and Evolution provides nuance to the conversation between bioinformatics, information technology, and pertinent social-political issues. This book is a welcome voice in working on the future challenges that humanity will face as a result of scientific and technological progress.

"Biodiversity" refers to the variety of life. It is now agreed that there is a "biodiversity crisis", corresponding to extinction rates of species that may be 1000 times what is thought to be "normal". Biodiversity science has a higher profile than ever, with the new Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services involving more than 120 countries and 1000s of scientists. At the same time, the discipline is re-evaluating its foundations - including its philosophy and even core definitions. The value of biodiversity is being debated. In this context, the tree of life ("phylogeny") is emerging as an important way to look at biodiversity, with relevance cutting across current areas of concern - from the question of resilience within ecosystems, to conservation priorities for globally threatened species - while capturing the values of biodiversity that have been hard to quantify, including resilience and maintaining options for future generations. This increased appreciation of the importance of conserving "phylogenetic diversity", from microbial communities in the human gut to global threatened species, has inevitably resulted in an explosion of new indices, methods, and case studies. This book recognizes and responds to the timely opportunity for synthesis and sharing experiences in practical applications. The book recognizes that the challenge of finding a synthesis, and building shared concepts and a shared toolbox, requires both an appreciation of the past and a look into the future. Thus, the book is organized as a flow from history, concepts and philosophy, through to methods and tools, and followed by selected case studies. A positive vision and plan of action emerges from these chapters, that includes coping with inevitable uncertainties, effectively communicating the importance of this "evolutionary heritage" to the public and to policy-makers, and ultimately contributing to biodiversity conservation policy from local to global scales.

This book addresses central questions in the evolution of language: where it came from; how and why it evolved; how it came to be culturally transmitted; and how languages diversified. It does so from the perspective of the latest work in linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, and deploys the latest methods and theories to probe into the origins and subsequent development of the only species that has languages.

This book addresses several key issues in the biological study of death with the intent of capturing their genealogy, the assumptions and presuppositions they make, and the way that they open specific new research avenues. The book is divided into two sections: the first considers physiology and the second evolutionary biology. Huneman explains that biologists in the late 1950s put forth a research framework that evolutionarily accounts for death in terms of either an effect of the weakness of natural selection or a by-product of natural selection for early reproduction. He illustrates how the biology of death is a central field and that studying it provides insight into the way that the epistemic structure of this knowledge has been constituted, persists until now, and may conflict with some traditional philosophical ideas.

Originally published in 1995, Antievolutionism Before World War I is the first volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume brings together original sources from the beginning of the twentieth century, critiquing Darwinism and the theory of natural selection. The sources included in this collection debate the role of natural selection in evolution, as well wider aspects of Darwinian theory from a creationist stance. The essays feature prominent figures from the period in the fields of naturalism, philosophy and theology and includes contributions from Alexander Patterson, Eberhard Dennert, Luther Tracy Townsend and George Frederick Wright. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, geology and history.

Originally published in 1995, Creation-Evolution Debates is the second volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume comprises eight debates from the early 1920s and 1930s between prominent evolutionists and creationists of the time. The original sources detail debates that took place either orally or in print, as well as active debates between creationists over the true meaning of Genesis I. The essays in this volume feature prominent discussions between the likes of Edwin Grant Conklin, Henry Fairfield Osbourne and William Jennings Bryan, John Roach Francis and Charles Francis Potter, George McCready Price and Joseph McCabe and William Bell Riley versus Charles Smith, amongst many others. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, and history.

Originally published in 1995, The Antievolution Works of Arthur I. Brown is the third volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America. The volume brings together original sources from the prominent surgeon and creationist Arthur I. Brown. Brown discredited evolution as it was contrary to the 'clear statements of scripture' which he believed infallible, stating evolution instead to be both a hoax and 'a weapon of Satan'. The works included focus on Brown's polemic through his early twentieth century writings. The essays focus on his scientific investigations and provide a negative commentary upon Darwin's theory of evolution instead focusing on biblical explanations for evolution. As a scientist Brown's unique view of evolution from a creationist and scientific viewpoint provides a fascinating lens through which to view the historical debates surrounding evolution and provides a unique insight into how Darwinian theory affected both the scientific and religious communities. This book will be of interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy and history.

Originally published in 1995, The Antievolution Pamphlets of William Bell Riley is the fourth volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume comprises of nine antievolution pamphlets written by William Bell Riley during the interwar years. The pamphlets detail Riley's antievolutionist ideas and activities, and the book attempts to place the work in the larger contexts of Riley's career, as well as discussing the pamphlets included. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, and history.