Biological homogenization is the dominant process shaping the future global biosphere. As global transportation becomes faster and more frequent, it is inevitable that biotic intermixing will increase. Unique local biotas will become extinct only to be replaced by already widespread biotas that can tolerate human activities. This process is affecting all aspects of our world: language, economies, and ecosystems alike. The ultimate outcome is the loss of uniqueness and the growth of uniformity. In this way, fast food restaurants exist in Moscow and Java Sparrows breed on Hawaii. Biological homogenization qualifies as a global environmental catastrophe. The Earth has never witnessed such a broad and complete reorganization of species distributions.

... an adult poet is simply an individual in a state of arrested development-in brief, a sort of moron. Just as all of us, in utero, pass through a stage in which we are tadpoles, ... so all of us pass through a state, in our nonage, when we are poets. A youth of seventeen who is not a poet is simply a donkey: his development has been arrested even anterior to that of the tadpole. But a man of fifty who still writes poetry is either an unfortunate who has never developed, intellectually, beyond his teens, or a conscious buffoon who pretends to be something he isn't-something far younger and juicier than he actually is. -H. 1. Mencken, High and Ghostly Matters, Prejudices: Fourth Series (1924) Where would evolution be, Without this thing, heterochrony? -M. L. McKinney (1987) One of the joys of working in a renascent field is that it is actually possible to keep up with the literature. So it is with mixed emotions that we heterochronists (even larval forms like myself) view the recent "veritable explosion of interest in heterochrony" (in Gould's words in this volume). On the positive side, it is ob viously necessary and desirable to extend and expand the inquiry; but one regrets that already we are beginning to talk past, lose track of, and even ignore each other as we carve out individual interests."

... an adult poet is simply an individual in a state of arrested development-in brief, a sort of moron. Just as all of us, in utero, pass through a stage in which we are tadpoles, ... so all of us pass through a state, in our nonage, when we are poets. A youth of seventeen who is not a poet is simply a donkey: his development has been arrested even anterior to that of the tadpole. But a man of fifty who still writes poetry is either an unfortunate who has never developed, intellectually, beyond his teens, or a conscious buffoon who pretends to be something he isn't-something far younger and juicier than he actually is. -H. 1. Mencken, High and Ghostly Matters, Prejudices: Fourth Series (1924) Where would evolution be, Without this thing, heterochrony? -M. L. McKinney (1987) One of the joys of working in a renascent field is that it is actually possible to keep up with the literature. So it is with mixed emotions that we heterochronists (even larval forms like myself) view the recent "veritable explosion of interest in heterochrony" (in Gould's words in this volume). On the positive side, it is ob viously necessary and desirable to extend and expand the inquiry; but one regrets that already we are beginning to talk past, lose track of, and even ignore each other as we carve out individual interests."

Biological homogenization is the dominant process shaping the future global biosphere. As global transportation becomes faster and more frequent, it is inevitable that biotic intermixing will increase. Unique local biotas will become extinct only to be replaced by already widespread biotas that can tolerate human activities. This process is affecting all aspects of our world: language, economies, and ecosystems alike. The ultimate outcome is the loss of uniqueness and the growth of uniformity. In this way, fast food restaurants exist in Moscow and Java Sparrows breed on Hawaii. Biological homogenization qualifies as a global environmental catastrophe. The Earth has never witnessed such a broad and complete reorganization of species distributions.

How will patterns of human interaction with the earth's eco-system impact on biodiversity loss over the long term--not in the next ten or even fifty years, but on the vast temporal scale be dealt with by earth scientists? This volume brings together data from population biology, community ecology, comparative biology, and paleontology to answer this question.

Roy L. McKinney reflects on his early life growing up on the family farm in the Young Cove near Bakersville, North Carolina. His charming stories include memories of farm chores, life outdoors, church, neighbors, and of course his family.