* A TIMES BEST SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR *From the prize-winning author of Adventures in the Anthropocene, the astonishing story of how culture enabled us to become the most successful species on Earth'A wondrous, visionary work' Tim Flannery, author of The Weather MakersHumans are a planet-altering force.
'A clear and engaging explanation of one of the hottest fields in science' Steven Pinker'A hugely important book' Matt Ridley, The TimesOne of the world's top behavioural geneticists argues that we need a radical rethink about what makes us who we areThe blueprint for our individuality lies in the 1% of DNA that differs between people.
A dazzling tour of evolution in action that sheds light on one of the greatest debates in scienceThe natural world is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times.
By dividing the creation of matter, energy, life, and mind into three big bangs, Holmes Rolston III brings into focus a history of the universe that respects both scientific discovery and the potential presence of an underlying intelligence.
This book places into modern context the information by which North American mammalian paleontologists recognize, divide, calibrate, and discuss intervals of mammalian evolution known as North American Land Mammal Ages.
The Biology of Sharks and Rays is a comprehensive resource on the biological and physiological characteristics of the cartilaginous fishes: sharks, rays, and chimaeras.
All living things on earth-from individual species to entire ecosystems-have evolved through time, and evolution is the acknowledged framework of modern biology.
By investigating a simple question, a philosopher of science and a molecular biologist offer an accessible understanding of microbial communities and a motivating theory for future research in community ecology.
Traditional ecological approaches to species evolution have frequently studied too few species, relatively small areas, and relatively short time spans.
"e;Engineering"e; has firmly taken root in the entangled bank of biology even as proposals to remake the living world have sent tendrils in every direction, and at every scale.
From the Scopes "e;Monkey Trial"e; of 1925 to the court ruling against the Dover Area School Board's proposed intelligent design curriculum in 2005, few scientific topics have engendered as much controversy-or grabbed as many headlines-as evolution.
The study of the chimpanzee, one of the human species' closest relatives, has led scientists to exciting discoveries about evolution, behavior, and cognition over the past half century.
The vertebrate fossil record extends back more than 500 million years, and bonebeds-localized concentrations of the skeletal remains of vertebrate animals-help unlock the secrets of this long history.
Prior to the First World War, more people learned of evolutionary theory from the voluminous writings of Charles Darwin's foremost champion in Germany, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), than from any other source, including the writings of Darwin himself.
With more than two hundred species distributed from California through Texas and across most of mainland Mexico, Central and South America, and islands in the Caribbean Sea, the Phyllostomidae bat family (American leaf-nosed bats) is one of the world's most diverse mammalian families.
Making Sense of Evolution explores contemporary evolutionary biology, focusing on the elements of theories-selection, adaptation, and species-that are complex and open to multiple possible interpretations, many of which are incompatible with one another and with other accepted practices in the discipline.
Paleobiology struggled for decades to influence our understanding of evolution and the history of life because it was stymied by a focus on microevolution and an incredibly patchy fossil record.
Life on earth is characterized by three striking phenomena that demand explanation: adaptation-the marvelous fit between organism and environment; diversity-the great variety of organisms; and complexity-the enormous intricacy of their internal structure.
Along with reproduction, balancing energy expenditure with the limits of resource acquisition is essential for both a species and a population to survive.
In this lavishly illustrated, first-ever book on how spider webs are built, function, and evolved, William Eberhard provides a comprehensive overview of spider functional morphology and behavior related to web building, and of the surprising physical agility and mental abilities of orb weavers.
Although modern cell biology is often considered to have arisen following World War II in tandem with certain technological and methodological advances-in particular, the electron microscope and cell fractionation-its origins actually date to the 1830s and the development of cytology, the scientific study of cells.
Evolutionary maternal effects occur whenever a mother's phenotypic traits directly affect her offspring's phenotype, independent of the offspring's genotype.
Darwin's concept of natural selection has been exhaustively studied, but his secondary evolutionary principle of sexual selection remains largely unexplored and misunderstood.
The natural world is infinitely complex and hierarchically structured, with smaller units forming the components of progressively larger systems: molecules make up cells, cells comprise tissues and organs that are, in turn, parts of individual organisms, which are united into populations and integrated into yet more encompassing ecosystems.
From eminent biologists like Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin to famous authors such as Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories, many people have asked, "e;Why do zebras have stripes?
From a small island in the Baltic Sea to the large tropical islands of Borneo and Madagascar, Messages from Islands is a global tour of these natural, water-bound laboratories.
