Bard Principles of Evolution

Systems, Species, and the History of Life
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-351-85476-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 391 Seiten

Principles of Evolution considers evolution in the context of systems biology, a contemporary approach for handling biological complexity. Evolution needs this systems perspective for three reasons. First, most activity in living organisms is driven by complex networks of proteins and this has direct implications, particularly for understanding evo-devo and for seeing how variation is initiated. Second, it provides the natural language for discussing phylogenetic trees. Third, evolutionary change involves events at levels ranging from the genome to the ecosystem and systems biology provides a context for integrating material of this complexity.

Understanding evolution means, on the one hand, describing the history of life and, on the other, making sense of the principles that drove that history. The solution adopted here is to make the science of evolution the primary focus of the book and place the various parts of the history of life in the context of the research that unpicks it. This means that the history is widely distributed across the text. This concise textbook assumes that the reader has a fair amount of biological knowledge and gives equal weight to all the major themes of evolution: the fossil record, phylogenetics, evodevo, and speciation. Principles of Evolution will therefore be an interesting and thought-provoking read for honors-level undergraduates, and graduates working in the biological sciences.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bard, Jonathan

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Evolutionsbiologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

SECTION 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO EVOLUTION
1. Approaching Evolution
2. A Potted History of Evolutionary Science
3. Life Today: Species, Diversity, and Classification

SECTION 2: THE EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION
4. The Fossil Record
5. Darwinian Descent With Modification: Evolutionary Taxonomy and Cladistics
6. The Anatomical Evidence for Vertebrate Evolution: From Fish to Birds
7. The Anatomical Evidence for Vertebrate Evolution: Mammals
8. The Genomic Evidence for Evolution
9. The First Three Billion Years of Life: From the First Universal Common Ancestor to the Last Eukaryote Common Ancestor and Beyond
10. Evo-devo 1: Embryos
11. Evo-devo 2: The Evidence From Functional Homologies

SECTION 3: THE MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION
12. Variation 1: Populations and Genes
13. Variation 2: Clades and Networks
14. Adaptation, Fitness, and Selection
15. Speciation
16. Human Evolution
17. Conclusions

APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Systems Biology
Appendix 2. A History of Evolutionary Thought
Appendix 3. Rocks, Dates, and Fossils
Appendix 4. Evolution Versus Creationism