In the Light of Evolution: Essays from the Laboratory and Field

by Losos, Jonathan

• ISBN13: 9780981519494
• ISBN10: 0981519490
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-03
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman

Summary

In the Light of Evolution is a collection of essays by leading scientists, and includes essays by science writer Carl Zimmer, historian Janet Browne, and a foreword by journalist David Quammen. As Quammen says in his foreword, the book collects "reports from the field, plainspoken descriptions of lifetime obsessions, hard-earned bits of wisdom, and works in progress, pried loose from some of the most interesting, eminent researchers in evolutionary biology..." It is a book "for readers who are fascinated by evolutionary biology and who desire to understand better the day-by-day, speciesby-species, ecosystem-by-ecosystem texture of its practice as a scientific profession." The book is intended for anyone with an interest in evolution, and it can be used in a wide variety of courses, including major's and non-major's introductory biology and evolution classes.

Author Biography

Jonathan Losos is Monique and Philip Lehner Professor for the Study of Latin America at Harvard University. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution and the David Starr Jordan Prize from the American Society of Naturalists. He is the author of Lizards in the Evolutionary Tree: Ecology, Evolution, and Adaptive Radiation of Anolis (University of California Press).

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Charles Darwin: Traveller, Author, and Naturalist	p. 1
Darwin in the Pumpkin Patch or Bay Area Travels with Charlie	p. 27
Darwin Under the Microscope: Witnessing Evolution in Microbes	p. 41
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Fortuitous: Brains, Brawn, and the Evolution of Human Bipedalism	p. 55
Detective Work in the West Indies: Integrating Historical and Experimental Approaches to Study the Evolutionary Diversification of Island Lizards	p. 73
Patterns, Process, and the Parable of the Coffeepot Incident: Arms Races Between Newts and Snakes from Landscapes to Molecules	p. 93
The Herbivore's Dilemma: Never Enough Nitrogen	p. 121
My Island Life	p. 135
Diversity in the Weapons of Sexual Selection: Horn Evolution in Dung Beetles	p. 149
Sex, Society, and Peacock Tails: Sexual Selection from Darwin to Modern Times	p. 171
Sexual Selection: A Tutorial from the Túngara Frog	p. 185
Guppies and the Empirical Study of Adaptation	p. 205
O Sting, Where Is Thy Death? The Evolution of Altruism	p. 233
King Midas and His Many Extremely Young Species: Studies on Speciation in Crater Lake Cichlid Fishes in Nicaraguan Crater Lakes	p. 257
From Darwin to DNA: The Genetic Basis of Color Adaptations	p. 277
Fossil Discovery and the Origin of Tetrapods	p. 297
Longhorns, Whitetails, and the Evolution of "Wild"	p. 311
Biographies of Essayists	p. 323
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