Biased Embryos and Evolution

by Wallace Arthur

• ISBN13: 9780521833820
• ISBN10: 0521833825
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-06-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What determines the direction of evolutionary change? This book provides a revolutionary answer to this question. Many biologists, from Darwin's day to our own, have been satisfied with the answer 'natural selection'. Professor Wallace Arthur is not. He takes the controversial view that biases in the ways that embryos can be altered are just as important as natural selection in determining the directions that evolution has taken, including the one that led to the origin of humans. This argument forms the core of the book. However, in addition, the book summarizes other important issues relating to how embryonic (and post-embryonic) development evolves. Written in an easy, conversational style, this is the first book for students and the general reader that provides an account of the exciting new field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology ('Evo-Devo' to its proponents).

Author Biography

Wallace Arthur is in the Department of Zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. The microscopic horse

2. What 'drives' evolution?

3. Darwin: pluralism with a single core

4. How to build a body

5. A brief history of the last billion years

6. Preamble to the quiet revolution

7. The return of the organism

8. Possible creatures

9. The beginnings of bias

10. A deceptively simple question

11. Development's twin arrows

12. Action and reaction

13. Evolvability: organisms in bits

14. Back to the trees

15. Stripes and spots

16. Towards 'The Inclusive Synthesis'

17. Social creatures

Glossary

References.