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Thoroughly updated and reorganized, Strickberger's Evolution, Fourth Edition, presents biology students with a basic introduction to prevailing knowledge and ideas about evolution, discussing how, why, and where the world and its organisms changed throughout history. Keeping consistent with Strickberger's engaging writing style, the authors carefully unfold a broad range of philosophical and historical topics that frame the theories of today including cosmological and geological evolution and its impact on life, the origins of life on earth, the development of molecular pathways from genetic systems to organismic morphology and function, the evolutionary history of organisms from microbes to animals, and the numerous molecular and populational concepts that explain the earth's dynamic evolution. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.
Bones and Cartilage provides the most in-depth review and synthesis assembled on the topic, across all vertebrates. It examines the function, development and evolution of bone and cartilage as tissues, organs and skeletal systems. It describes how bone and cartilage develop in embryos and are maintained in adults, how bone is repaired when we break a leg, or regenerates when a newt grows a new limb, or a lizard a new tail. The second edition of Bones and Cartilage includes the most recent knowledge of molecular, cellular, developmental and evolutionary processes, which are integrated to outline a unified discipline of developmental and evolutionary skeletal biology. Additionally, coverage in...
A discussion of the neural crest and neural crest cells, dealing with their discovery, their embryological and evolutionary origins, their cellular derivatives - in both agnathan and jawed vertebrates or gnathostomes - and the broad topics of migration and differentiation in normal development. The book also considers what goes wrong when development is misdirected by mutations, or by exposure of embryos to exogenous agents such as drugs, alcohol, or excess vitamin A, and includes discussions of tumours and syndromes and birth defects involving neural crest cells.
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was based on the observation that there is variation between individuals within the same species. This fundamental observation is a central concept in evolutionary biology. However, variation is only rarely treated directly. It has remained peripheral to the study of mechanisms of evolutionary change. The explosion of knowledge in genetics, developmental biology, and the ongoing synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology has made it possible for us to study the factors that limit, enhance, or structure variation at the level of an animals' physical appearance and behavior. Knowledge of the significance of variability is crucial to th...
Although evolutionary developmental biology is a new field, its origins lie in the last century; the search for connections between embryonic development (ontogeny) and evolutionary change (phylogeny) has been a long one. Evolutionary developmental biology is however more than just a fusion of the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. It forges a unification of genomic, developmental, organismal, population and natural selection approaches to evolutionary change. It is concerned with how developmental processes evolve; how evolution produces novel structures, functions and behaviours; and how development, evolution and ecology are integrated to bring about and stabilize evolution...
Covering more than 50 central terms and concepts in entries written by leading experts, this book offers an overview of this new subdiscipline of biology, providing the core insights and ideas that show how embryonic development relates to life-history evolution, adaptation, and responses to and integration with environmental factors.
Illuminating the processes and patterns that link genotype to phenotype, epigenetics seeks to explain features, characters, and developmental mechanisms that can only be understood in terms of interactions that arise above the level of the gene. With chapters written by leading authorities, this volume offers a broad integrative survey of epigenetics. Approaching this complex subject from a variety of perspectives, it presents a broad, historically grounded view that demonstrates the utility of this approach for understanding complex biological systems in development, disease, and evolution. Chapters cover such topics as morphogenesis and organ formation, conceptual foundations, and cell differentiation, and together demonstrate that the integration of epigenetics into mainstream developmental biology is essential for answering fundamental questions about how phenotypic traits are produced.
In this authoritative three-volume reference work, leading researchers bring together current work to provide a comprehensive analysis of the comparative morphology, development, evolution, and functional biology of the skull.
Leading researchers in evolutionary developmental biology seek linkages between, and a synthesis of, development, physiology, endocrinology, ecology, and evolution. Evolutionary developmental biology, also known as evo-devo or EDB, seeks to find links between development and evolution by opening the "black box" of development's role in evolution and in the evolution of developmental mechanisms. In particular, this volume emphasizes the roles of the environment and of hormonal signaling in evo-devo. It brings together a group of leading researchers to analyze the dynamic interaction of environmental factors with developmental and physiological processes and to examine how environmental signal...
The most prominent naturalist in Britain before Charles Darwin, Richard Owen made empirical discoveries and offered theoretical innovations that were crucial to the proof of evolution. Among his many lasting contributions to science was the first clear definition of the term homology—“the same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function.” He also graphically demonstrated that all vertebrate species were built on the same skeletal plan and devised the vertebrate archetype as a representation of the simplest common form of all vertebrates. Just as Darwin’s ideas continue to propel the modern study of adaptation, so too will Owen’s contributions fuel the new interest in homology, organic form, and evolutionary developmental biology. His theory of the archetype and his views on species origins were first offered to the general public in On the Nature of Limbs, published in 1849. It reemerges here in a facsimile edition with introductory essays by prominent historians, philosophers, and practitioners from the modern evo-devo community.