Designed to help readers learn how to think like evolutionary biologists, this 4-color book approaches evolutionary
biology as a dynamic field of inquiry and as a process. Using a theme-based approach, it illustrates the interplay
between theory, observation, testing and interpretation. It offers commentary on strengths and weaknesses of data
sets, gives detailed examples rather than a broad synoptic approach, includes many data graphics and boxes regarding
both sides of controversies. Introduces each major organizing theme in evolution through a question--e.g., How
has HIV become drug resistant? Why did the dinosaurs, after dominating the land vertebrates for 150 million years,
suddenly go extinct?
Are humans more closely related to gorillas or to chimpanzees? Focuses on many applied, reader-relevant topics--e.g.,
evolution and human health, the evolution of senescence, sexual selection, social behavior, eugenics, and biodiversity
and conservation. Then develops the strategies that evolutionary biologists use for finding an answers to such
questions. Then considers the observations and experiments that test the predictions made by competing hypotheses,
and discusses how the data are interpreted. For anyone interested in human evolution, including those working in
human and animal health care, environmental management and conservation, primary and secondary education, science
journalism, and biological and medical research.
Table of Contents
Pt. 1. Introduction
Ch. 1. A Case for Evolutionary Thinking: Understanding HIV
Ch. 2. The Evidence for Evolution
Ch. 3. Darwinian Natural Selection
Pt. 2. Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change
Ch. 4. Mutation and Genetic Variation
Ch. 5. Mendelian Genetics in Populations I: Selection and Mutation as Mechanisms of Evolution
Ch. 6. Mendelian Genetics in Populations II: Migration, Genetic Drift, and Nonrandom Mating
Ch. 7. Evolution at Multiple Loci: Linkage and Sex
Ch. 8. Evolution at Multiple Loci: Quantitative Genetics
Pt. 3. Adaptation
Ch. 9. Studying Adaptation: Evolutionary Analysis of Form and Function
Ch. 10. Sexual Selection
Ch. 11. Kin Selection and Social Behavior
Ch. 12. Aging and Other Life History Characters
Ch. 13. Evolution and Human Health
Pt. 4. The History of Life
Ch. 14. Reconstructing Evolutionary Trees
Ch. 15. Mechanisms of Speciation
Ch. 16. The Origins of Life and Precambrian Evolution
Ch. 17. The Cambrian Explosion and Beyond
Ch. 18. Development and Evolution
Ch. 19. Human Evolution
