Mathematical and computational biology is playing an increasingly important role in the biological sciences. This science brings forward unique challenges, many of which are, at the moment, beyond the theoretical techniques available. Developmental biology, due to its complexity, has lagged somewhat behind its sister disciplines (such as molecular biology and population biology) in making use of quantitative modeling to further biological understanding. This volume comprises work that is a...

Scholars consider the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of organisms, experimental protocols, theoretical concepts, and philosophical issues.The evolution of multicellularity raises questions regarding genomic and developmental commonalities and discordances, selective advantages and disadvantages, physical determinants of development, and the origins of morphological novelties. It also represents a change in the defi...

"An engaging and complex examination of the development of the human brain throughout its evolutionary history" ( Publishers Weekly).After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so.In this delightfully accessible book, the authors present the first full, step-by-ste...

Two biologists tackle the unresolved question in the field of evolution: how have living organisms on Earth developed with such variety and complexity?In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer has been that small genetic mutations accumulate over time to produce wondrous innovations such as eyes and wings. Drawing on cutt...

Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order that is widely observed thro...

Animal life, now and over the past half billion years, is incredibly diverse. Describing and understanding the evolution of this diversity of body plans - from vertebrates such as humans and fish to the numerous invertebrate groups including sponges, insects, molluscs, and the many groups of worms - is a major goal of evolutionary biology. In this book, a group of leading researchers adopt a modern, integrated approach to describe how current molecular genetic techniques and disciplines as...

Introductory guide to human population genetics and microevolutionary theoryProviding an introduction to mathematical population genetics, Human Population Genetics gives basic background on the mechanisms of human microevolution. This text combines mathematics, biology, and anthropology and is best suited for advanced undergraduate and graduate study.Thorough and accessible, Human Population Genetics presents concepts and methods of popul...

The essential one-volume reference to evolutionThe Princeton Guide to Evolution is a comprehensive, concise, and authoritative reference to the major subjects and key concepts in evolutionary biology, from genes to mass extinctions. Edited by a distinguished team of evolutionary biologists, with contributions from leading researchers, the guide contains some 100 clear, accurate, and up-to-date articles on the most important topics in seven major areas: phy...

With the emergence of the new field of evolutionary developmental biology we are witnessing a renaissance of Darwin's insights 150 years after his On the Origin of Species. Thus far, the exciting findings from 'evo-devo' have only been trickling into college courses and into the domain of non-specialists. With its focus on the human organism, Quirks of Human Anatomy opens the floodgates by stating the arguments of evo-devo in plain English, and by offering a cornucopia of interesting case ...

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Genetics is a pithy, lively book occupying a special niche—the conceptual history of evolutionary genetics— not inhabited by any other available treatment. Written by a world-leading authority in evolutionary genetics, this work encapsulates and ranks 70 of the most significant paradigm shifts in evolutionary biology and genetics during the century-and-a-half since Darwin and Mendel. The science of evolutionary genetics is central to all of biology,...

This well-referenced, inquiry-driven text presents an up-to-date and comprehensive understanding of the emerging field of environmental microbiology.Coherent and comprehensive treatment of the dynamic, emerging field of environmental microbiologyEmphasis on real-world habitats and selective pressures experienced by naturally occurring microorganismsCase studies and “Science and the Citizen” features relate issues in the publ...

Microbes and microbiology are seldom encountered in philosophical accounts of the life sciences. Although microbiology is a well-established science and microbes the basis of life on this planet, neither the organisms nor the science have been seen as philosophically significant. This book will change that. It fills a major gap in the philosophy of biology by examining central philosophical issues in microbiology. Topics are drawn from evolutionary microbiology, microbial ecology, and micr...