The 7-volume Encyclopedia of Biodiversity, Second Edition maintains the reputation of the highly regarded original, presenting the most current information available in this globally crucial area of research and study. It brings together the dimensions of biodiversity and examines both the services it provides and the measures to protect it. Major themes of the work include the evolution of biodiversity, systems for classifying and defining biodiversity, ecological patterns and th...

Invasion biology has many hypotheses, but it is largely unknown whether they are backed up by empirical evidence. This book fills that gap by (a) further developing a tool for assessing research hypotheses and (b) applying it to a number of invasion hypotheses, using the hierarchy-of-hypotheses (HoH) approach. Part 1, an overview chapter of invasion biology will be followed by an introduction to the HoH approach and short chapters of science theorists and philosophers that comment on the a...

Darwin’s nineteenth-century writings laid the foundations for modern studies of evolution, and theoretical developments in the mid-twentieth century fostered the Modern Synthesis. Since that time, a great deal of new biological knowledge has been generated, including details of the genetic code, lateral gene transfer, and developmental constraints. Our improved understanding of these and many other phenomena have been working their way into evolutionary theory, changing it and improving it...