The impact of bees on our world is immeasurable. Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly colored flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They've painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities, and they have evolved the most complex societies to aid their exploitation of the environment. The parallels between human and insect societies have been explored by countless sociobiologists. Tradit...

Charles Darwin struggled to explain how forty thousand bees working in the dark, seemingly by instinct alone, could organize themselves to construct something as perfect as a honey comb. How do bees accomplish such incredible tasks? Synthesizing the findings of decades of experiments, The Spirit of the Hive presents a comprehensive picture of the genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying the division of labor in honey bee colonies and explains how bees’ complex social behavi...

Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human storyFewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than jus...

Whether it's in a cockpit at takeoff or the planning of an offensive war, a romantic relationship or a dispute at the office, there are many opportunities to lie and self-deceive -- but deceit and self-deception carry the costs of being alienated from reality and can lead to disaster. So why does deception play such a prominent role in our everyday lives? In short, why do we deceive?In his bold new work, prominent biological theorist Robert Trivers unflinchingly argues that self-de...

'From your brain to your fingertips, you emerge from her book entertained and with a deeper understanding of yourself' Richard Dawkins**'A masterful account of why our bodies are the way they are . . . this book really shines . . . Roberts's lightness of touch is joyous, and celebratory' Observer'Witty, personal and above all informed by passion and deep knowledge, this is the story of you, not just from conception onwards but from...

A fully updated edition of one of the most original accounts of evolution ever written, featuring new fractal diagrams, six new 'tales' and the latest scientific developments.THE ANCESTOR'S TALE is a dazzling, four-billion-year pilgrimage to the origins of life: Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong take us on an exhilarating reverse journey through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life. It is a journey happily interrupted by meetings o...

No book has changed our understanding of ourselves more than Darwin's Origin of Species. It caused a sensation on its first day of publication in 1859 and went on to become an international bestseller. The idea that living things gradually evolve through natural selection profoundly shocked its Victorian readers, calling into question what had been for many the unshakeable belief that there was a Creator.In this book, Janet Browne, Charles Darwin's foremost biographer, sho...

The Unpredictable Species argues that the human brain evolved in a way that enhances our cognitive flexibility and capacity for innovation and imitation. In doing so, the book challenges the central claim of evolutionary psychology that we are locked into predictable patterns of behavior that were fixed by genes, and refutes the claim that language is innate. Philip Lieberman builds his case with evidence from neuroscience, genetics, and physical anthropology, showing how our basa...

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...

The house mouse is the source of almost all genetic variation in laboratory mice; its genome was sequenced alongside that of humans, and it has become the model for mammalian speciation. Featuring contributions from leaders in the field, this volume provides the evolutionary context necessary to interpret these patterns and processes in the age of genomics. The topics reviewed include mouse phylogeny, phylogeography, origins of commensalism, adaptation, and dynamics of secondary contacts b...

The development of the placenta was a pivotal event in evolution. Without it, we would still be laying eggs instead of giving birth to live offspring. It represents the critical link between the foetus and the mother, but its character is extraordinary -- it is, in effect, a foreign tissue that invades the mother's body. Compared to many other animals, the human placenta represents a particularly aggressive body. But how is it managed and controlled? How did such an organ evolve in the fir...

Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory which fell under my observation.