The marsupial family Dasyuridae has a history of study extending from 18th century naturalists to the modern genomics era. The Evolution of Dasyurid Marsupials: Systematics and Family History tells the story of dasyurid evolution as it unfolded in the context of changing world views on biodiversity, biotic history and scientific methodology, from its roots in Enlightenment taxonomy to its transformation by the Darwinian and Hennigian revolutions, and then its maturation as statist...

How did flying birds evolve from running dinosaurs, terrestrial trotting tetrapods evolve from swimming fish, and whales return to swim in the sea? These are some of the great transformations in the 500-million-year history of vertebrate life. And with the aid of new techniques and approaches across a range of fields—work spanning multiple levels of biological organization from DNA sequences to organs and the physiology and ecology of whole organisms—we are now beginning to unravel the con...

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...

Members of the mammalian clade Carnivora have invaded nearly every continent and ocean, evolving into bamboo-eating pandas, clam-eating walruses and of course, flesh-eating sabre-toothed cats. With this ecological, morphological and taxonomic diversity and a fossil record spanning over sixty million years, Carnivora has proven to be a model clade for addressing questions of broad evolutionary significance. This volume brings together top international scientists with contributions that foc...

Why do the best-known examples of evolutionary change involve the alteration of one kind of animal into another very similar one, like the evolution of a bigger beak in a bird? Wouldn't it be much more interesting to understand how beaks originated? Most people would agree, but until recently we didn't know much about such origins. That is now changing, with the growth of the interdisciplinary field evo-devo, which deals with the relationship between how embryos develop in the short term a...

The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examp...

This book covers the proceedings of a major 2006 symposium on macropods that brought together the many recent advances in the biology of this diverse group of marsupials, including research on some of the much neglected macropods such as the antilopine wallaroo, the swamp wallaby and tree-kangaroos. More than 80 authors have contributed 32 chapters, which are grouped into four themes: genetics, reproduction and development; morphology and physiology; ecology; and management. The book examines...

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 ...

Bryophytes were a pivotal step in land plant evolution, and their significance in the regulation of ecosystems and the conservation of biodiversity is becoming increasingly acknowledged. This introductory textbook assumes no prior knowledge of bryophyte biology, making it ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as amateur botanists. The authors expertly summarise the diversity of bryophytes and outline recent advances in our understanding of their evolutionary histo...

Biodiversity of Fungi is essential for anyone collecting and/or monitoring any fungi. Fascinating and beautiful, fungi are vital components of nearly all ecosystems and impact human health and our economy in a myriad of ways. Standardized methods for documenting diversity and distribution have been lacking. A wealth of information, especially regrading sampling protocols, compiled by an international team of fungal biologists, make Biodiversity of Fungi an incredible and fundamental resour...

This practical handbook describes sampling and laboratory assessment methods for the biodiversity of a number of key functional groups of soil organisms, including insects, earthworms, nematodes, fungi and bacteria. The methods have been assembled and the protocols drafted by a number of scientists associated with the UNEP-GEF funded Conservation and Sustainable Management of Below-Ground Biodiversity Project, executed by the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility (TSBF) Institute of the Inte...

For biologists, 2009 was an epochal year: the bicentennial of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of a book now known simply as The Origin of Species. But for many botanists, Darwin's true legacy starts with the 1862 publication of another volume: On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing, or Fertilisation of Orchids. This slim but detailed bo...