Biased Embryos and Evolution

Wallace Arthur

233 pages, parution le 14/05/2004

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Résumé

What determines the direction of evolutionary change?

This book provides a revolutionary answer to this question. Many biologists, from Darwin’s day to our own, have been satisfied with the answer ‘natural selection’. Professor Wallace Arthur is not. He takes the controversial view that biases in the ways that embryos can be altered are just as important as natural selection in determining the directions that evolution has taken, including the one that led to the origin of humans. This argument forms the core of the book. However, in addition, the book summarizes other important issues relating to how embryonic (and post-embryonic) development evolves.

Written in an easy, conversational style, this is the first book for students and the general reader that provides an account of the exciting new field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology ("Evo-Devo" to its proponents).

Sommaire

The microscopic horse
What steers evolution?
Darwin: pluralism with a single core
How to build a body
A brief history of the last billion years
Preamble to the quiet revolution
The return of the organism
Possible creatures
The beginnings of bias
A deceptively simple question
Development's twin arrows
Action and reaction
Evolvability: organisms in bits
Back to the trees
Stripes and spots
Towards 'the inclusive synthesis'
Social creatures

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	Cambridge University Press
Auteur(s)	Wallace Arthur
Parution	14/05/2004
Nb. de pages	233
Format	15 x 22,5
Couverture	Broché
Poids	410g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780521541619
ISBN13	978-0-521-54161-9