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| Evolution: From Molecules to Ecosystems | 
 enlarge | Creators: Andres Moya, Enrique Font
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $114.00
Buy New: $42.42
You Save: $71.58 (63%)
New (4) Used (7) from $32.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1966381
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 7.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 019851543X
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.8
EAN: 9780198515432
ASIN: 019851543X
Publication Date: May 6, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Good Condition, Dispatched from UK, delivery time 10 to 12 Working days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The book addresses many issues in the study of evolution where important advances have recently taken place and provides a sampler of the diversity of questions and research approaches that constitute the modern study of evolution. More advanced and up-to-date than currently available textbooks, it will appeal to students and professional researchers throughout the life sciences.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Evolution: From Molecules to Ecosystems (Oxford Biology) January 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book title page was beauty color picture. the title expression caught my interesting about the evolution. but, the book inside was almost sentences only through the book (with some no color graphs). So, my interesting died. My English understanding level is less than high school level. I love Oxford's Modular Science series, also Oxford children's encyclopedia of science series too (i often read friendly these series).
My level is like that. so, this "evolution" was too hard for me. I am a Japanese.
 Very educational and interesting April 15, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There are plenty of books for the layman about what evolution is. But how about a book for biology students? This one provides 23 interesting articles on evolution, with students and scientists in mind.
The first part is on the genetic machinery of evolution. That starts with an examination of the importance of various types of mutations: deleterious, "nearly neutral," neutral, and advantageous. We see the significance of random drift, and that there is a negative correlation between evolutionary rate and population size. Next is a discussion of the characteristic footprint left by natural selection in DNA sequences, and how this footprint can be detected from the analysis of intraspecific nucelotide variation. After that is a paper which addresses the extent and severity of deleterious mutations, and the reduction in overall fitness that ensues from them. This "mutational load" is shown to be less than had been previously estimated. The following topic is gene duplication. Many of the key evolutionary lineages of multicellular eukaryotes have experienced polyploidization at some point. Gene duplication clearly plays an important role in genome evolution and in all likelihood in phenotypic evolution as well. After that comes the issue of gene regulation: how have regulatory sequences evolved, mutated, and drifted? The section finishes with a paper on the relevance of the human genome project to evolution. We may find causes of suboptimality, infer nonorthologous gene displacements, learn about the origin of nonhierarchical distributions in character states, infer ancestral character states (my favorite), learn about the relative importance of neutral mutations (as well as of duplications, transportations, and gene and genome shuffling), and learn about the interaction between directional and stabilizing selection.
The second part is about molecular variation and evolution. That includes a discussion of the evolution of virulence in AIDS viruses, the evolution of the plasmodium parasites (which cause malaria), and the evolution of symbioses in insects (the conquest of insect intercellular habitats by bacteria).
Part Three deals with the ecological and biogeographic context of evolutionary change. While evolutionary biology is a study of how organisms evolve, evolutionary ecology is a study of why they evolve. That means looking at both abiotic and biotic drivers of natural selection. And we see a little of how a single genotype can produce different phenotypes in different environments. If there is a predictable change in the environment (such as the annual cycle), genotypes can adapt very well to it (consider the summer diopause of cyclopoids). Next there are a couple of articles on the evolutionary peculiarities of cyclical parthenogens (species that more or less regularly alternate between sexual and parthenogenetic reproduction). There are about 15,000 species of cyclical parthenogens, with rotifers and aphids being well-known representatives of them. After that is an article about how ecosystem-level phenomena (habitat persistence) may shape the dispersal strategies of populations, and what consequences these dispersal strategies may have on gene flow and genetic differentiation of populations. The final article in the section is on using molecules to understand the distribution of animal and plant diversity. That means a fascinating tracing the progress of DNA sequences through the Pangea continent era (about 225 million years ago), the production of the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes mountain ranges (all in the past 35 million years or so), the production of the Hawaiian chain of islands (in the past 30 million years), and the series of ice ages in the past two million years.
The fourth part has papers on speciation and major evolutionary events. The first of these is about allopatric speciation (where total geographic isolation of populations causes the formation of different species due to the effects of random genetic divergence). But how often are these "isolated" populations truly isolated? It appears that in many cases, isolation is not complete, and sexual selection plays a major role in the ensuing speciation. The next paper attempts to summarize the evidence that hybrids are not evolutionary dead ends, but actually a positive source of evolutionary innovations. That leads to a discussion of mobile DNA sequences, called transposons, which can transpose copies of themselves throughout the genome. The idea is that hybridization can induce high transposition rates. That means high mutation and rearrangement rates. Selection effects and increased fixation by drift in small hybrid populations then lead to introgression or to speciation. Then there is a paper on cooperation and conflict during two major evolutionary transitions, prokaryotic to eukaryotic and unicellular to multi-cellular. It is pointed out that natural selection not only fails to maximize fitness in the "Prisoner's Dilemma" game, it minimizes it. The next paper discusses the molecular evidence on the origin and phylogenetic relationships among the major groups of vertebrates. The phylogeny of vertebrates is relatively well known given their fossil record. The final paper in the section discusses mass extinctions. Some clades survive with little change in long-term patterns. Some die. Others diversify. Some suffer setbacks and then recover (in some cases, genera disappear from the fossil record prior to the extinction and reappear late in the recovery period). And some survive the extinction but perish in the recovery (dead clade walking).
The last part has four intriguing papers about behavior, evolution, and human affairs. The first of these is on how evolution may explain play. After all, it uses up energy to play. Why is it worth doing? The next paper is on the evolutionary psychology of human physical attraction and attractiveness. The third paper is about the genome view on human evolution. And the final paper is an attempt to find a Darwinian account for human creativity. Here, the claim is made that we have no way to be sure that Kasparov's method for finding a good chess move is entirely unlike the means exploited by Deep Blue. Good. I have now found a statement in this book that I can strongly disagree with and be confident that I am right. I highly recommend the book in spite of this.
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