Product Description

Since Charles Darwin's masterpiece 'The origin of Species by natural selection' was published in 1859, evolution has become an established science that illuminates and informs our understanding of many central biological issues from animal development to animal behaviour. Evolution 2/e stands alone amongst the major textbooks by focusing on key principles to offer a truly accessible, unintimidating treatment of this fascinating subject Part One introduces the basic mechanisms of microevolution: selection, inheritance, and development. Part Two considers how natural selection has designed organisms for reproductive success. Part Three explores macroevolutionary processes such as speciation and extinction and the techniques which are used to study these. Part Four examines key events in evolution throughout the geological record. Finally, Part Five discusses two subjects, coevolution and evolutionary medicine, which integrate and contrast micro- and macroevolution. The book closes with a chapter that recapitulates major issues, discusses unsolved problems, and looks ahead to future developments in this dynamic field. Recent advances in molecular biology and genetics have fuelled a renewed interest in evolutionary biology, and have given us new tools with which to explore the field, revolutionising our understanding of how evolutionary processes impact upon many aspects of biology. A rigorous yet engaging text, Evolution 2/e is perfect for any student wishing to gain a sound understanding of the subject. Online Resource Centre: - Figures available to download, to facilitate lecture preparation, - Self test questions linked to each chapters in the textbook - Key glossary terms in an interactive crossword format

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #201489 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 596 pages

Review
This book exactly meets my needs as a general introductory text for students with different scientific and biological backgrounds ... The text provides and accessible, authoritative and readable account. This is an excellent text. (Steve Waite, University of Brighton )

About the Author
Professor Stephen Stearns, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, USA

Customer Reviews

Excellent state of the art of evolutionary biology
Stearns and Hoekstra have written an extremely useful and much needed book. Beginning with an appetizing set of examples they proceed first with a couple of particularly thoughtful chapters on "The Nature of Evolution" and "Adaptive evolution" and then cover more or less all of the important fields of evolutionary biology: genetic variation, evolution of sex, life history and history of life theories, sexual selection, molecular methods, speciation and comparative methods. They are conspicuously short on human evolution, but if you add a suitable text on that particular field you have a superb overview of current evolutionary biology: not more detailed than necessary, not more complicated tharn doing justice to the intricacies of reseach in this field straddling experimental and historical sciences, very well written and handsomely produced. In brief, a book which Darwin would have loved, if he had happened to read it for amusement...It is to be greatly recommended as an introduction to a deeper understanding of life on earth.After all evolution is what makes biology so much more exciting and relevant than the other sciences.

Highly recommended
... I have never been very excited by the other Evolution textbooks around and so this one has taken me by surprise. It is just the right size, not too heavy but seems to cover every thing I need. Even better it is written in a lively and easy-to-understand way with nice drawings of animals. There are lots of interesting facts which you can't help but remember - for example I started with systematics and found that whales are most closely related to ungulates (pigs, deer etc.) - isn't that bizarre! I recommend it very highly to any other students as it has certainly helped me.

Good but with gaps
A well-written, straightforward text that serves as a good generalintroduction to most of the topics discussed on my course (introduction toevolution for medical students). Not strong on human evolution, so not atop recommendation (see Freeman & Herron)