Understanding Biology Through Evolution Fourth Edition

This is the fourth edition of a clear, effective study guide written by Mr. Olsen to help students in an introductory-level college biology course master the fundamentals ' and get the best possible grade. Written especially for non-majors, the concise explanations of core biology concepts are accompanied throughout with helpful illustrations and tables. The author's objective is to illustrate how the concept of evolution is the key to understanding the major sub-disciplines of biology, including genetics, ecology, biodiversity, botany, and zoology.

Bringing together conceptual obstacles and core concepts of evolutionary theory, this book presents evolution as straightforward and intuitive.

This book contains lecture notes for an introductory course in biology for undergraduate non-majors. It stresses that the concept of evolution is as central to biology as atomic theory is to chemistry.

Published by Sinauer Associates, an imprint of Oxford University Press. Extensively rewritten and reorganized, this new edition of Evolution--featuring a new coauthor: Mark Kirkpatrick (The University of Texas at Austin)--offers additional expertise in evolutionary genetics and genomics, the fastest-developing area of evolutionary biology. Directed toward an undergraduate audience, the text emphasizes the interplay between theory and empirical tests of hypotheses, thus acquainting students with the process of science. It addresses major themes--includingthe history of evolution, evolutionary processes, adaptation, and evolution as an explanatory framework--at levels of biological organization ranging from genomes to ecological communities.

A pioneering proposal for a pluralistic extension of evolutionary theory, now updated to reflect the most recent research. This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions has been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was first published in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes. They describe four “dimensions” in heredity—four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, and symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than that offered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play a role. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of the fictional “I.M.” (for Ipcha Mistabra—Aramaic for “the opposite conjecture”). The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information on each of the four dimensions—with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been an explosion of new research. Praise for the first edition “With courage and verve, and in a style accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines “In their beautifully written and impressively argued new book, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioral and linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution.” —Oren Harman, The New Republic “It is not only an enjoyable read, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do—it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions.” —Adam Wilkins, BioEssays

Thoroughly updated and reorganized, Strickberger's Evolution, Fourth Edition, presents biology students with a basic introduction to prevailing knowledge and ideas about evolution, discussing how, why, and where the world and its organisms changed throughout history. Keeping consistent with Strickberger's engaging writing style, the authors carefully unfold a broad range of philosophical and historical topics that frame the theories of today including cosmological and geological evolution and its impact on life, the origins of life on earth, the development of molecular pathways from genetic systems to organismic morphology and function, the evolutionary history of organisms from microbes to animals, and the numerous molecular and populational concepts that explain the earth's dynamic evolution. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

The function of scientific research is promoting the understanding of the world around us. In theory, anyway, the more we learn, the more potential we have of making our lives better. Thus, we have seen research in electronics provide us with computers, research in chemistry provide us with all manner of synthetics, and research in agriculture provide us with more food. Periodically, scientific research uncovers something that makes some of us uncomfortable. The discovery of the link between smoking and lung cancer and heart disease was not received well by the tobacco industry, and the link between global climate change and fossil fuel use has not been well received by the petroleum industry, to cite just two examples. Usually the response of those whose world has been disrupted by science is denial, often followed by attack on or ridicule of the science that has challenged them. In the long term, however, science usually turns out to be correct.

This is the third edition of a clear, effective study guide to help students in an introductory-level college biology course master the fundamentals - and get the best possible grade. Written especially for nonmajors, the concise explanations of core biology concepts are accompanied throughout with helpful illustrations and tables and a minimum of jargon. The author's objective is to illustrate how the concept of evolution is the key to understanding the major subdisciplines of biology, including genetics, ecology, biodiversity, botany, and zoology.