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Author | : F. John Odling-Smee |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 489 |
Release | : 2013-02-15 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 1400847265 |
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The seemingly innocent observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in environments is so obvious that it seems an unlikely focus for a new line of thinking about evolution. Yet niche construction--as this process of organism-driven environmental modification is known--has hidden complexities. By transforming biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection in external environments, niche construction generates feedback in evolution on a scale hitherto underestimated--and in a manner that transforms the evolutionary dynamic. It also plays a critical role in ecology, supporting ecosystem engineering and influencing the flow of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Despite this, niche construction has been given short shrift in theoretical biology, in part because it cannot be fully understood within the framework of standard evolutionary theory. Wedding evolution and ecology, this book extends evolutionary theory by formally including niche construction and ecological inheritance as additional evolutionary processes. The authors support their historic move with empirical data, theoretical population genetics, and conceptual models. They also describe new research methods capable of testing the theory. They demonstrate how their theory can resolve long-standing problems in ecology, particularly by advancing the sorely needed synthesis of ecology and evolution, and how it offers an evolutionary basis for the human sciences. Already hailed as a pioneering work by some of the world's most influential biologists, this is a rare, potentially field-changing contribution to the biological sciences.
Author | : F. John Odling-Smee |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 488 |
Release | : 2003-07-22 |
Genre | : Nature |
ISBN | : 0691044376 |
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The seemingly innocent observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in environments is so obvious that it seems an unlikely focus for a new line of thinking about evolution. Yet niche construction--as this process of organism-driven environmental modification is known--has hidden complexities. By transforming biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection in external environments, niche construction generates feedback in evolution on a scale hitherto underestimated--and in a manner that transforms the evolutionary dynamic. It also plays a critical role in ecology, supporting ecosystem engineering and influencing the flow of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Despite this, niche construction has been given short shrift in theoretical biology, in part because it cannot be fully understood within the framework of standard evolutionary theory. Wedding evolution and ecology, this book extends evolutionary theory by formally including niche construction and ecological inheritance as additional evolutionary processes. The authors support their historic move with empirical data, theoretical population genetics, and conceptual models. They also describe new research methods capable of testing the theory. They demonstrate how their theory can resolve long-standing problems in ecology, particularly by advancing the sorely needed synthesis of ecology and evolution, and how it offers an evolutionary basis for the human sciences. Already hailed as a pioneering work by some of the world's most influential biologists, this is a rare, potentially field-changing contribution to the biological sciences.
Author | : John Odling-Smee |
Publisher | : MIT Press |
Total Pages | : 409 |
Release | : 2024-09-03 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 0262378892 |
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How niche construction theory extends evolutionary theory beyond natural selection to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. In Niche Construction, John Odling-Smee, the leading authority on niche construction theory, extends evolutionary theory from an explanation of how populations of organisms respond to natural selection pressures in their environments to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. Organisms, he shows, cause changes in their local external environments by interacting with them, thereby contributing in fundamental ways to their own and one another’s evolution. This book applies niche construction theory to current problems such as human-induced global warming and suggests how humans might contribute positively to the future evolution of life on Earth. Odling-Smee explains how orthodox evolutionary theory falls short in two ways. First, it does not describe how organisms contribute to their own and one another’s evolution through their environment-changing niche constructing activities. Second, it fails to explain how genetic evolution can give rise to supplementary knowledge-gaining processes in many species. These include certain developmental processes in individual organisms and socio-cultural processes in animals, including humans. Neo-Darwinism, the author writes, assesses the fitness of individual organisms in populations in terms of their capacity to survive and reproduce, but without attributing these capacities to the active, purposeful agency of organisms. He argues that the purposeful agency of individual organisms plays a central role in evolution. He also discusses the relationship of an organism’s energy-consuming activities and the second law of thermodynamics.
Author | : Sonia E. Sultan |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 241 |
Release | : 2015 |
Genre | : Nature |
ISBN | : 0199587078 |
Download Organism and Environment Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Over the past decade, advances in both molecular developmental biology and evolutionary ecology have made possible a new understanding of organisms as dynamic systems interacting with their environments. This innovative book synthesizes a wealth of recent research findings to examine how environments influence phenotypic expression in individual organisms (ecological development or 'eco-devo'), and how organisms in turn alter their environments (niche construction). A key argument explored throughout the book is that ecological interactions as well as natural selection are shaped by these dual organism-environment effects. This synthesis is particularly timely as biologists seek a unified contemporary framework in which to investigate the developmental outcomes, ecological success, and evolutionary prospects of organisms in rapidly changing environments. Organism and Environment is an advanced text suitable for graduate level students taking seminar courses in ecology, evolution, and developmental biology, as well as academics and researchers in these fields.
Author | : Thomas Armstrong |
Publisher | : ASCD |
Total Pages | : 195 |
Release | : 2012 |
Genre | : Education |
ISBN | : 1416614834 |
Download Neurodiversity in the Classroom Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
This book by best-selling author Thomas Armstrong offers classroom strategies for ensuring the academic success of students in five special-needs categories: learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, intellectual disabilities, and emotional and behavioral disorders.
Author | : Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque |
Publisher | : Springer |
Total Pages | : 207 |
Release | : 2015-09-23 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 331919917X |
Download Evolutionary Ethnobiology Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Ethnobiology is a fascinating science. To understand this vocation it needs to be studied under an evolutionary point of view that is very strong and significant, although this aspect is often poorly approached in the literature. This is the first book to compile and discuss information about evolutionary ethnobiology in English.
Author | : Colleen M. Cheverko |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 210 |
Release | : 2020-08-20 |
Genre | : Education |
ISBN | : 0429557418 |
Download Theoretical Approaches in Bioarchaeology Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Theoretical Approaches in Bioarchaeology emphasizes how several different theoretical perspectives can be used to reconstruct the biocultural experiences of humans in the past. Over the past few decades, bioarchaeology has been transformed through methodological revisions, technological advances, and the inclusion of external theoretical frameworks from the social and natural sciences. These interdisciplinary perspectives became the backbone of bioarchaeology and strengthened the discipline’s ability to address questions about past biological and social dynamics. Consequently, how, why, and when to apply external theory to studies of past populations are central and timely questions tied to future developments of the discipline. This book facilitates ongoing dialogues about theoretical applications within the field and interdisciplinary connections between bioarchaeology, biological anthropology, and other disciplines. Each chapter highlights how a theoretical framework originating from a social or natural science connects to past and future bioarchaeological research. For scholars and archaeologists interested in the theoretical applications of bioarchaeology, this book will be an excellent resource.
Author | : Anouk Barberousse |
Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
Total Pages | : 178 |
Release | : 2009-02-26 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 1402096364 |
Download Mapping the Future of Biology Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Carving Nature at its Joints? In order to map the future of biology we need to understand where we are and how we got there. Present day biology is the realization of the famous metaphor of the organism as a bete ˆ machine elaborated by Descartes in Part V of the Discours,a realization far beyond what anyone in the seventeenth century could have im- ined. Until the middle of the nineteenth century that machine was an articulated collection of macroscopic parts, a system of gears and levers moving gasses, solids, and liquids, and causing some parts of the machine to move in response to the force produced by others. Then, in the nineteenth century, two divergent changes occurred in the level at which the living machine came to be investigated. First, with the rise of chemistry and the particulate view of the composition of matter, the forces on macroscopic machine came to be understood as the ma- festation of molecular events, and functional biology became a study of molecular interactions. That is, the machine ceased to be a clock or a water pump and became an articulated network of chemical reactions. Until the ?rst third of the twentieth century this chemical view of life, as re?ected in the development of classical b- chemistry treated the chemistry of biological molecules in much the same way as for any organic chemical reaction, with reaction rates and side products that were the consequence of statistical properties of the concentrations of reactants.
Author | : Derek Bickerton |
Publisher | : Macmillan |
Total Pages | : 294 |
Release | : 2009-03-17 |
Genre | : Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | : 0809022818 |
Download Adam's Tongue Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
One of the world's leading researchers into the evolution of language argues that the acquisition of words changed the structure of early human's brains, which set into motion the limitless creativity that allowed people to make the world that exists today.
Author | : Agustín Fuentes |
Publisher | : John Wiley & Sons |
Total Pages | : 1596 |
Release | : 2017-04-24 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 0470673370 |
Download The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, 3 Volume Set Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
The International Encyclopedia of Primatology represents the first comprehensive encyclopedic reference focusing on the behaviour, biology, ecology, evolution, genetics, and taxonomy of human and non-human primates. Represents the first comprehensive encyclopedic reference relating to primatology Features more than 450 entries covering topics ranging from the taxonomy, history, behaviour, ecology, captive management and diseases of primates to their use in research, cognition, conservation, and representations in literature Includes coverage of the basic scientific concepts that underlie each topic, along with the latest advances in the field Highly accessible to undergraduate and graduate students in primatology, anthropology, and the medical, biological and zoological sciences Essential reference for academics, researchers and commercial and conservation organizations This work is also available as an online resource at www.encyclopediaofprimatology.com