The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life

The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life PDF Author: Richard P. Shefferson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108138608
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
The existing theories on the evolution of senescence assume that senescence is inevitable in all organisms. However, recent studies have shown that this is not necessarily true. A better understanding of senescence and its underlying mechanisms could have far-reaching consequences for conservation and eco-evolutionary research. This book is the first to offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolution of senescence in many species, setting the stage for further developments. It brings together new insights from a wide range of scientific fields and cutting-edge research done on a multitude of different animals (including humans), plants and microbes, giving the reader a complete overview of recent developments and of the controversies currently surrounding the topic. Written by specialists from a variety of disciplines, this book is a valuable source of information for students and researchers interested in ageing and life history traits and populations.

The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life

The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life PDF Author: Richard P. Shefferson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108138608
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Get Book Here

Book Description
The existing theories on the evolution of senescence assume that senescence is inevitable in all organisms. However, recent studies have shown that this is not necessarily true. A better understanding of senescence and its underlying mechanisms could have far-reaching consequences for conservation and eco-evolutionary research. This book is the first to offer interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolution of senescence in many species, setting the stage for further developments. It brings together new insights from a wide range of scientific fields and cutting-edge research done on a multitude of different animals (including humans), plants and microbes, giving the reader a complete overview of recent developments and of the controversies currently surrounding the topic. Written by specialists from a variety of disciplines, this book is a valuable source of information for students and researchers interested in ageing and life history traits and populations.

Demographic Methods Across the Tree of Life

Demographic Methods Across the Tree of Life PDF Author: Roberto Salguero-Gomez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198838603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Demography is everywhere in our lives: from birth to death. Indeed, the universal currencies of survival, development, reproduction, and recruitment shape the performance of all species, from microbes to humans. The number of techniques for demographic data acquisition and analyses across the entire tree of life (microbes, fungi, plants, and animals) has drastically increased in recent decades. These developments have been partially facilitated by the advent of technologies such as GIS and drones, as well as analytical methods including Bayesian statistics and high-throughput molecular analyses. However, despite the universality of demography and the significant research potential that could emerge from unifying: (i) questions across taxa, (ii) data collection protocols, and (iii) analytical tools, demographic methods to date have remained taxonomically siloed and methodologically disintegrated. This is the first book to attempt a truly unified approach to demography and population ecology in order to address a wide range of questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology across the entire spectrum of life. This novel book provides the reader with the fundamentals of data collection, model construction, analyses, and interpretation across a wide repertoire of demographic techniques and protocols. It introduces the novice demographer to a broad range of demographic methods, including abundance-based models, life tables, matrix population models, integral projection models, integrated population models, individual based models, and more. Through the careful integration of data collection methods, analytical approaches, and applications, clearly guided throughout with fully reproducible R scripts, the book provides an up-to-date and authoritative overview of the most popular and effective demographic tools. Demographic Methods across the Tree of Life is aimed at graduate students and professional researchers in the fields of demography, ecology, animal behaviour, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematical biology, and wildlife management.

An Unsolved Problem of Biology

An Unsolved Problem of Biology PDF Author: Peter Brian Medawar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aging
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Book Description


The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life

The Evolution of Senescence in the Tree of Life PDF Author: Richard P. Shefferson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108139328
Category : MEDICAL
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Top researchers in the field introduce interdisciplinary perspectives on senescence, presenting new insights and cutting-edge research.

The Biology of Reproduction

The Biology of Reproduction PDF Author: Giuseppe Fusco
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108499856
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
A look into the phenomena of sex and reproduction in all organisms, taking an innovative, unified and comprehensive approach.

Between Zeus and the Salmon

Between Zeus and the Salmon PDF Author: Caleb E. Finch
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Demographers and public health specialists have been surprised by the rapid increases in life expectancy, especially at the oldest ages, that have occurred since the early 1960s. Some scientists are calling into question the idea of a fixed upper limit for the human life span. There is new evidence about the genetic bases for both humans and other species. There are also new theories and models of the role of mutations accumulating over the life span and the possible evolutionary advantages of survival after the reproductive years. This volume deals with such diverse topics as the role of the elderly in other species and among human societies past and present, the contribution of evolutionary theory to our understanding of human longevity and intergenerational transfers, mathematical models for survival, and the potential for collecting genetic material in household surveys. It will be particularly valuable for promoting communication between the social and life sciences.

The Metabolic Ghetto

The Metabolic Ghetto PDF Author: Jonathan C. K. Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107009472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 625

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Book Description
A multidisciplinary analysis of the role of nutrition in generating hierarchical societies and cultivating a global epidemic of chronic diseases.

The Evolution of Aging

The Evolution of Aging PDF Author: Theodore C. Goldsmith
Publisher: Azinet
ISBN: 0978870905
Category : Aging
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Goldsmith provides a historical review of biological aging theories including underlying evolution and genetics issues and describes exciting recent discoveries and new theories that are causing renewed interest in aging-by-design.

The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems

The Evolutionary Strategies that Shape Ecosystems PDF Author: J. Philip Grime
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118223276
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
THE EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGIES THAT SHAPE ECOSYSTEMS In 1837 a young Charles Darwin took his notebook, wrote “I think”, and then sketched a rudimentary, stick-like tree. Each branch of Darwin’s tree of life told a story of survival and adaptation – adaptation of animals and plants not just to the environment but also to life with other living things. However, more than 150 years since Darwin published his singular idea of natural selection, the science of ecology has yet to account for how contrasting evolutionary outcomes affect the ability of organisms to coexist in communities and to regulate ecosystem functioning. In this book Philip Grime and Simon Pierce explain how evidence from across the world is revealing that, beneath the wealth of apparently limitless and bewildering variation in detailed structure and functioning, the essential biology of all organisms is subject to the same set of basic interacting constraints on life-history and physiology. The inescapable resulting predicament during the evolution of every species is that, according to habitat, each must adopt a predictable compromise with regard to how they use the resources at their disposal in order to survive. The compromise involves the investment of resources in either the effort to acquire more resources, the tolerance of factors that reduce metabolic performance, or reproduction. This three-way trade-off is the irreducible core of the universal adaptive strategy theory which Grime and Pierce use to investigate how two environmental filters selecting, respectively, for convergence and divergence in organism function determine the identity of organisms in communities, and ultimately how different evolutionary strategies affect the functioning of ecosystems. This book refl ects an historic phase in which evolutionary processes are finally moving centre stage in the effort to unify ecological theory, and animal, plant and microbial ecology have begun to find a common theoretical framework. Companion website This book has a companion website www.wiley.com/go/grime/evolutionarystrategies with Figures and Tables from the book for downloading.

Oxygen and the Evolution of Life

Oxygen and the Evolution of Life PDF Author: Heinz Decker
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642131794
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book describes the interlaced histories of life and oxygen. It opens with the generation of oxygen in ancient stars and its distribution to newly formed planets like the Earth. Free O2 was not available on the early Earth, so the first life forms had to be anaerobic. Life introduced free O2 into the environment through the evolution of photosynthesis, which must have been a disaster for many anaerobes. Others found ways to deal with the toxic reactive oxygen species and even developed a much more efficient oxygen-based metabolism. The authors vividly describe how the introduction of O2 allowed the burst of evolution that created today’s biota. They also discuss the interplay of O2 and CO2, with consequences such as worldwide glaciations and global warming. On the physiological level, they present an overview of oxidative metabolism and O2 transport, and the importance of O2 in human life and medicine, emphasizing that while oxygen is essential, it is also related to aging and many disease states.