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Author: George R. McGhee
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262016427
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
Convergent evolution occurs on all levels, from tiny organic molecules to entire ecosystems of species.
Author: George R. McGhee
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262016427
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 335
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Book Description
Convergent evolution occurs on all levels, from tiny organic molecules to entire ecosystems of species.
Author: Ted R Schultz
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262543206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339
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Book Description
Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The goal is to create a new, synthetic field that characterizes, quantifies, and empirically documents the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that drive both human and nonhuman agriculture. The contributors report on the results of quantitative analyses comparing human and nonhuman agriculture; discuss evolutionary conflicts of interest between and among farmers and cultivars and how they interfere with efficiencies of agricultural symbiosis; describe in detail agriculture in termites, ambrosia beetles, and ants; and consider patterns of evolutionary convergence in different aspects of agriculture, comparing fungal parasites of ant agriculture with fungal parasites of human agriculture, analyzing the effects of agriculture on human anatomy, and tracing the similarities and differences between the evolution of agriculture in humans and in a single, relatively well-studied insect group, fungus-farming ants.
Author: Jonathan B. Losos
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184937
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets? Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be. Improbable Destinies will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.
Author: Simon Conway Morris
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139440802
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
The assassin's bullet misses, the Archduke's carriage moves forward, and a catastrophic war is avoided. So too with the history of life. Re-run the tape of life, as Stephen J. Gould claimed, and the outcome must be entirely different: an alien world, without humans and maybe not even intelligence. The history of life is littered with accidents: any twist or turn may lead to a completely different world. Now this view is being challenged. Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life's almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly. Eyes, brains, tools, even culture: all are very much on the cards. So if these are all evolutionary inevitabilities, where are our counterparts across the galaxy? The tape of life can only run on a suitable planet, and it seems that such Earth-like planets may be much rarer than hoped. Inevitable humans, yes, but in a lonely Universe.
Author: Huw S. Groucutt
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030461262
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
This volume brings together diverse contributions from leading archaeologists and paleoanthropologists, covering various spatial and temporal periods to distinguish convergent evolution from cultural transmission in order to see if we can discover ancient human populations. With a focus on lithic technology, the book analyzes ancient materials and cultures to systematically explore the theoretical and physical aspects of culture, convergence, and populations in human evolution and prehistory. The book will be of interest to academics, students and researchers in archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, and paleontology. The book begins by addressing early prehistory, discussing the convergent evolution of behaviors and the diverse ecological conditions driving the success of different evolutionary paths. Chapters discuss these topics and technology in the context of the Lower Paleolithic/Earlier Stone age and Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age. The book then moves towards a focus on the prehistory of our species over the last 40,000 years. Topics covered include the human evolutionary and dispersal consequences of the Middle-Upper Paleolithic Transition in Western Eurasia. Readers will also learn about the cultural convergences, and divergences, that occurred during the Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene, such as the budding of human societies in the Americas. The book concludes by integrating these various perspectives and theories, and explores different methods of analysis to link technological developments and cultural convergence.
Author: Simon Conway Morris
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 1599474654
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 525
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Book Description
How did human beings acquire imaginations that can conjure up untrue possibilities? How did the Universe become self-aware? In The Runes of Evolution, Simon Conway Morris revitalizes the study of evolution from the perspective of convergence, providing us with compelling new evidence to support the mounting scientific view that the history of life is far more predictable than once thought. A leading evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, Conway Morris came into international prominence for his work on the Cambrian explosion (especially fossils of the Burgess Shale) and evolutionary convergence, which is the process whereby organisms not closely related (not monophyletic), independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar environments or ecological niches. In The Runes of Evolution, he illustrates how the ubiquity of convergence hints at an underlying framework whereby many outcomes, not least brains and intelligence, are virtually guaranteed on any Earth-like planet. Conway Morris also emphasizes how much of the complexity of advanced biological systems is inherent in microbial forms. By casting a wider net, The Runes of Evolution explores many neglected evolutionary questions. Some are remarkably general. Why, for example, are convergences such as parasitism, carnivory, and nitrogen fixation in plants concentrated in particular taxonomic hot spots? Why do certain groups have a particular propensity to evolve toward particular states? Some questions lead to unexpected evolutionary insights: If bees sleep (as they do), do they dream? Why is that insect copulating with an orchid? Why have sponges evolved a system of fiber optics? What do mantis shrimps and submarines have in common? If dinosaurs had not gone extinct what would have happened next? Will a saber-toothed cat ever re-evolve? Cona Morris observes: “Even amongst the mammals, let alone the entire tree of life, humans represent one minute twig of a vast (and largely fossilized) arborescence. Every living species is a linear descendant of an immense string of now-vanished ancestors, but evolution itself is the very reverse of linear. Rather it is endlessly exploratory, probing the vast spaces of biological hyperspace. Indeed this book is a celebration of how our world is (and was) populated by a riot of forms, a coruscating tapestry of life.” The Runes of Evolution is the most definitive synthesis of evolutionary convergence to be published to date.
Author: Andrea Braides
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319019821
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
This book addresses new questions related to the asymptotic description of converging energies from the standpoint of local minimization and variational evolution. It explores the links between Gamma-limits, quasistatic evolution, gradient flows and stable points, raising new questions and proposing new techniques. These include the definition of effective energies that maintain the pattern of local minima, the introduction of notions of convergence of energies compatible with stable points, the computation of homogenized motions at critical time-scales through the definition of minimizing movement along a sequence of energies, the use of scaled energies to study long-term behavior or backward motion for variational evolutions. The notions explored in the book are linked to existing findings for gradient flows, energetic solutions and local minimizers, for which some generalizations are also proposed.
Author: Ted Peters
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Sumario : War? really? -- Darwin, Darwinism, and the neo-Darwinian synthesis -- Social Darwinism, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology -- Scientific creationism -- Intelligent design -- Theistic evolution : a survey -- Theistic evolution : a constructive proposal.
Author: John S Torday
Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
ISBN: 1839162252
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Understanding how simple molecules have given rise to the complex biochemical systems and processes of contemporary biology is widely regarded as one of chemistry’s great unsolved questions. There are numerous theories as to the origins of life, the majority of which draw on the idea that DNA and nucleic acids are the central dogma of biology. The Singularity of Nature: A Convergence of Biology, Chemistry and Physics takes a systems-based approach to the origin and evolution of complex life. Readers will gain a novel understanding of physiologic evolution and the limits to our current understanding: why biology remains descriptive and non-predictive, as well as offering new opportunities for understanding relationships between physics and biology in the origins of biological life at the cellular-molecular level.
Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128202610
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440
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Book Description
Biology of Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases, Volume 48 in The Enzymes series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters on A narrative about our work on the endless frontier of editing, The puzzling evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, Structural basis of the tRNA recognition by aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, Catalytic strategies of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, Trans-editing by aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase-like editing domains, Adaptive and maladaptive mistranslation arising from aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, Non-canonical inputs and outputs of tRNA aminoacylation, Structure and function of multi-tRNA synthetase complexes, Mitochondrial aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, Non-canonical functions of human cytoplasmic tyrosyl-, tryptophanyl- and other aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, and much more. - Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors - Presents the latest release in The Enzymes series
