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Developmental Plasticity and Evolution
List Price: $65.45Our Price: $56.83 You Save: $8.62 (13%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 578.4
EAN: 9780195122350
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0195122356
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 816
Publication Date: March 13, 2003
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Review:
The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Not a productive tome.
West-Eberhard has produced a 794 page tome that chokes the brain and deadens the senses. On the reverse cover, it asks a question about the picture on the cover, and refers to a chapter for the answer. As far as I can see, the question is never addressed.
This reveals two of the books problems. First, its grandiose aspirations, to be a new 'Modern Synthesis,' and to bring developmental biology into the fold, are never backed with a strength of data and arguments that equal her claims. ... Read More
Rating:  - One of the important books no one reads
There seems to be a consensus in evolutionary biology that this is an important book representing a major advance in our understanding. However, most of the biologists saying this haven't read the book; or have, perhaps, skimmed a chapter or two. The reason for this is simple: this book is far too long, far too dense, and far too abstruse. There is a lot of potential here; rewritten as a 150-200 page book with a good editor, it could have been an excellent and influential book. At 640 pages of ... Read More
Rating: - OK but who's going to read this ?
I have a PhD in biochemistry (meaning I can understand a reasonable amount of jargon) and hoped that with this book I'd be able to understand what modern developmental biology (in particular developmental genetics, "evo-devo", etc.) is about, but this book bored me to death. There is no continuum, no logical progression in the teaching. When you reach the end of a chapter you've forgotten what it was about. I admire the central concept and the work but, frankly, as a book it's completely missed. ... Read More
Rating:  - New ways of thinking about Biology
I think that Mary Jane West-Eberhard is trying to formulate a new Shyntesis in Biology, she is trying to include Development in Neo-Darwinism. Her book makes the difference in the role that gives to phenotype, every biologist needs to read it to express his/her own opinions. Really deserves to be read.
Rating: - jump starting a revolutiion
Darwin developed his theory of evolution without knowing much about the mechanisms of heredity. These mechanisms were rediscovered in the 1900's as part of the science of genetics. By the 1930's a school of evolutionary thinkers came to the realization that Darwin's theory could be further developed by recasting it in terms of population genetics. The resulting synthetic theory of evolution has ruled mainstream biology ever since. But genetics has not stood still in the meantime. The rise of molecular ... Read More
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