Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology) available on June 28 2015 from Amazon for 25.29
ISBN bar code 9780262016421 ξ1 registered September 19 2015
ISBN bar code 9780262016421 ξ2 registered February 15 2015
ISBN bar code 9780262016421 ξ3 registered June 28 2015
Product category is Book
Manufacturered by The MIT Press
Product weight is 1.26 lbs.
Charles Darwin famously concluded On the Origin of Species with a vision of "endless forms most beautiful" continually evolving. More than 150 years later many evolutionary biologists see not endless forms but the same, or very similar, forms evolving repeatedly in many independent species lineages. A porpoise's fishlike fins, for example, are not inherited from fish ancestors but are independently derived convergent traits. In this book, George McGhee describes the ubiquity of the phenomenon of convergent evolution and connects it directly to the concept of evolutionary constraint--the idea that the number of evolutionary pathways available to life are not endless, but quite limited. Convergent evolution occurs on all levels, from tiny organic molecules to entire ecosystems of species. McGhee demonstrates its ubiquity in animals, both herbivore and carnivore; in plants; in ecosystems; in molecules, including DNA, proteins, and enzymes; and even in minds, describing problem-solving behavior and group behavior as the products of convergence. For each species example, he provides an abbreviated list of the major nodes in its phylogenetic classification, allowing the reader to see the evolutionary relationship of a group of species that have independently evolved a similar trait by convergent evolution. McGhee analyzes the role of functional and developmental constraints in producing convergent evolution, and considers the scientific and philosophical implications of convergent evolution for the predictability of the evolutionary process.
^George R. McGhee (2015). Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most BeautifulISBN 9780262016421 (revised Nov 2015)
^George R. McGheeConvergent Evolution : Limited Forms Most Beautiful by George R. McGhee (2011, Hardcover)ISBN 9780262016421 (revised Jun 2015)
^George McGheeConvergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful (Vienna Series in Theoretical Biology), The Mit Press. Amazon. ISBN 9780262016421 (revised Jun 2015)
