The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited
Published on 22. April 2011
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-262-01524-0 (ISBN)
Description
Drawing on recent advances in evolutionary biology, prominent scholars return to the question posed in a pathbreaking book: how evolution itself evolved.In 1995, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry published their influential book The Major Transitions in Evolution. The "transitions" that Maynard Smith and Szathmáry chose to describe all constituted major changes in the kinds of organisms that existed but, most important, these events also transformed the evolutionary process itself. The evolution of new levels of biological organization, such as chromosomes, cells, multicelled organisms, and complex social groups radically changed the kinds of individuals natural selection could act upon. Many of these events also produced revolutionary changes in the process of inheritance, by expanding the range and fidelity of transmission, establishing new inheritance channels, and developing more open-ended sources of variation. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry had planned a major revision of their work, but the death of Maynard Smith in 2004 prevented this. In this volume, prominent scholars (including Szathmáry himself) reconsider and extend the earlier book's themes in light of recent developments in evolutionary biology. The contributors discuss different frameworks for understanding macroevolution, prokaryote evolution (the study of which has been aided by developments in molecular biology), and the complex evolution of multicellularity.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
36 b&w illus., 6 tables
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-01524-0 (9780262015240)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Brett Calcott is a postdoctoral researcher in the Philosophy Program in the Research School of the Social Sciences at Australia National University and a founding member of ANU's Centre for Macroevolution and Macroecology.
Content
Complete TOC Series Foreword Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction A Dynamic View of Evolution Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny I A Big Picture of Big Pictures of Life's History 15 1 The Miscellaneous Transitions in Evolution Daniel W. McShea and Carl Simpson 19 2 Alternative Patterns of Explanation for Major Transitions Brett Calcott 35 3 Biological Ontology and Hierarchical Organization: A Defense of Rank F reedom Samir Okasha 53 4 Darwinian Populations and Transitions in Individuality Peter Godfrey-Smith 65 5 Evolvability Reconsidered Kim Sterelny 83 II The Prokaryote's Tale 101 6 To Be or Not To Be: Where Is Self-Preservation in Evolutionary Theory? Pamela Lyon 105 7 The Evolution of Restraint in Structured Populations: Setting the Stage for an Egalitarian Major Transition Benjamin Kerr and Joshua Nahum 127 8 Conflicts among Levels of Selection as Fuel for the Evolution of Individuality Paul B. Rainey and Benjamin Kerr 141 III Complexity and the Developmental Cycle 163 9 Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality: Multicellularity and Sex Richard E. Michod 169 10 How Many Levels Are There? How Insights from Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality Help Measure the Hierarchical Complexity of Life Carl Simpson 199 11 Plant Individuality and Multilevel Selection Theory Ellen Clarke 227 12 Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity Andrew H. Knoll and David Hewitt 251 13 The Small Picture Approach to the Big Picture: Using DANN Sequences to Investigate the Diversification of Animal Body Plans Lindell Bromham 271 III Concluding Remarks 299 14 Concluding Remarks Eörs Szathmáry and Chrisantha Fernando 301 Contributors 311 Index