Live long and evolve

An engaging journey into the biological principles underpinning a beloved science-fiction franchiseIn Star Trek, crew members travel to unusual planets, meet diverse beings, and encounter unique civilizations. In these remarkable space adventures, does Star Trek reflect biology and evolution as w...

Mate choice

A major new look at the evolution of mating decisions in organisms from protozoans to humans The popular consensus on mate choice has long been that females select mates likely to pass good genes to offspring. In Mate Choice, Gil Rosenthal overturns much of this conventional wisdom. Providing the...

Mathematical properties of population-genetic statistics

A powerful new approach to interpreting population-genetic data in evolution and ecologyPopulation genetics uses statistical analysis to catalog genetic variation among populations and species. Summary statistics computed from allele frequencies—mathematical functions that measure features of gen...

Metacommunity ecology

Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions, selection, and stochasticity—with larger-scale issues such as dispersal and habitat heterogeneity. Until now, the field has fo...

Model systems in behavioral ecology

A key way that behavioral ecologists develop general theories of animal behavior is by studying one species or a closely related group of species--''model systems''--over a long period. This book brings together some of the field's most respected researchers to describe why they chose their syste...

Modeling infectious diseases in humans and animals

For epidemiologists, evolutionary biologists, and health-care professionals, real-time and predictive modeling of infectious disease is of growing importance. This book provides a timely and comprehensive introduction to the modeling of infectious diseases in humans and animals, focusing on recen...

Molds, mushrooms, and medicines

The hidden role of fungi inside and all around usFrom beneficial yeasts that aid digestion to toxic molds that cause disease, we are constantly navigating a world filled with fungi. Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines explores the amazing ways fungi interact with our bodies, showing how our health an...

Nano comes to life

The nanotechnology revolution that will transform human health and longevityNano Comes to Life opens a window onto the nanoscale—the infinitesimal realm of proteins and DNA where physics and cellular and molecular biology meet—and introduces readers to the rapidly evolving nanotechnologies that a...

Not so different

The biologist Nathan H. Lents shows that humans and animals are not as different as once believed: the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both human and animal behavior. He describes the strides scientists have made in decoding animal behavior to explain that we a...

Nutrient cycling and limitation

The availability or lack of nutrients shapes ecosystems in fundamental ways. From forest productivity to soil fertility, from the diversity of animals to the composition of microbial communities, nutrient cycling and limitation are the basic mechanisms underlying ecosystem ecology. In this book, ...

Ocean biogeochemical dynamics

Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics provides a broad theoretical framework upon which graduate students and upper-level undergraduates can formulate an understanding of the processes that control the mean concentration and distribution of biologically utilized elements and compounds in the ocean. Thoug...

Ocean ecology

A comprehensive introduction to ocean ecology and a new way of thinking about ocean lifeMarine ecology is more interdisciplinary, broader in scope, and more intimately linked to human activities than ever before. Ocean Ecology provides advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners...

On aging

This book offers an accessible yet rigorous account of recent research that has begun to unlock the biology of aging.

Pain

Pain is one of medicine's greatest mysteries. When farmer John Mitson caught his hand in a baler, he cut off his trapped hand and carried it to a neighbor. "Sheer survival and logic" was how he described it. "And strangely, I didn't feel any pain." How can this be? We're taught that pain is a war...

People, parasites, and plowshares

Dickson D. Despommier's vivid, visceral account of the biology, behavior, and history of parasites follows the interplay between these fascinating life forms and human society over thousands of years. Despommier focuses on long-term host-parasite associations, which have evolved to avoid or even ...

Period

A bold and revolutionary perspective on the science and cultural history of menstruationMenstruation is something half the world does for a week at a time, for months and years on end, yet it remains largely misunderstood. Scientists once thought of an individual’s period as useless, and some doc...

Phase transitions

Phase transitions--changes between different states of organization in a complex system--have long helped to explain physics concepts, such as why water freezes into a solid or boils to become a gas. How might phase transitions shed light on important problems in biological and ecological complex...

Philosophy of biology

An essential introduction to the philosophy of biologyThis is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible introduction to the philosophy of biology written by a leading authority on the subject. Geared to philosophers, biologists, and students of both, the book provides sophisticated and innovative ...

Phylogenies in ecology

Phylogenies in Ecology is the first book to critically review the application of phylogenetic methods in ecology, and it serves as a primer to working ecologists and students of ecology wishing to understand these methods. This book demonstrates how phylogenetic information is transforming ecolog...

Piping hot bees and boisterous buzz-runners

A biologist’s up-close account of how he and fellow biologists cracked long-standing puzzles about honey bee behaviorPiping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners takes readers inside a world seldom seen even by beekeepers, shedding light on twenty of the most compelling mysteries of honey bee beha...

Pollination and floral ecology

Pollination and Floral Ecology is the most comprehensive single-volume reference to all aspects of pollination biology--and the first fully up-to-date resource of its kind to appear in decades. This beautifully illustrated book describes how flowers use colors, shapes, and scents to advertise the...

Population ecology

The essential introduction to population ecology—now expanded and fully updatedEcology is capturing the popular imagination like never before, with issues such as climate change, species extinctions, and habitat destruction becoming ever more prominent. At the same time, the science of ecology ha...

Prairie dogs

A comprehensive overview of the behavioral ecology of a highly social group of North American mammalsBest known for their large colonies, complex burrows, and frequent alarm calls, prairie dogs are diurnal, herbivorous rodents endemic to the grasslands of western North America. Prairie Dogs synth...

Principles of animal locomotion

How can geckoes walk on the ceiling and basilisk lizards run over water? What are the aerodynamic effects that enable small insects to fly? What are the relative merits of squids' jet-propelled swimming and fishes' tail-powered swimming? Why do horses change gait as they increase speed? What dete...

Programmable planet

Programmable Planet is a grand tour through the world of synthetic biology, telling the stories of the colorful visionaries whose ideas are shaping discoveries. Ted Anton explores the field from its beginning in fighting malaria in Africa to the COVID vaccines and beyond.

Puppet masters of evolution

Andrew A. Davinack reveals that parasites are far more than agents of disease or grotesque passengers along for the ride: They are powerful forces that have shaped the course of evolution.

Quarks to culture

Quarks to Culture explores the rhythm within what Tyler Volk calls the “grand sequence,” a series of levels of sizes and innovations building from elementary quanta to globalized human civilization. The key is “combogenesis,” the building-up from combination and integration to produce new things ...

Race and the genetic revolution

Do advances in genomic biology create a scientific rationale for long-discredited racial categories? Leading scholars in law, medicine, biology, sociology, history, anthropology, and psychology examine the impact of modern genetics on the concept of race. Contributors trace the interplay between ...

Random walks in biology

This book is a lucid, straightforward introduction to the concepts and techniques of statistical physics that students of biology, biochemistry, and biophysics must know. It provides a sound basis for understanding random motions of molecules, subcellular particles, or cells, or of processes that...

Refiguring life

Research techniques in animal ecology

The present biodiversity crisis is rife with opportunities to make important conservation decisions; however, the misuse or misapplication of the methods and techniques of animal ecology can have serious consequences for the survival of species. Still, there have been relatively few critical revi...

Respect for nature

What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for...

Self-organization in biological systems

The synchronized flashing of fireflies at night. The spiraling patterns of an aggregating slime mold. The anastomosing network of army-ant trails. The coordinated movements of a school of fish. Researchers are finding in such patterns--phenomena that have fascinated naturalists for centuries--a f...

Seven decades

An anthropologist uncovers new evidence for the evolutionary origins of human longevity—and explains why growing old is an opportunity, not a burdenOur ability to live for decades may seem like a modern luxury made possible by clean water and advances in medicine. In fact, human longevity is a le...

Sex is a spectrum

Why human biology is far more expansive than the simple categories of female and maleBeing human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex I...

So simple a beginning

A biophysicist reveals the hidden unity behind nature’s breathtaking complexityThe form and function of a sprinting cheetah are quite unlike those of a rooted tree. A human being is very different from a bacterium or a zebra. The living world is a realm of dazzling variety, yet a shared set of ph...