Based on the 25th Anniversary Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society, this book represents cutting-edge work on the mechanisms of cognitive, social, and cultural development. The authors-anthropologists, biologists, historians of science, paleontologists, and psychologists-believe that a rebirth is in progress relating to the study of these mental developments. This volume seeks to illuminate this rebirth. The varied findings and approaches reported reveal that contemporary comparative research on mental development is in a phase of differentiation and integration. Far from being global and fused, this comparative study is a flowering field of diverse disciplinary approaches, empirical phenomena, scholarly topics, and theoretical perspectives. It focuses on the comparative phylogeny, ontogeny, and history of mentation-most notably on the comparative onset and offset ages, velocity, extent, sequencing, organization of thought, symbol, and value development. The world's leading authorities on the subject discuss the implications of the study of evolution for our models of the ontogenetic origins, development, and history of mentation, as well as determine the constraints that evolution imposes on mental development. Bringing the current interest in primate cognition to bear on studies of cognitive development in humans, this book will be of interest cognitive developmentalists, primatologists and comparitive psychologists.

Life scientists are increasingly drawn to the study of comparative evolutionary biology. Insect Development and Evolution is the first synthesis of knowledge of insect development within an evolutionary framework and the first to survey the genetic, molecular, and whole organism literature. Bruce S. Heming provides a detailed introduction to the embryonic and postembryonic development of insects. Topics include:* reproductive systems,* male and female gametogenesis,* sperm transfer and use,* fertilization,* sex determination,* parthenogenesis,* embryogenesis,* postembryogenesis,* hormones,* and the role of ontogeny in insect evolution.Summaries for each of these topics cover structural events; comparative aspects (inserted on a phylogeny of the insect orders); and hormonal, genetic, and molecular causal analyses.Insect Development and Evolution treats examples throughout the hexapods with frequent reference to the evolution and development of other invertebrates. It also compares insects to vertebrates and places insect development into context with fossil evidence and earth history. Heming's book will become an essential tool for students and teachers of entomology. It will also interest insect systematists and paleontologists, insect behavioral ecologists, insect pathologists, applied entomologists, developmental and invertebrate biologists, and all scientists who use Drosophila as a model organism.

Integrating the results of comparative morphology, experiments on pattern development, the genetics of color patterns, and theoretical modeling of pattern formation, Nijhout shows that the enormous diversity of natural patterns arises largely from quantitative variations in a small set of readily understandable generating rules.

The Inductive Brain in Development and Evolution provides readers with a substantial biological education on animal nervous systems and their role in the development, adaptation, homeostasis, and evolution of species. The book begins by delving into the embryonic development of the brain and then discusses epigenetic information and neural activity post-birth. It then analyzes the inductive brain's neural and brain control of such factors like myogenesis, bone development, sensory organs, metamorphosis in vertebrates and invertebrates, and wing development in insects. The book closes with an examination of phenotypic evolution in neural control, mechanisms, and drivers of animal brains. The Inductive Brain in Development and Evolution will offer evolutionary biologists, specifically those researching development, adaptation, and evolution of animals, a comprehensive text that covers a variety of valuable topics. - Presents the first book devoted to the inductive role of the brain in development, in adaptation, and in the evolution processes in animals - Examines the central nervous system (CNS) from embryonic to adult life stages - Provides detailed evidence to investigate the role of the CNS in molding animal morphology and life histories

Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology - from systematics and principles of evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and cooperation, as well as niche construction, complexity, eco-evo-devo, and the role of the individual in evolutionary processes. Darwinian sociocultural evolutionary theory applies the logic of Darwinism to social-learning based cultural and social change. With a multidisciplinary approach for graduate biologists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, archaeologists, linguists, economists, political scientists and science and technology specialists, the author presents this model of evolution drawing on a number of sophisticated aspects of biological evolutionary theory. The approach brings together a broad and inclusive theoretical framework for understanding the social sciences which addresses many of the dilemmas at their forefront - the relationship between history and necessity, conflict and cooperation, the ideal and the material and the problems of agency, subjectivity and the nature of social structure.

Originally published in 1987 Rates of Evolution is an edited collection drawn from a symposium convened to bring together palaeontologists, geneticists, molecular biologists and developmental biologists to examine some aspects of the problem of evolutionary rates. The book asks questions surrounding the study of evolution, such as did large morphological changes really occur rapidly at various times in the geological past, or is the fossil record too imperfect to be of value in assessing rates of morphological change? What is the measure of ‘rapid’ change? Is stasis at any taxonomic level established? Is it possible to relate genomic and morphological change? What is the role of regulatory and executive genes in controlling evolutionary change? Does the transfer of genetic material between different taxa provide the possibility of increasing evolutionary rates? Featuring contributions from leading researchers, this book will interest anthropologists, palaeontology and scientists of evolution and genetics.

By focusing on the cellular mechanisms that underlie ontogeny, phylogeny and regeneration of complex physiologic traits, Evolution, the Logic of Biology demonstrates the use of homeostasis, the fundamental principle of physiology and medicine, as the unifying mechanism for evolution as all of biology. The homeostasis principle can be used to understand how environmental stressors have affected physiologic mechanisms to generate condition-specific novelty through cellular mechanisms. Evolution, the Logic of Biology allows the reader to understand the vertebrate life-cycle as an intergenerational continuum in support of effective, on-going environmental adaptation. By understanding the principles of physiology from their fundamental unicellular origins, culminating in modern-day metazoans, the reader as student, researcher or practitioner will be encouraged to think in terms of the prevention of disease, rather than in the treatment of disease as the eradication of symptoms. By tracing the ontogeny and phylogeny of this and other phenotypic homologies, one can perceive and understand how complex physiologic traits have mechanistically evolved from their simpler ancestral and developmental origins as cellular structures and functions, providing a logic of biology for the first time. Evolution, the Logic of Biology will be an invaluable resource for graduate students and researchers studying evolutionary development, medicine and biology, anthropology, comparative and developmental biology, genetics and genomics, and physiology.

This book provides an up-to-date review of the biology of myxozoans, which represent a divergent clade of endoparasitic cnidarians. Myxozoans are of fundamental interest in understanding how early diverging metazoans have adopted parasitic lifestyles, and are also of considerable economic and ecological concern as endoparasites of fish. Synthesizing recent research, the chapters explore issues such as myxozoan origins; evolutionary trends and diversification; development and life cycles; interactions with hosts; immunology; disease ecology; the impacts of climate change on disease; risk assessment; emerging diseases; and disease mitigation. This comprehensive work will appeal to a wide readership, from invertebrate zoologists, evolutionary biologists and developmental biologists to ecologists and parasitologists. It will also be of great practical interest to fisheries and conservation biologists. The identification of key areas for future research will appeal to scientists at all levels.