Pere Alberch (1954-1998) fue un destacado biólogo español que reformuló el concepto de evo-devo, la ciencia del desarrollo y la evolución, siguiendo la estela dejada por figuras clásicas de la ciencia de los siglos XIX y XX tales como Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, sir Gavin De Beer, Conrad H. Waddington y Stephen J. Gould. Sus artículos sobre las limitaciones desarrollistas y evolucionistas, centrados en la heterocronía como proceso fundamental responsable de la formación de la filogenia, constituyen verdaderos clásicos de la evo-devo actual. Este volumen presenta tres ensayos originales que analizan la importancia histórica y filosófica de su trabajo en el desarrollo de la evo-devo. Además ofrece una selección de reproducciones facsímiles de sus artículos más relevantes, que proporcionan al lector una visión inestimable para encomiar la vida y el trabajo de Alberch.

This volume comprises refereed papers and abstracts of the 10th International Conference on the Evolution of Language (EVOLANGX), held in Vienna on 14-17th April 2014. As the leading international conference in the field, the biennial EVOLANG meeting is characterised by an invigorating, multidisciplinary approach to the origins and evolution of human language, and brings together researchers from many subject areas, including anthropology, archaeology, biology, cognitive science, computer science, genetics, linguistics, neuroscience, palaeontology, primatology and psychology.For this 10th conference, the proceedings will include a special perspectives section featuring prominent researchers reflecting on the history of the conference and its impact on the field of language evolution since the inaugural EVOLANG conference in 1996.

This volume explores questions about conceptual change from both scientific and philosophical viewpoints by analyzing the recent history of evolutionary developmental biology. It features revised papers that originated from the workshop "Conceptual Change in Biological Science: Evolutionary Developmental Biology, 1981-2011" held at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in July 2010. The Preface has been written by Ron Amundson. In these papers, philosophers and biologists compare and contrast key concepts in evolutionary developmental biology and their development since the original, seminal Dahlem conference on evolution and development held in Berlin in 1981. Many of the original scientific participants from the 1981 conference are also contributors to this new volume and, in conjunction with other expert biologists and philosophers specializing on these topics, provide an authoritative, comprehensive view on the subject. Taken together, the papers supply novel perspectives on how and why the conceptual landscape has shifted and stabilized in particular ways, yielding insights into the dynamic epistemic changes that have occurred over the past three decades. This volume will appeal to philosophers of biology studying conceptual change, evolutionary developmental biologists focused on comprehending the genesis of their field and evaluating its future directions, and historians of biology examining this period when the intersection of ev olution and development rose again to prominence in biological science.

This book explores Juan de Anchieta’s life and his music and, for the first time, presents a critical study of the life and works of a major Spanish composer from the time of Ferdinand and Isabel. A key figure in musical developments in Spain in the decades around 1500, Anchieta served in the Castilian royal chapel for over thirty years, from his appointment in 1489 as a singer in the household of Queen Isabel, and he continued to receive a pension from her grandson, the Emperor Charles V, until his death in 1523. He traveled to Flanders in the service of the Catholic Monarchs’ daughter Juana, and was briefly music master to Charles himself. Anchieta, along with Francisco de Peñalosa, his contemporary in the Aragonese chapel, and a few others, was a key figure in the rise of elaborate written polyphony in the Spain of Josquin’s time. The book brings together two of the leading specialists in Spanish music of the era in order to review and revise the rich biographical material relating to Anchieta’s life, and the historiographical traditions which have dominated its telling. After a biographical overview, the chapters focus on specific genres of his music, sacred and secular, with suggestions as to a possible chronology of his work based on its codicology and style, and consideration of the contexts in which it was conceived and performed. A final chapter summarizes his achievement and his influence in his own time and after his death. As the first comprehensive study of Anchieta’s life and works, The Music of Juan de Anchieta is an essential addition to the history of Spanish music.

This book, written accessibly for both biologists and linguists, argues that language is not as exceptional a human trait as some linguists believe it to be. It is rather, according to the authors, just the human version of a fairly common and conservative organic system, the Central Computational Complex.

Evolutionary Biology, of which this is the nineteenth volume, continues to offer its readers a wide range of original articles, reviews, and com mentaries on evolution, in the broadest sense of that term. The topics of the reviews range from anthropology and behavior to molecular biology and systematics. In recent volumes, a broad spectrum of articles have appeared on such subjects as natural selection among replicating molecules in vitro, mate recognition and the reproductive behavior in Drosophila, evolution of the monocotyledons, species selection, and the communication net work made possible among even distantly related genera of bacteria by plasmids and other transposable elements. Articles such as these, often too long for standard journals, are the stuff of Evolutionary Biology. The editors continue to solicit manuscripts on an international scale in an effort to see that everyone of the many facets of biological evolution is covered. Manuscripts should be sent to anyone of the following: Max K. Hecht, Department of Biology, Queens College of the City University of New York, Flushing, New York 11367; Bruce Wallace, Department of Biology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacks burg, Virginia 24061; Ghillian T. Prance, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458. The Editors vII Contents 1. Discontinuous Processes in the Evolution of the Bacterial Genome ........................................ 1 Monica Riley Introduction ............................... ,........ 1 Internal Rearrangements ............................... 2 Large-Scale Internal Rearrangements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Small-Scale Rearrangements: Divergence of Duplicate Genes ......................................... 11 Interactions between Two Genomes ...................... 20 Transposons: Jumping Genes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 . . . . . . Plasmids: Incorporation into Genomic DNA. . . . . . . . . . .. . . 23 .

This book is the first in a projected series on Evolutionary Cell Biology, the intent of which is to demonstrate the essential role of cellular mechanisms in transforming the genotype into the phenotype by transforming gene activity into evolutionary change in morphology. This book —Cells in Evolutionary Biology — evaluates the evolution of cells themselves and the role cells have been viewed to play as agents of change at other levels of biological organization. Chapters explore Darwin’s use of cells in his theory of evolution and how Weismann’s theory of the separation of germ plasm from body cells brought cells to center stage in understanding how acquired changes to cells within generations are not passed on to future generations. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Two-legged goats, Siamese twins and Cyclops infants, these 'freaks of nature' have shocked and fascinated people for centuries. This book explores the reasons and the insights they are beginning to provide about the deepest complexities of evolutionary biology, genetics and development.

A major synthesis of homology, written by a top researcher in the field Homology—a similar trait shared by different species and derived from common ancestry, such as a seal's fin and a bird’s wing—is one of the most fundamental yet challenging concepts in evolutionary biology. This groundbreaking book provides the first mechanistically based theory of what homology is and how it arises in evolution. Günter Wagner, one of the preeminent researchers in the field, argues that homology, or character identity, can be explained through the historical continuity of character identity networks—that is, the gene regulatory networks that enable differential gene expression. He shows how character identity is independent of the form and function of the character itself because the same network can activate different effector genes and thus control the development of different shapes, sizes, and qualities of the character. Demonstrating how this theoretical model can provide a foundation for understanding the evolutionary origin of novel characters, Wagner applies it to the origin and evolution of specific systems, such as cell types; skin, hair, and feathers; limbs and digits; and flowers. The first major synthesis of homology to be published in decades, Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation reveals how a mechanistically based theory can serve as a unifying concept for any branch of science concerned with the structure and development of organisms, and how it can help explain major transitions in evolution and broad patterns of biological diversity.

In Freaks of Nature, Mark S. Blumberg turns a scientist's eye on the oddities of nature, showing how a subject once relegated to the sideshow can help explain some of the deepest complexities of biology.