This text discusses whether the origin of radically new kinds of organisms - new higher taxa - are the result of normal Darwinian evolution proceeding, or whether unusual genetic processes and/or special environmental circumstances are necessary.

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.

Tackling one of the most difficult and delicate of the evolutionary questions, this challenging book summarizes the more recent results in phylogenetics and developmental biology that address the evolution of key innovations in metazoans. Divided into three sections, the first considers the phylogenetic issues involving this area of the tree of lif

The diversity of living forms and the unity of evolutionary processes are the focus of these essays. The collection helps form much of the basis of contempoary undertanding of evolutionary biology.

Illustrated throughout, this book presents what is known about factors that "shift the balance" between accretion and erosion, recruitment and mortality, stony corals and filamentous algae, recovery and degradation - the life and death of coral reefs.

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.

The arthropods contain more species than any other animal group, but the evolutionary pathways which led to their current diversity are still an issue of controversy. Arthropod Relationships provides an overview of our current understanding, responding to the new data arising from sequencing DNA, the discovery of new Cambrian fossils as direct evidence of early arthropod history, and developmental genetics. These new areas of research have stimulated a reconsideration of classical morphology and embryology. Arthropod Relationships is the first synthesis of the current debate to emerge: not since the volume edited by Gupta was published in 1979 has the arthropod phylogeny debate been, considered in this depth and breadth. Leaders in the various branches of arthropod biology have contributed to this volume. Chapters focus progressively from the general issues to the specific problems involving particular groups, and thence to a consideration of embryology and genetics. This wide range of disciplines is drawn on to approach an understanding of arthropod relationships, and to provide the most timely account of arthropod phylogeny. This book should be read by evolutionary biologists, palaeontologists, developmental geneticists and invertebrate zoologists. It will have a special interest for post-graduate students working in these fields.

As a review of the status of biogeography in the West Indies in the 1980s, the first edition of Biogeography of the West Indies: Past, Present, and Future provided a synthesis of our current knowledge of the systematics and distribution of major plant and animal groups in the Caribbean basin. The totally new and revised Second Edition, Biogeography

Presents an in-depth comparison of Darwin's theory of evolution versus the theory of creation and the theory of abrupt appearance.

Presents, for the general readership, the novel picture of evolution proposed in the 1995 book, The major transitions in evolution.