Evolution's Witness: How Eyes Evolved [Hardcover]

Ivan R Schwab (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 21, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0195369742 | ISBN-13: 978-0195369748 | Edition: 1

With predation and carnivory as catalysts, the first known eye appeared in a trilobite during the Cambrian explosion approximately 543 million years ago. This period was a crucible of evolution and teemed with anatomic creativity although the journey to formed vision actually began billions of years before that.
The Cambrian period, however, spawned nearly all morphologic forms of the eye, followed by descent over hundreds of millions of years providing an unimaginable variety of eyes with at least ten different designs. Some eyes display spectacular creativity with mirror, scanning or telephoto optics. Some of these ocular designs are merely curiosities, while others offer the finest visual potential packed into a small space, limited only by the laws of diffraction or physiological optics.
For example, some spiders developed tiny, well-formed eyes with scanning optics and three visual pigments; scallops have 40-100 eyes circling their mantle, each of which has mirror optics and contains two separate retinae per eye; deep ocean fish have eyes shaped like tubes containing yellow lenses to break camouflage; and some birds have vision five times better than ours; but this is only part of the story. Each animal alive today has an eye that fits is niche perfectly demonstrating the intimacy of the evolutionary process as no other organ could. The evolution of the eye is one of the best examples of Darwinian principles.
Although few eyes fossilize in any significant manner, many details of this evolution are known and understood. From initial photoreception 3.75 billion years ago to early spatial recognition in the first cupped eyespot in Euglena to fully formed camera style eyes the size of beach balls in ichthyosaurs, animals have processed light to compete and survive in their respective niches.
It is evolution's greatest gift and its greatest triumph. This is the story of the evolution of the eye.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Take a Look Inside Evolution's Witness [Click on Images to Enlarge]

American Bittern

Australian Giant Cuttlefish

Barking Owl

Horseshoe Crab

Tarsier Skull

Tree Boa

Koran Angelfish

Leaf-Tailed Gecko

Mantis Shrimp

Review

This book shows what can be achieved by combining insights from sensory physiology with anatomy, phylogeny and the fossil record across the widest range of organisms to document the evolution of a biological system. It demonstrates how the study of living forms can successfully be used to interpret fossil ones, and vice versa. The book's magnificent sweep is all-encompassing, and remarkably up-to-date for such a cross-disciplinary work. It's rare for one person to have such a broad background, but Schwab has achieved this, such that the work provides an example for future studies of the kind.
-Prof. Jennifer A. Clack, ScD, FRS
Professor and Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology,
University Museum of Zoology

An astounding erudite and exciting visual description of eye evolution, something every inquisitive biologist, veterinarian, neuroscientist, or ophthalmologist should have in their library. This book contains 400 illustrations that define and refine the text providing a unique look at the how the eye was achieved. It is truly one of a kind.
Bruce E. Spivey, M.D., M.S., M.Ed.
President, International Council of Ophthalmology

Schwab's lavishly illustrated book documents the amazing proliferation of eyes across the animal kingdom, in all their variations and all their splendour, and it explains the pathways by which these eyes have evolved. Aimed at the non-specialist but intelligent reader, the book begins with the early evolution of life on earth, and sets the scene for the advent of eyes that took place some 500-600 million years ago (mya). By combining fossil evidence with information from extant "primitive" organisms, Schwab explains current ideas about the simple animals that were present during the Ediacaran period (around 600 mya), about the light-detection mechanisms and the genetic machinery that they possessed, and about the split of these primitive animals into two major divisions - comprising on the one hand most invertebrates and on the other hand our own line that led to vertebrates and mammals.

High on the agenda is the invention, around the time of the Cambrian explosion in body forms (more than 500 mya), and the subsequent re-invention, of the two radically different forms of eye: the camera-style eye (as we have) with a single lens, and the compound eye, with multiple repeated units each having its own lens or mirror. Using beautiful images, Schwab charts the myriad variations on these two themes that have been employed by countless species, extinct and extant, over the course of 500 million years of global experimentation, refinement, and rejection. The result is a stunning book that will serve both to introduce non-specialists to the concepts of evolution and eye evolution and also as a reference work for experts.


Trevor D Lamb
Professor of Neuroscience
John Curtin School of Medical Research
The Australian National University
Canberra, Australia

The evolution of the eye was unquestionably one of the most important innovations in the history of life. Ivan Schwab has synthesized a huge array of disparate information to provide us with an indispensable guide through the complexities of visual systems throughout the animal kingdom.
Richard Fortey FRS FRSL

"Which leads to a just published book -- a most remarkable book -- that needs to be in the library of every school and college, and maybe in every household ...There aren't many books like this one, transformative books that provide a wondrous experience -- especially for young people -- just by turning the pages of mesmerizing illustrations of the evolution of the eyes that are looking at the book... A deep majestic event: human eyes looking at a book explaining the evolution of human eyes. (The only event that I know of with more majesty is the human brain contemplating its own evolution.)" -- Dan Agin, Huffington Post

"Evolution's Witness: How the Eyes Evolved is an outstanding book. It can be highly recommended. Every neuroophthalmologist should strongly consider adding this book to their library. It would also be valuable for ophthalmologists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons interested in the field of evolution." -- Walter M. Jay, MD, Neuro-ophthalmology

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 328 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (November 21, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195369742
• ISBN-13: 978-0195369748
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 1 x 11.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #329,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ivan R. Schwab, M.D., F.A.C.S. graduated from West Virginia University (WVU) with a bachelor's degree from the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. He obtained his M.D. from WVU in 1973. Completing his ophthalmology residency at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and following two fellowships in ophthalmology, Dr. Schwab returned to WVU as a faculty member in the WVU School of Medicine (1982-89). In 1989, he moved to the University of California, Davis (UCD) where he is has been a faculty member ever since. He is currently a Professor of Ophthalmology at UCD. His interest in comparative optics and ocular physiology stems from a childhood interest in all manner of animals and an educational process devoted to biology.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A visually rich and engagingly written textbook explicating the evolution of eyes and an implicit defense of Darwinian evolution November 21, 2011

By V. deLuise

Format:Hardcover

Episodically a book is written of such profound importance that it not only encapsulates and defines a subject, but transforms our understanding of it as well.
Such is "Evolution's Witness," by Professor Ivan Schwab M.D., at once both magisterial treatise and kaleidoscopic visual treat on the subject of the evolution of eyes. Dr. Schwab has managed, apart from being a Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of California at Davis where he is an ophthalmologic surgeon and well-published and internationally recognized basic and clinical research scientist, to have found the time, focus and diligence to comb the world's literature, communicate with leading authorities in the fields of paleontology, invertebrate and vertebrate biology, comparative anatomy and physiology, collate hundreds of splendid color photographs, microphotographs and histopathology images, and bring to bear an enormous quantity of wide-ranging scientific discourse on how eyes have evolved over the eons, and in so doing, to explicate how the eye is indeed the "visual witness" of the story of evolution.
For years, it had been argued that the complexity of the eye was a reason for some kind of intelligent design in its creation,that the eye could not have developed simply from a combination of time and natural selection. This book, much as Richard Dawkins' seminal work "The Blind Watchmaker," is implicitly a paean to and defense of the concept which Darwin championed, that over an impossible-to-comprehend period of time measured in the billions of years and often by only subtle mutations and changes responding to natural selection, nature actually could, and did, design, refine and re-design the eye as a response to predation, biochemistry, environment, natural catastrophes and extinctions. In Doctor Schwab's words, "Sensory systems, especially visual systems, will continue to be among the premier forces of evolution because of the advantage they afford species."
Dr. Schwab begins at the beginning, as it were, with the formation of life itself, around 3.75 billion years ago. What is clear after only a few chapters into this richly illustrated book is how important and early in the history of evolution is the special sense of vision, and how crucial it was for the development of the most primitive organisms to today. He augments the chronology by marvelously and engagingly telling the reader many stories along the way - of the lowly Euglena, the protist whom we all met in high school biology, and how its flagellum may be powered by a variant of rhodopsin, a primitive form of the same visual pigment we have in our own human eyes; that the trilobite, birthed in the Cambrian Era 543 million years ago likely from an even older pre-Cambran (Ediacaran) forebear, might have possessed the "first eye"; that the Cambrian explosion begat many of the last common ancestors of present-day organisms and their unimaginably diverse eyes that have evolved and radiated over time ; the world of the misnamed mantis shrimp with its sixteen visual pigments (as opposed to three in the human) and its "superman"-like qualities in its particular ecosystem; that the scallop has 40-100 eyes, resembling tiny "blueberries" attached to its mantle; that the shark may have a form of synesthesia as it is able to use the electromagnetic as well as the visible spectrum to navigate waters; why birds may have the most complicated and highest visual system; and the evolution of the primate eye, culminating in our magnificent and beautiful human organ of vision.
Dr. Schwab masterfully engages the reader in this wondrous chronology and by augmenting the narrative with these stories, replete with vivid color illustrations, he does so compellingly well, as opposed to robotically listing a myriad organisms and examining their visual apparati. And in reality, he tells two interweaving stories: the story of evolution as seen through the specific lens of nature's protean and tenacious journey of ocular evolution, and the story of many of the world's creatures, and the development of their unimaginably diverse and fascinating eyes, which evolved in response to Darwinian natural selection.
Dr. Schwab's writing style is effortlessly brilliant - erudite but self-effacing, meticulous to a fault but in the service of accuracy and science, clever and witty but always focused on providing information accretively and understandably. The book is divided into chapters for each eon or era, with representative examples of both last common ancestors and current examplars of these radiations of life. Colored margins on each page of text correlate to a color-coded timeline which keeps the reader on task synthesizing the plethora of knowledge of geology, paleontology, anatomy, biology and physiology that the author explicates.
This book is hard to put down. It will be both a wonderful tome to pick up frequently and select a chapter at random to read on the remarkable and colorful story of life and vision, as well as a serious, deeply referenced academic resource for ophthalmologists, visual scientists and readers of all stripes who are intrigued by how it is that our eyes, and the eyes of countless and creatures both present and extinct, have come to be.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Science writing at its very best November 14, 2011

By R. G. Lane

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Evolution's Witness has quickly become one of my all-time favorite science books. Have you ever wondered what the insides of an owl eye look like? How spiders see with 8 eyes? Why we have color vision? What did dinosaur eyes look like? This book is for you. The author was very passionate about his subject and it shows. There are lots of photos and histology sections to look at. The format of the book made it easy to read. The main text is broken up into short sections followed by many case studies, examples and diagrams that helped explain difficult ideas. I rarely felt lost. There are 8 appendices and a glossary to help provide background information if you need it (I did). I think it is accessible to pretty much anyone with an interest - from high school students to PhDs. What set the book apart for me was the writing. Instead of an encyclopedia, the author took all of the information and put it together into one narrative. It really tells a good story from the beginning of life up until the present. Highly recommended.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The fabulous eye November 10, 2011

By marmot

Format:Hardcover

This is a marvelous book, beautifully written, constructed and illustrated, that shows the extraordinary diversity and power of eyes throughout the animal kingdom. It is humbling to realize that our own eyes, good as they are, are surpassed in one or another capabilities by many other species. The photographs show eyes that will amaze, amuse and tease--but the bottom line is top-notch science written to enlighten everyone. The evolution of remarkably complex eyes in seemingly diverse animals challenged Darwin, and is still a challenge, but this book brings us closer to understanding how and why vision is so critical to all types of creatures...including us!