Customer Reviews

Frogs, Flies, and Dandelions: Speciation--The Evolution of New Species

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This is an extremely entertaining overview of the major theories of how new species emerge during biological evolution. Ideas from the technical literature such as allopatric speciation, sympatric speciation, and speciation through polyploidy are presented with lots of concrete examples, making the ideas very easy to digest.

The science really comes alive in this book. Interviews with the scientists in the thick of research are enough to get you cheering for them. Also, Schilthuizen dramatizes in an engaging way the disputes between advocates of different theories of speciation.

Finally, a useful glossary is provided at the end for anyone rusty on terminology from biology.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a quick, fun, yet informative, well-referenced, and up-to-date account of the state of the art in evolutionary biology.

One of the deepest questions in evolution is how new species form. A common view is that some members of a species have to become spatially isolated from the other members of the species in order for them to become a new species. This view, that a new species cannot form in the same territory as the old species has been challenged by many biologists who have used a variety of experimental and observational methods. They have shown that natural selection is a bigger factor than isolation in the formation of new species and that members of the same species living in the same territory can occupy different environmental niches. Since each niche is associated with different selection pressures, new species can and do form on the same territory as old ones.

This new chapter of scientific history can now be read by everyone thanks to this clear, entertaining and even amusing book.

This book was gripping and a joy to read and convinced me even more about evolutionary processes in the context of speciation. It was also terse, punchy and easily understood. The author has done the spadework and interviewed lots of scientists to put this part Journalistic guided tour together.

This book starts with Mayr and the definition of a species - perhaps the best part, and goes into great depth about allopatric speciation before moving onto sympatric modes, polyploidy in plants and instances of possible instant speciation with animals as well.

There are really good examples provided from the Galapagos, Indonesia and Australasia, the lake Chichlid fishes, Banana flies, Insects and yes dandelions. Most of the examples are quite varied and easily appreciated.

I could not fault this extremely informative and enjoyable read. You would find is useful if you need to brush up on the mechanisms of species formation but don't have time to wade through a Mayr or a more expensive and dull textbook.

This is a quirky little book that gives you a nice overview on species and speciation. I'm an Ecology and Evolutionary biology major, and still find this book useful, but it also keeps thinks broad enough that a casual reader with little to know biology background could read it as well. It's also filled with small antecdotes that keep it entertaining and feeling more like a casual read than an educational one. Wonderful book if you're interested in learning or expanding your knowledge about species and speciation!

This book is chock full of current "problems" in systematics and species concepts. I was able to use several of these stories to pass my oral pre-lims in entomology and systematics!

I told the author so in an email! :)
This was a few years ago - and now I'm returning to this book again in order to locate or develop a post-doc.

I couldn't put this book down! I was extremely impressed with this author and wish he had written a dozen books already! I learned so much from this author and would highly recommend it to both scientists and non-scientists. I can see this book being looked at 50 years from now as well, so people can see where we got our evolutionary theories of today.