Customer Reviews

On the Origin of Phyla

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The title says it all, this is a book about the evolution of phyla. It's a fairly advanced book, if you don't know what a phylum is or what natural selection is you'll probably find it a very rough go. However you don't have to be an expert, I'm certainly not, to enjoy it and learn from it.

The book starts off by covering a lot of background biology. The first chapter covers very basic topics relating to classifying animals such as: what phyla are, why it's useful to study homologues, the nature of hierarchies and cladistics.

The second chapter covers cellular biology. This quickly moves from the study of single cells to how cells aggregate to form tissues, organs and other body parts. This sets the stage for the following chapters that discuss body plans and how their development is determined by a system of regulatory genes, not just individual alleles.

Following this is a discussion of the fossil record, a high level view of the phyla and how they are related to each other. Much of the rest of the book is spent elaborating on this material.

The first section concludes with a discussion of the Cambrian Explosion. The main ideas he describes are: there was no explosion, it was due to physical changes in the environment, it was due to a biological changes in the environment or it was due to an intrinsic evolutionary change. Needles to say it's an open question and the author couldn't give a definitive answer. As more material is covered the question is addressed several times later in the book.

This first part of the book alone made it worth it to me.

The next six chapters form the heart of the book, they give a very detailed account of the phyla. More than just a catalog, it presents how the phyla are related to each other and how they are broken up into subphyla and classes. The evidence from the fossil record is continually presented and details of the body plans of the phyla are illustrated with specific examples. The level of detail is fantastic.

Give the title there probably isn't much of a chance that someone would pick this book up for a casual read. It's even more rigorous and complete than I expected. However, there is a lot of background material (which is quite interesting in its own right) and things are pretty much explained from the ground up. The bits of humor in the book were enjoyable, I especially appreciated the dig at postmodernism on page 78. A non-expert, like me, can benefit from reading this book and enjoy it too, but should be ready for a tough read (for me the most difficult part was the vast amount of terminology, but the glossary helped to offset that). I would expect that people with more expertise will likely enjoy it even more.

I am a biologist yet found this book a hard study. No, I didn't READ it, I studied it. That's what is required. My little corner of biology is not evolutionary biology, so this book was a bit off my beaten track. For those with the determination, this is a very rewarding work, and may become a classic. It lacks a good glossary; the one it has seems to have been thrown together as an afterthought. The illustrations could benefit from serious upgrading. Yet with these minor faults, I still rate this book as 5 stars. A truly marvelous work.

With new evidence from molecular sequencing, the study of evolutionary development and the discovery of exceptionally preserved fossils of Precambrian and Cambrian age, the reality of evolution cannot be denied. Valentine embraces these fields with his experience and authority as a professor emeritus of integrative biology at UCB, who has been publishing novel and provocative ideas on the origin and nature of phyla for more than 30 years. This book is essentially about the Cambrian radiation, the event that gave rise to most of the major animal groups. The book's particular strength is its integration of data from paleontology and biology. This book is a remarkable achievement, a timely synthesis of the current state of this exciting field. It may be a bit of a tedious read for many, but a must for anyone who wants to understand evolution at its core.

This is a fantastic book that discusses in great (sometimes excruciating) detail the morphological, developmental, fossil, molecular, and other evidence regarding the definitions, circumscriptions, origins, evolution, and interrelationships of the phyla. Mostly well and clearly written although the text is at times frustratingly redundant, and it will probably be difficult reading for anybody without an intense interest in, and some basic knowledge of, biology. However, it is a must-read for anybody who is interested in this topic.

This is an excellent review that follows current thinking in modern invertebrate taxonomy. The author does not take any controversial positions, and discusses the uncertainties where they are. He provides what i think is an excellent basic review of the biology necessary to understand the book, although when reading a book that is on a subject that is not unfamiliar it is always difficult to judge how easy it would be for someone with less knowledge on the subject. Even though the paperback version being sold is july 2006, it is impossible to have a review that is entirely to the date. If you read source articles you will realize that mitochondrial DNA studies fairly convincingly place placazoa basal to porifera, and a new molecular analysis places urochordates closer to craniata (vertebrata)than cephalochordata, but i am not aware of any summary that includes info that new.