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Mary Jane West-Eberhard

Developmental Plasticity and Evolution 1st Edition

by Mary Jane West-Eberhard (Author)

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The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities
of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in
chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.

ISBN-10

0195122356
ISBN-13

978-0195122350
Edition

1st
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

March 13, 2003
Language

English
Dimensions

10.02 x 6.88 x 1.57 inches
Print length

816 pages
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Editorial Reviews

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"This book does not propose a radical departure from current evolutionary theory; rather it is a truly novel synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology that is sure to profoundly affect the way biologists view the natural world. A must-read for any serious student of evolution and a must-have for any biological literature collection."--Choice

About the Author

Mary Jane West-Eberhard is at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (March 13, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 816 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195122356
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195122350
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.27 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 10.02 x 6.88 x 1.57 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #271,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #41 in Developmental Biology (Books)
- #204 in Genetics (Books)
- #415 in Ecology (Books)

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4.7 20 ratings

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Patrick Alexander

One of the important books no one reads

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 16, 2007

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There seems to be a consensus in evolutionary biology that this is an important book representing a major advance in our understanding. However, most of the biologists saying this haven't read the book; or have, perhaps, skimmed a chapter or two. The reason for this is simple: this book is far too long, far too dense, and far too abstruse. There is a lot of potential here; rewritten as a 150-200 page book with a good editor, it could have been an excellent and influential book. At 640 pages of text with constant grammatical & spelling errors (Lamarck only has his "c" about half the time) and writing that is, even by academic standards, hopelessly tangled, this is bound to be only an excellent decoration for the academic bookshelf.

Nonetheless, for those willing to take the long slog through there really is a lot of value here. There are just so many more enjoyable ways to spend one's time...

32 people found this helpful

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JLG

A fantastic scholarship. A must read for anyone tired with ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 12, 2014

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A fantastic scholarship. A must read for anyone tired with the evolutionary synthesis platitude that places the gene in the driver's seat of evolution and development; like novel structures and functions are invented by mutations, ahead of a need for them, or that development is pre-programmed by our genes. West-Eberhard, instead, places the phenotype and organismic activity in that seat. Read the book and see for yourself why the active organism and its development deserve that seat. A long and demanding read, to be sure, but worth all the hours you will spend reading it (almost 700 pages)

7 people found this helpful

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ptilosphen

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 1, 2015

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Very detailed, well-explained scenarios to change your view on how evolution works

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Christopher J. Davis

The beginning of an extended synthesis in evolutionary biological theory!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 23, 2013

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If you never fully accepted the "simple" gene-based model (the Modern Synthesis) of Natural Selection, this is the book for you!

3 people found this helpful

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Michal Polak

A vital contribution to evolutionary theory

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2004

Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard is an enormously important contribution to the modern (neo-Darwinian) theory of organic evolution. It presents a new way of understanding evolution. The book teaches us how environmental induction of purely phenotypic events, including learning, can drive evolution, and why a plastic and modular phenotype should replace mutation at the center stage of evolutionary thinking. It is my prediction that this book will precipitate a revolution in thought within biology, but that this will take time, as has any major new idea. Biologists in all fields related to evolution are encouraged to read this work.
The book contains a masterful synthesis of biological facts and theories on the broadest of scales. It unites all disciplines within the biological sciences. It is not, however, merely an impressive review. Rather, it captures a vast collection of data and brilliantly organizes it around a set of fundamental principles about development and evolution from which the main messages of the book are crystallized. Whereas many of the concepts may be described as relatively simple, contemplating the connections between them, as well as their overall unification, becomes an infinitely more challenging and fascinating task. It is from this unification that West-Eberhard's coherent theory of development and evolution blossoms. Expertly guiding the reader from individual concepts to coherent theory, West-Eberhard captures our imagination at every twist and turn, and catapults the reader's mind in a myriad of unexpected directions. The writing is crisp, clean and captivating. The book is filled with exciting and highly felicitous examples from natural history, touching upon the lives of all kinds of organisms, from prions to elm trees and African elephants. The pages are richly textured with detailed examples, illustrations and various intellectual gems. One such delight is a discussion of Darwin's pangenesis theory and how it fails in light of sterile castes in the Hymenoptera.
The book's main contribution to modern evolutionary biology is the revolutionary idea that environmental influences on development, not mutation, are the first order cause of design. This view is a fundamental alteration of emphasis in a field obsessed with genes, genetic drift and mass selection. The book places major emphasis on the importance of genetic accommodation, which occurs when developmentally-mediated changes in the phenotype are molded by quantitative genetic change. The hypothesis of genetic accommodation can be understood as beginning when the environment induces a phenotypic change. This change imposes a new selective regime onto pre-existing polygenic variation. In this way, we are encouraged to understand genes as "followers", as opposed to "leaders" in evolution. The variants can be inherited in subsequent generations if the environmental conditions inducing them are recurrent, and if there is genetic variation underlying the population in the developmental capacity to produce them. Natural selection will favor the spread of a particular environmentally-induced variant when it has positive effects on individual fitness. Although both mutation and environmental induction are considered important modes of initiation of new phenotypic variation, West-Eberhard's argument is that environmental induction is in fact more important.
This thesis challenges the modern gene-centered view of evolution, and in so doing, drives the final nail in the coffin of the "one-gene-one-phenotype" illusion. The book encourages the view that a unified science of evolution can only be achieved with a thorough integration of development into evolutionary biology. To this end, Mary Jane West-Eberhard's treatise is an enormous success. By showing how environmentally influenced development contributes to the origin of novelty in all organisms, the book provides a key missing component of a modern evolutionary theory that biology has been lacking since Darwin. The book is essential reading for all graduate students, researchers and teachers of biology.

52 people found this helpful

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Charles E. Nydorf

jump starting a revolutiion

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 3, 2006

Darwin developed his theory of evolution without knowing much about the mechanisms of heredity. These mechanisms were rediscovered in the 1900's as part of the science of genetics. By the 1930's a school of evolutionary thinkers came to the realization that Darwin's theory could be further developed by recasting it in terms of population genetics. The resulting synthetic theory of evolution has ruled mainstream biology ever since. But genetics has not stood still in the meantime. The rise of molecular biology has made possible a new discipline, evo-devo which seeks to explain how the genes control development. Evo-devo has developed a new approach to evolution. While the synthetic theory tended to see evolution as a matter of the loss of old genes within a population or the fixation of new ones, evo-devo has found that large parts of the genome are conserved over vast periods of time and shared by widely divergent phyla. Evolution has produced diversity by modifying the mechanisms which control the expression of these ancient genes. New ideas are now required to explain how this kind of diversity evolves. West-Eberhard proposes that genetic control mechanisms can be exposed to selection by the phenotypic adaptation of organisms to new kinds of environmemt. This phenotypic adaptation ultimately drives evolution. The germ of this idea had been put forward by J. Baldwim more than one hundred years ago but neither Baldwin or anybody else knew about evo-devo and the idea had little influence. Now its time may have come.

18 people found this helpful

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