speciation

Book review – Macroevolutionaries: Reflections on Natural History, Paleontology, and Stephen Jay Gould

7-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, history of science, paleontology

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) was a well-known evolutionary biologist, palaeontologist, and science populariser. Amongst his many achievements stand the 300 popular essays that appeared from 1974 to 2001 in the magazine Natural History, published by the American Museum of Natural History. Many of these were collected in bestselling volumes that have been reprinted repeatedly. To celebrate this legacy of essays, his friends and close colleagues Bruce S. Lieberman and Niles Eldredge, themselves evolutionary biologists and palaeontologists of considerable renown, here present thirteen of their own essays that do exactly what the subtitle promises. They entertain as often as they intrigue in a collection that draws serious and, looking at the chapter titles, sometimes not-so-serious connections between macroevolution and palaeontology on the one hand, and popular culture, philosophy, and the history of science on the other. To my shame, I have to admit that I have never read Gould’s essays or his many books (while having several on my shelves). Macroevolutionaries convinced me that this gap in my knowledge needs closing.

(more…)

Book review – Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species

9-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology, history of science

Having just reviewed James T. Costa’s biography of Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was keen to read more about one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of science: how two scholars independently hit on the same idea and how history has largely forgotten one of them. Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species brings together many lines of evidence and analysis to argue that Wallace deserves recognition on the same footing as Charles Darwin as the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection. This is a companion book to On the Organic Law of Change, presenting an analysis of this crucial notebook that Wallace kept during his travels around the Malay archipelago. Hence, you are getting a two-for-one as this review continues the previous one.

(more…)

Book review – Cave Biodiversity: Speciation and Diversity of Subterranean Fauna

8-minute read
keywords: biodiversity, ecology, evolutionary biology

The deep sea is often mentioned as one of the last remaining unexplored areas on the planet, but there is another, closely related world: the subterranean realm of caves. Edited by cave ecologist J. Judson Wynne, Cave Biodiversity brings together fifteen experts in biospeleology to discuss several notable invertebrate and vertebrate groups. A scholarly yet readable overview, this is a welcome addition to the small number of books on this topic.

(more…)

Book review – Sex in City Plants, Animals, Fungi, and More: A Guide to Reproductive Diversity

6-minute read
keywords: ecology, ethology, evolutionary biology

Where evolution is concerned, the city is a cauldron exerting its own unique mix of selection pressures on the organisms living here. The metronome beating at the heart of this process is sex. For this book, retired physician Kenneth D. Frank has explored his hometown of Philadelphia in the Eastern US state of Pennsylvania and documented the astonishing variety of sex lives playing out right under our noses. Many of these organisms can be found in cities around the world. Remarkably well-researched and richly illustrated with photos, this collection of 106 one-page vignettes shows what avocational naturalists can contribute both in terms of observations and in terms of highlighting the many basic questions that are still unanswered.

(more…)

Book review – The Process of Animal Domestication

7-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology

It is tempting to call animal domestication humanity’s oldest and longest-running experiment, but professor of palaeobiology Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra would beg to differ. It is worth opening with a quote from The Process of Animal Domestication to set the tone: “domestication is actually pretty poor as experiments go; there are too many variables involved with little control, and no records of how things started” (p. 206). The excellent structure prevents the book from becoming an overwhelming infodump, making this a valuable synthesis of data across a large number of disciplines that will interest a wide range of researchers.

(more…)

Book review – Otherlands: A World in the Making

7-minute read
keywords: paleontology

Our planet has been many different worlds over its 4.5-billion-year history. Imagining what they were like is hard—with our limited lifespan, deep time eludes us by its very nature. Otherlands, the debut of Scottish palaeontologist Thomas Halliday, presents you with a series of past worlds. Though this is a non-fiction book thoroughly grounded in fact, it is the quality of the narrative that stands out. Beyond imaginative metaphors to describe extinct lifeforms, some of his reflections on deep time, taxonomy, and evolution are simply spine-tingling.

(more…)

Book review – Life Changing: How Humans Are Altering Life on Earth

7-minute read

Ever since humans appeared on the scene, we have been altering life on Earth. Where once our actions could be considered part of nature’s fabric, our influence has become outsized and our options to exercise it have multiplied. Though the subtitle of Life Changing does not make it explicit, science writer Helen Pilcher focuses on our impact on the genetics and evolution of life around us. A book that stands out for its balanced tone, it managed to surprise me more than once, despite my familiarity with the topics considered.

(more…)

Book review – Vampirology: The Science of Horror’s Most Famous Fiend

6-minute read

You would think that science and monsters are strange bedfellows. And yet, there are plenty of science geeks, myself included, who get a good giggle out of pondering the science behind mythical beings and worlds. Clearly, somebody at the Royal Society of Chemistry has a similar sense of humour, for they have just published Vampirology. Here, chemist and science communicator Kathryn Harkup trains a scientific lens on the fanged fiend—not so much to ask whether vampires do or do not exist, but whether they could exist given our scientific understanding today.

(more…)

Book review – The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past

6-minute read

In the field of palaeoanthropology, one name keeps turning up: the Leakey dynasty. Since Louis Leakey’s first excavations in 1926, three generations of this family have been involved in anthropological research in East Africa. In this captivating memoir, Meave, a second-generation Leakey, reflects on a lifetime of fieldwork and research and provides an inspirational blueprint for what women can achieve in science.

(more…)

Book review – Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene

7-minute read

The idea that extinction is a bad thing and diversity a good thing seems self-evident to us. But, by surveying more than two centuries of scholarship, science historian David Sepkoski shows that this was not always the prevailing belief. Rather than a book discussing mass extinction, Catastrophic Thinking is more meta than that, discussing how we have been discussing mass extinction. So, we have an interesting premise, but also an interesting author because—bonus detail—the work of his father, J. John (Jack) Sepkoski Jr., was instrumental in recognizing the Big Five mass extinctions. I could not wait to get to grips with this book.

(more…)