Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This exciting and unique Reader presents a wide spectrum of views and issues involved in the ever expanding debates about evolution. Can we trace the origin of life? How important is the theory of natural selection? Why did we start talking? Is there an evolutionary argument for the existence of God? It includes extracts which look at the roles of mutations, inbreeding, crossbreeding, and gene selection; the puzzle of sex; the evolutionary consequences of being a plant, and the means of measuring time by using molecular clocks. With articles by Darwin, Fisher, Haldane, Dawkins, Gould, and Medawar amongst others, this Oxford Reader offers a combination of classic accounts and modern research which will appeal both to students and a broad general audience.

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Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

A large and fairly detailed book to introduce undergraduates to evolutionary biology. Five sections, with three to five chapters in each, introduce the four main components Ridley considers to be eveolutionary theory: genetics, adaptation and selection, diversity (what one would term "systematics"), and macroevolution. Historical background and terminology are covered in the first section, the second surveys both population and molecular genetics, and the third combines aspects of organismal microevolution, evolutionary functional morphology, and adaptation. In Section 4, a broadly cladistic view prevails, but this reviewer questions the sequence of chapters: classification, species concepts, speciation, and phylogeny reconstruction. These topics are intertwined in a manner not well elaborated here, and one might move most of the classification material to the end, with the goal of understanding species and then lineages before naming segments thereof. The final section covers biogeography, rates, trends, and extinction--the usual macroevolutionary menu. Recommended. Advanced undergraduate. E. Delson; Herbert H. Lehman College, CUNY

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Dr Mark Ridley is Lecturer at Somerville College, and a member of the Zoology Department, University of Oxford.