The 40th anniversary edition of the million copy international bestseller, with a new epilogue from the author. As relevant and influential today as when it was first published, this classic ...exposition of evolutionary thought, widely hailed for its stylistic brilliance and deep scientific insights, stimulated whole new areas of research.
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. As influential today as when it was first published, 'The Selfish Gene' has become a classic ...exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication.
The 'extended phenotype' is Dawkins' key contribution to the gene's eye view of evolution given in The Selfish Gene. He shows that the influence of genes can extend far beyond the bodies in which ...they reside, manipulating the environment and the behaviour of other individuals. A worldwide bestseller and a classic work of scientific exposition.
Adaptations are often spoken of as ‘for the good of’ some entity, but what is that entity? Groups and species are now rightly unfashionable, so what are we left with? The prevailing answer is ...Darwin's: ‘the individual’. Individuals clearly do not maximise their own survival so the concept of fitness had to be invented. If fitness is correctly defined in Hamilton's way as ‘inclusive fitness’ it ceases to matter whether we speak of individuals maximising their inclusive fitness or of genes maximising their survival. The two formulations are mutually inter‐translatable. Yet some serious mistranslations are quoted from the literature, which have led their authors into actual biological error. The present paper blames the prevailing concentration on the individual for these errors, and advocates a reversion to the replicator as the proper focus of evolutionary attention. A gene is an obvious replicator, but there are others, and the general properties of replicators are discussed. Defenders of the individual as the unit of selection often point to the unity and integration of the genome as expressed phenotypically. This paper ends by attacking even this assumption, not by a reductionist fragmentation of the phenotype, but, on the contrary, by extending it to include more than one individual. Replicators survive by virtue of their effects on the world, and these effects are not restricted to one individual body but constitute a wider ‘extended phenotype’.
Popular science books, selling in their thousands — even millions — help us appreciate breakthroughs in understanding the natural world, while highlighting the cultural importance of scientific ...knowledge. Textbooks bring these same advances to students; the scientists of tomorrow. But how do these books come about? And why are some of them so spectacularly successful? This is the first ever insider's account of science publishing, written by an editor intimately involved in the publication of some of the most famous bestsellers in the field. Michael Rodgers reveals the stories behind these extraordinary books, providing a behind-the-scenes view of the world of books, authors and ideas. These vivid and engaging narratives illuminate not only the challenges of writing about science, but also how publishing itself works and the creative collaboration between authors and editors that lies at its heart.
This is a revised edition with a new afterword by Daniel Dennett. The Extended Phenotype carries on from where The Selfish Gene takes off. It is a fascinating look at the evolution of life and ...natural selection. Dawkins's theory is that individual organisms are replicators that have extended phenotypic effects on society and the world at large, thus our genes have the ability to manipulate other individuals. A worldwide bestseller, this book has become a classic in popular science writing.
Parasites that manipulate the behaviour of their hosts represent striking examples of adaptation by natural selection. This field of study is now moving beyond its descriptive phase and into more ...exciting areas where the processes and patterns of such dramatic adaptations can be better understood. This book provides a review of host manipulation by parasites that assesses the current state of developments in the field and lays out a framework for future research. It also promotes a greater integration of behavioural ecology with studies of host manipulation (behavioural ecology has tended to concentrate mainly on behaviour expressed by free living organisms and is far less focused on the role of parasites in shaping behaviour). To help achieve this, the book adopts the approach of having an expert on behavioural ecology (but who does not work directly on parasites) to provide an afterword to each chapter.
