As the work of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, François Jacob, Louis Althusser, and Pierre Bourdieu demonstrates, Georges Canguilhem has exerted tremendous influence on the philosophy of science ...and French philosophy more generally. In Knowledge of Life, a book that spans twenty years of his essays and lectures, Canguilhem offers a series of epistemological histories that seek to establish and clarify the stakes, ambiguities, and emergence of philosophical and biological concepts that defined the rise of modern biology. How do transformations in biology and modern medicine shape conceptions of life? How do philosophical concepts feed into biological ideas and experimental practices, and how are they themselves transformed? How does knowledge "undo the experience of life so as to help man remake what life has made without him, in him or outside of him?" Knowledge of Life is Canguilhem's effort to explain how the movements of knowledge and life come to rest upon each other. Published at the dawn of the genetic revolution and still pertinent today, the book tackles the history of cell theory, the conceptual moves toward and away from mechanical understandings of the organism, the persistence of vitalism, and the nature of normality in science and its objects.
Methods in Stream Ecology, Second Edition, provides a complete series of field and laboratory protocols in stream ecology that are ideal for teaching or conducting research. This updated edition ...reflects recent advances in the technology associated with ecological assessment of streams, including remote sensing. In addition, the relationship between stream flow and alluviation has been added, and a new chapter on riparian zones is also included. The book features exercises in each chapter; detailed instructions, illustrations, formulae, and data sheets for in-field research for students; and taxanomic keys to common stream invertebrates and algae. With a student-friendly price, this book is key for all students and researchers in stream and freshwater ecology, freshwater biology, marine ecology, and river ecology. This text is also supportive as a supplementary text for courses in watershed ecology/science, hydrology, fluvial geomorphology, and landscape ecology. * Exercises in each chapter * Detailed instructions, illustrations, formulae, and data sheets for in-field research for students * Taxanomic keys to common stream invertebrates and algae * Link from Chapter 22: FISH COMMUNITY COMPOSITION to an interactive program for assessing and modeling fish numbers
‘Toby Gardner’s excellent book contains many valuable lessons and recommendations on ways to improve forest monitoring, how to promote far better and more ecologically sustainable forest management, ...and approaches to significantly improve biodiversity conservation programmes… Researchers, policy-makers, and forest managers need to read this book.’ David Lindenmayer, Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University
‘This book provides a highly original review of one of the greatest challenges facing today’s conservation and forestry professionals.’
Jeffrey Sayer, Senior Scientific Adviser, Forest Conservation Programme , IUCN - International Union for Conservation of Nature
‘Toby Gardner’s timely, accessible and much needed book provides a constructive and common sense review of key problems and remedies regarding the future of forest biodiversity. His clear-headed proposals about monitoring and good practice offer a practical guide to improved forest management and conservation. I urge all those concerned with the fate of the world’s forests to read and consider what this book has to say.’
Douglas Sheil, Director, Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation, Uganda, and Senior Research Associate, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia
The fate of much of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity depends upon our ability to improve the management of forest ecosystems that have already been substantially modified by humans. Monitoring is an essential ingredient in meeting this challenge, allowing us to measure the impact of different human activities on biodiversity and identify more responsible ways of managing the environment. The purpose of this book is to examine the factors that make biodiversity monitoring programmes fail or succeed.
The first two sections lay out the context and importance of biodiversity monitoring, and shed light on some of the key challenges that have confounded many efforts to date. The third and main section presents an operational framework for developing monitoring programmes that have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to forest management. Discussion covers the scoping, design and implementation stages of a forest biodiversity monitoring programme, including defining the purpose, goals and objectives of monitoring, indicator selection, and the process of data collection, analysis and interpretation.
Toby Gardner is a NERC Research Fellow in the Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK.
The origin of biological diversity, via the formation of new species, can be inextricably linked to adaptation to the ecological environment. Specifically, ecological processes are central to the ...formation of new species when barriers to gene flow (reproductive isolation) evolve between populations as a result of ecologically based divergent natural selection. This process of ‘ecological speciation’ has seen a large body of focused research in the last ten-fifteen years, and a review and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical literature is now timely. The book begins by clarifying what ecological speciation is, its alternatives, and the predictions that can be used to test for it. It then reviews the three components of ecological speciation and discusses the geography and genomic basis of the process. A final chapter highlights future research directions, describing the approaches and experiments which might be used to conduct that future work. The ecological and genetic literature is integrated throughout the text with the goal of shedding new insight into the speciation process, particularly when the empirical data is then further integrated with theory.
The root of the eukaryote tree of life defines some of the most fundamental relationships among species. It is also critical for defining the last eukaryote common ancestor (LECA), the shared ...heritage of all extant species. The unikont-bikont root has been the reigning paradigm for eukaryotes for more than 10 years 1 but is becoming increasingly controversial 2–4. We developed a carefully vetted data set, consisting of 37 nuclear-encoded proteins of close bacterial ancestry (euBacs) and their closest bacterial relatives, augmented by deep sequencing of the Acrasis kona (Heterolobosea, Discoba) transcriptome. Phylogenetic analysis of these data produces a highly robust, fully resolved global phylogeny of eukaryotes. The tree sorts all examined eukaryotes into three megagroups and identifies the Discoba, and potentially its parent taxon Excavata 5, as the sister group to the bulk of known eukaryote diversity, the proposed Neozoa (Amorphea + Stramenopila+Alveolata+Rhizaria+Plantae SARP 6). All major alternative hypotheses are rejected with as little as ∼50% of the data, and this resolution is unaffected by the presence of fast-evolving alignment positions or distant outgroup sequences. This “neozoan-excavate” root revises hypotheses of early eukaryote evolution and highlights the importance of the poorly studied Discoba for understanding the evolution of eukaryotic diversity and basic cellular processes.
Display omitted
•A new 37-protein data set produces a robust and rooted eukaryote tree•All examined eukaryotes form three megagroups: Amorphea, SARP, and Excavata•A new neozoan-excavate root is proposed with strong statistical support•Discoba (Excavata) has a long, unique, and largely unknown evolutionary history
He et al. developed a novel data set of 37 eukaryotic proteins of bacterial ancestry (euBacs) to explore the major radiations of eukaryotes. A neozoan-excavate root is found, with the little-known Discoba (and potentially its parent taxon Excavata) identified as sister group to the bulk of known eukaryote diversity.
PDF