Anolis Lizards Of The Caribbean

The Anolis lizards of the Caribbean are ideally suited for the study of evolutionary ecology. Offering fascinating insights into the more than 150 species dispersed throughout the Caribbean islands, Jonathan Roughgarden details the differences between species in a wide range of behavioral and physical characteristics, including foraging behaviors, body size, and habitat use, resulting from evolutionary divergences concurrent with the plate-tectonic origins of the region. This book will be of interest to students and researchers--ecology and theoretical, tropical, and population biology.

The author of this treatise uses the Anolis lizard to demonstrate the concept of ecology models - how ecological context supplies the natural selection that drives evolution and how evolutionary change among species in turn affects their ecological station.

The Anolis lizards of the Caribbean are ideally suited for the study of evolutionary ecology. Offering fascinating insights into the more than 150 species dispersed throughout the Caribbean islands, Jonathan Roughgarden details the differences between species in a wide range of behavioral and physical characteristics, including foraging behaviors, body size, and habitat use, resulting from evolutionary divergences concurrent with the plate-tectonic origins of the region. This book will be of interest to students and researchers--ecology and theoretical, tropical, and population biology.

Adaptive speciation occurs when biological interactions induce disruptive selection and the evolution of assortative mating, thus triggering the splitting of lineages. Internationally recognized authorities explain exciting developments in modeling speciation, including celebrated examples of rapid speciation by natural selection. The text is geared toward students and researchers in biology, physics, and mathematics.

"In a book both beautifully illustrated and deeply informative, Jonathan Losos, a leader in evolutionary ecology, celebrates and analyzes the diversity of the natural world that the fascinating anoline lizards epitomize. Readers who are drawn to nature by its beauty or its intellectual challenges—or both—will find his book rewarding."—Douglas J. Futuyma, State University of New York, Stony Brook "This book is destined to become a classic. It is scholarly, informative, stimulating, and highly readable, and will inspire a generation of students."—Peter R. Grant, author of How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches "Anoline lizards experienced a spectacular adaptive radiation in the dynamic landscape of the Caribbean islands. The radiation has extended over a long period of time and has featured separate radiations on the larger islands. Losos, the leading active student of these lizards, presents an integrated and synthetic overview, summarizing the enormous and multidimensional research literature. This engaging book makes a wonderful example of an adaptive radiation accessible to all, and the lavish illustrations, especially the photographs, make the anoles come alive in one's mind."—David Wake, University of California, Berkeley "This magnificent book is a celebration and synthesis of one of the most eventful adaptive radiations known. With disarming prose and personal narrative Jonathan Losos shows how an obsession, beginning at age ten, became a methodology and a research plan that, together with studies by colleagues and predecessors, culminated in many of the principles we now regard as true about the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. This work combines rigorous analysis and glorious natural history in a unique volume that stands with books by the Grants on Darwin's finches among the most informed and engaging accounts ever written on the evolution of a group of organisms in nature."—Dolph Schluter, author of The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation

On the Origin of Species (or, more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), [3] published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology.[4] Darwin's book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation