Nature Strange and Beautiful: How Living Beings Evolved and Made the Earth a Home

by Egbert Giles Leigh Jr., Christian Ziegler

Overview

A beautifully written exploration of how cooperation shaped life on earth, from its single-celled beginnings to complex human societies
 
In this rich, wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated volume, Egbert Leigh explores the results of billions of years of evolution at work. Leigh, who has spent five decades on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island reflecting on the organization of various amazingly diverse tropical ecosystems, now shows how selection on “selfish genes” gives rise to complex modes of cooperation and interdependence.
 
With the help of such artists as the celebrated nature photographer Christian Ziegler, natural history illustrator Deborah Miriam Kaspari, and Damond Kyllo, Leigh explains basic concepts of evolutionary biology, ranging from life’s single-celled beginnings to the complex societies humans have formed today. The book covers a range of topics, focusing on adaptation, competition, mutualism, heredity, natural selection, sexual selection, genetics, and language. Leigh’s reflections on evolution, competition, and cooperation show how the natural world becomes even more beautiful when viewed in the light of evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300244625
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	08/20/2019
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Egbert Giles Leigh, Jr., is a biologist for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and has resided on Barro Colorado Island in Panama as the staff scientist since 1972. Christian Ziegler is a celebrated nature photographer whose work focuses on ecologically oriented themes.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction 1

2 How We Approach the Problem 4

3 Adaptation, Individual and Social 10

4 Life's Common Ancestry, and Its Origin 31

5 Diversification 49

6 Integrating Diversity into Community: Interdependence and Mutualism 88

7 Heredity, Natural Selection, and Evolution 124

8 Organizing Genes for Adaptive Evolution 138

9 The Processes of Evolution 154

10 The Last Transition: How Thought and Language Evolved 185

11 What Have We Learned, and What Is Still Unknown? 198

Bibliographic Essay 203

Index 243

Editorial Reviews

This is a fascinating, authoritative, challenging, and beautifully illustrated book about how adaptive evolution has produced the diversity of life on Earth from the first biologically mediated chemical reactions to the functioning of human societies. Egbert Leigh’s remarkable intellectual range is on stimulating display here with references ranging from Charles Darwin and Jacques Monod to Adam Smith, Noam Chomsky, and Immanuel Kant—and topics from oxidation-reduction chemistry to molecular genetics, paleontology, anthropology, behavioral evolution, and detailed natural history.”— Nelson G. Hairston Jr., Quarterly Review of Biology

“A truly fine piece of work, one that should be on the reading list of all students and practitioners of evolutionary biology.”—Geerat J. Vermeij, author of The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Shells to Civilization

"Nature Strange and Beautiful is an exceptionally comprehensive and clear portrait of the origin and functioning of ecological communities, founded on Egbert Leigh’s career in tropical biology. The photographs by Christian Ziegler and other detailed drawings add to the book’s richness and appeal."—Douglas Futuyma, Stony Brook University

“Not just a linear narrative of evolutionary history – but a wonderful walk through the world. Leigh demonstrates how the evolutionary lens enriches all of human experience and deepens our appreciation for the strange and beautiful world in which we live.”—Noel Michele Holbrook, Harvard University

From the Publisher