Sex in Cetaceans provides an up-to-date review of multi-faceted aspects related to mating and reproduction in toothed and baleen whales. This open access book begins with discussions of sexual selection and anatomical traits related to mating and diversity between the sexes. The functions of non-conceptive copulations are reviewed as are different research techniques applied to explore sex in c…
This book deals with the very real possibility of earthly immortality and the human and societal implications of such immortality, including whether it is desirable. It looks at what makes immortality appear so attractive and at the possibility that we would be better served with longer lives and the freedom to terminate our lives at the time when life has given us all the joy, inspiration a…
This book addresses the differentiation control of skeletal muscle in different locations of the vertebrate body Particular attention is paid to novel regulatory molecules and signals as well as the heterogeneity of origin that have revealed a developmental overlap between skeletal and cardiac muscle. Different functional muscle groups are the product of the evolution of the vertebrate classes,…
The central focus of this book is the avian respiratory system. The authors explain why the respiratory system of modern birds is built the way it is and works the way that it does. Birds have been and continue to attract particular interest to biologists. The more birds are studied, the more it is appreciated that the existence of human-kind on earth very much depends directly and indirectly o…
This book brings Søren Kierkegaard’s nineteenth-century existentialist project into our contemporary age, applying his understanding of “freedom” and “despair” to science and science studies, queer, decolonial and critical race theory, and disability studies. The book draws out the materialist dimensions of belief, examining the existential dynamics of phenomena like placebos, epigen…
Polyploidy – whole-genome duplication (WGD) – is a fundamental driver of biodiversity with significant consequences for genome structure, organization, and evolution. Once considered a speciation process common only in plants, polyploidy is now recognized to have played a major role in the structure, gene content, and evolution of most eukaryotic genomes. In fact, the diversity of eukaryo…
This book is the first of its kind, providing in-depth analysis of the retrograde evolution occurring during major extinction periods. The text offers a non-strictly adaptative explanation of repetition of phyla after the major extinctions, utilizing a study of seven phylogenetically distinct groups. This opens a new experimental field in evolutionary biology with the possibility of reconstruct…
Written for non-experts, this volume introduces the mechanisms that underlie reticulate evolution. Chapters are either accompanied with glossaries that explain new terminology or timelines that position pioneering scholars and their major discoveries in their historical contexts. The contributing authors outline the history and original context of discovery of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral …
This reference provides comprehensive information on the taxonomy and distribution in time and space of all currently recognized southern African fossil mammals. After an introductory background chapter on southern Africa, mammals, sites and dating, the following chapters are presented by epoch, covering the Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene and Holocene. Individual maps provide informatio…
This book demonstrates how the primate hand combines both primitive and novel morphology, both general function with specialization, and both a remarkable degree of diversity within some clades and yet general similarity across many others. Across the chapters, different authors have addressed a variety of specific questions and provided their perspectives, but all explore the main themes descr…