Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198549687 ISBN 13: 9780198549680

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

This book introduces what is essential and exciting in evolutionary biology. It covers the whole field and emphasizes what the important concepts are. Care has been taken to express complex and stimulating ideas in simple language, while the frequent examples and running summaries make reading fun. Each chapter follows logically from the next, so that the book can be read straight through, one chapter per sitting.
· Concise, clear, and states what is important
· Concentrates on the central concepts and illustrates them with telling examples
· Running summaries in the margins make navigation easy
· Suitable for a one-semester or one-year course in evolution
· Summaries at chapter ends
· Each chapter's connections to neighboring chapters are explained

Evolution: An Introduction takes a fresh approach to classical topics such as population genetics and natural selection, and gives an overview of recent advances in hot areas such as sexual selection, genetic conflict, life history evolution, and development.

About the Author:

Stephen C. Stearns, Professor of Zoology and Director, Zoology Institute, Basel, Switzerland

Review:

..a nice, slim, inexpensive, up-to-date, user-friendly textbook pitched at exactly the right level...Stearns and Hoekstra excel both on presentation and content. The uncluttered pages and numerous sub-headings are inviting...The questions at the end of each chapter are though provoking...the best undergraduate evolution textbook available. The Times Higher Education Supplement, Friday 25th February 2000

..a nice, slim, inexpensive, up-to-date, user-friendly textbook pitched at exactly the right level...Stearns and Hoekstra excel both on presentation and content. The uncluttered pages and numerous sub-headings are inviting...The questions at the end of each chapter are though provoking...the best undergraduate evolution textbook available. George F Turner, Head of Biochemistry, University of Southampton/The Times Higher Education Supplement, Friday 25/02/2000

I felt I must write and congratulate you and thank you for the excellent text-book you and your co-author (whom I don't think I have ever met) have written. I am full of admiration of your skill in writing briefly and succinctly and yet cover so much ground and making it clear that in many cases things are not all that straightforward. As has been said, any fool can write a thick book but it takes talent to write a short one. I am convinced your book will be widely used and make splendid service in many years to come./Staffan Ulfstrand at Uppsala.

"Willis's and McElwain's book will appeal to a wide spectrum of researchers, teachers and students with interests ranging from biogeography to geology, through botany, ecology and plant physiology". The Holocene, 2003.