The Evolution Explosion: How Humans Cause Rapid Evolutionary Change - Hardcover

Palumbi, Stephen R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393020118 ISBN 13: 9780393020113

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2001

Synopsis

A critical look at evolution examines the slow process that ruled the rise and fall of the dinosaurs over hundreds of millions of years, the speedy process that causes drugs to fail because a disease evolves too quickly, and how human impact effects our own evolution.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen R. Palumbi is professor of biology at Harvard University.

Reviews

While some human beings stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that evolution is synonymous with life on Earth, others, such as Harvard biologist Palumbi, try valiantly to explain evolution's astonishing intricacies in order to reveal how our species is "upping the evolutionary ante and accelerating the evolutionary game." The example that hits closest to home is Palumbi's account of how various disease-causing bacteria have rapidly evolved strains resistant to antibiotics, the miracle drugs that briefly seemed to have eradicated such scourges as TB, but are now ineffectual against a host of frightening infections. The war against insects is another arena in which evolutionary wiliness has trumped humankind's efforts at controlling nature: insect species resistant to insecticides now abound. Palumbi's writing is lively and lucid, and his analogies are felicitous. His enlightening discussions of the evolution of HIV, the ecological dangers posed by precipitous bioengineering, and such remarkable evolutionary phenomena as the changes in size and spawning strategies of fish in overfished regions give weight and urgency to his call for evolution literacy. Donna Seaman
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Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393020118
• ISBN 13: 9780393020113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1109