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Throughout this book Minelli justifies his title by developing the theme that biological classifications are, in fact, very unequal in their expressions of the pattern and processes of the natural world. Specialists are imbibed with their own groups and tend to establish a consensus of what constitutes a species or a genus, or whether it should be desirable to recognize sub­ species, cultivars etc. Ornithologists freely recognize subspecies and rarely do bird genera contain more than 10 species. On the other hand some coleopterists and botanists work with genera with over 1500 species. This asymmetry may reflect a biological reality; it may express a working practicality, or simply an historical artefact (older erected genera often contain more species). 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Maria Pia Mannucci, an author and illustrator, writes about the biogeography of invertebrates and natural history.  100 colour photographs","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49601336443153,"sku":"GOR012997522","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1554075203.jpg?v=1751341258"},{"product_id":"towards-a-theory-of-development-book-alessandro-minelli-9780199671434","title":"Towards a Theory of Development","description":"Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be discovered, and examines the role of models and theories.  The two editors (one a biologist with long interest in the theoretical aspects of his discipline, the other a philosopher of science who has mainly worked on biological systems) have assembled a team of leading contributors who are representative of the scientific and philosophical community within which a diversity of thoughts are growing, and out of which a theory of development may eventually emerge. They analyse a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a 'programme' of development and its critiques, and the long-standing opposition between preformationist and epigenetic conceptions of development.   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Using familiar examples and easy-to-follow arguments, he offers fresh alternatives to a number of preconceptions and stereotypes, awakening the reader to the disparity of developmental phenomena across all main branches of the tree of life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49744233365777,"sku":"NGR9781108799232","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51019466965265,"sku":"NIN9781108799232","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53472769999121,"sku":"CIN110879923XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/110879923X.jpg?v=1751367201"},{"product_id":"forms-of-becoming-book-alessandro-minelli-9780691135687","title":"Forms of Becoming","description":"What comes first, form or function? Trumpeted as the future of biological science, evolutionary developmental biology (or \"evo-devo\") answers this fundamental question by showing how evolution controls the development of organisms. In Forms of Becoming, Alessandro Minelli, a leading international figure in the field, takes an in-depth and comprehensive look at the history and key issues of evo-devo. Spirited and insightful, this book focuses on the innovative ways animal organisms evolve through competition and cooperation. Minelli provides a complete overview of conceptual developments--from the fierce nineteenth-century debates between the French biologists Geoffroy and Cuvier, who fought over questions of form versus function--to modern theories of how genes dictate body formation. The book's wide-ranging topics include expression patterns of genes, developmental bias, the role of developmental genes, and genetic determinism. Drawing from diverse examples, such as the anatomy of butterflies, giraffes, Siamese twins, and corals, Minelli extends and reformulates important concepts from development, evolution, and the interplay between the two. 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All groups and features are extensively illustrated by line drawings and micrographs and living specimens of representative species of the main groups are presented in color photographs.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52137315959057,"sku":"NLS9789004156128","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9789004156128.jpg?v=1768563358"},{"product_id":"treatise-on-zoology-anatomy-taxonomy-biology-the-myriapoda-volume-1-book-alessandro-minelli-9789004156111","title":"Treatise on Zoology - Anatomy, Taxonomy, Biology. The Myriapoda, Volume 1","description":"The Myriapoda is the first comprehensive monograph ever on all aspects of myriapod biology, including external and internal morphology, physiology, reproduction, development, distribution, ecology, phylogeny and taxonomy. 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