Evolutionary Innovations by Matthew H Nitecki

Evolutionary Innovations by Matthew H Nitecki

Evolutionary innovations—the bony skeleton of vertebrates, avian flight, or the insect pollination system of angiosperms, for example—have in recent years become the focus of much fertile new research in evolutionary biology. Innovations may hold the keys to understanding why whole new groups of organisms evolve or, conversely, why groups of organisms become extinct. This volume brings together contributors from the fields of morphology, genetics, embryology, physiology, and paleontology to present research on evolutionary innovations and to suggest directions for further work.

The topics covered include the plurality of evolutionary innovations, patterns and processes at different hierarchical levels, evolutionary genetics of adaptations, heterochrony and other mechanisms of radical evolutionary change in early development, developmental mechanisms at the origin of morphological novelty, the evolution of morphological variation patterns, functional design and its punctuated products, plausibility and testability in assessing the consequences of evolutionary innovations, paradigms and pitfalls of studying physiological evolution, polyphyletic constructional breakthroughs in fossil and extant species, ecology of evolutionary innovations in the fossil record.

Nitecki, Matthew H.: - Matthew H. Nitecki, curator of fossil invertebrates at the Field Museum of Natural History.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226586946
ISBN 10	0226586944
Title	Evolutionary Innovations
Author	Matthew H Nitecki
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	1990-07-14
Number of pages	314
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.