Plant Evolution by Karl J Niklas

Plant Evolution by Karl J Niklas

Although plants comprise more than 90% of all visible life, and land plants and algae collectively make up the most morphologically, physiologically, and ecologically diverse group of organisms on earth, books on evolution instead tend to focus on animals. This organismal bias has led to an incomplete and often erroneous understanding of evolutionary theory. Because plants grow and reproduce differently than animals, they have evolved differently, and generally accepted evolutionary views as, for example, the standard models of speciation often fail to hold when applied to them. Tapping such wide-ranging topics as genetics, gene regulatory networks, phenotype mapping, and multicellularity, as well as paleobotany, Karl J. Niklas's Plant Evolution offers fresh insight into these differences. Following up on his landmark book The Evolutionary Biology of Plants in which he drew on cutting-edge computer simulations that used plants as models to illuminate key evolutionary theories Niklas incorporates data from more than a decade of new research in the flourishing field of molecular biology, conveying not only why the study of evolution is so important, but also why the study of plants is essential to our understanding of evolutionary processes. Niklas shows us that investigating the intricacies of plant development, the diversification of early vascular land plants, and larger patterns in plant evolution is not just a botanical pursuit: it is vital to our comprehension of the history of all life on this green planet.

Karl J. Niklas is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. He is the author of Plant Biomechanics, Plant Allometry, and The Evolutionary Biology of Plants, and coauthor of Plant Physics, all published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Ithaca, NY.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226342146
ISBN 10	022634214X
Title	Plant Evolution
Author	Karl J Niklas
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2016-08-12
Number of pages	560
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable