Product Description
The first comprehensive synthesis on development and evolution: it applies to all aspects of development, at all levels of organization and in all organisms, taking advantage of modern findings on behavior, genetics, endocrinology, molecular biology, evolutionary theory and phylogenetics to show the connections between developmental mechanisms and evolutionary change. This book solves key problems that have impeded a definitive synthesis in the past. It uses new concepts and specific examples to show how to relate environmentally sensitive development to the genetic theory of adaptive evolution and to explain major patterns of change. In this book development includes not only embryology and the ontogeny of morphology, sometimes portrayed inadequately as governed by "regulatory genes," but also behavioral development and physiological adaptation, where plasticity is mediated by genetically complex mechanisms like hormones and learning. The book shows how the universal qualities of phenotypes--modular organization and plasticity--facilitate both integration and change. Here you will learn why it is wrong to describe organisms as genetically programmed; why environmental induction is likely to be more important in evolution than random mutation; and why it is crucial to consider both selection and developmental mechanism in explanations of adaptive evolution. This book satisfies the need for a truly general book on development, plasticity and evolution that applies to living organisms in all of their life stages and environments. Using an immense compendium of examples on many kinds of organisms, from viruses and bacteria to higher plants and animals, it shows how the phenotype is reorganized during evolution to produce novelties, and how alternative phenotypes occupy a pivotal role as a phase of evolution that fosters diversification and speeds change. The arguments of this book call for a new view of the major themes of evolutionary biology, as shown in chapters on gradualism, homology, environmental induction, speciation, radiation, macroevolution, punctuation, and the maintenance of sex. No other treatment of development and evolution since Darwin's offers such a comprehensive and critical discussion of the relevant issues. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution is designed for biologists interested in the development and evolution of behavior, life-history patterns, ecology, physiology, morphology and speciation. It will also appeal to evolutionary paleontologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and teachers of general biology.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 13 reviews)

Not a productive tome.

West-Eberhard has produced a 794 page tome that chokes the brain and deadens the senses. On the reverse cover, it asks a question about the picture on the cover, and refers to a chapter for the answer. As far as I can see, the question is never addressed.

This reveals two of the books problems. First, its grandiose aspirations, to be a new 'Modern Synthesis,' and to bring developmental biology into the fold, are never backed with a strength of data and arguments that equal her claims. Secondly, the book is a morass of arguments, constantly pointing to other parts of the book. I started drawing little circle around each time we were referred to another chapter, but I quickly stopped as my pages became tangled messes of circles.

The writing is murky at best, and the reader learns to treasure moments of lucidity, as they are long in coming. The structure often seems backwards, confusing, and generally awkward. This tome is in dire need of a biologically educated editor. Her tone is often confrontational and bullying towards other authors.

Technically speaking, her ideas within are vague, and while she lays out a clear path for phenotypic plasticity leading evolution, the reader quickly realizes her definitions of concepts like 'Phenotype' are so nebulous and removed from what any other average biologist uses that to argue against is to try and staple Jell-O to your roof. At times, she attempts to have things in two different ways - arguing phylogenetic inertia isn't a relevant or especially frequent, but also wanting traits to remain perfect and unexpressed for absurd periods of time.

The mathematical treatment of the subject in this book is non-existent. This is almost unforgivable, in a topic that clearly needs a mathematical treatment to establish its true importance in any given system beyond the examples given. Its testable predictions are rare in coming, often muddied in content, and frequently overlap with predictions made by alternate competing hypothesis. Those looking for a research programme had best look elsewhere. It definitely has not, and will not, sway any sceptics.

Its sole, redeeming quality is that it aggressively challenges the readers pre-existing notions of evolution, and forces the reader to reconsider long-held notions. But for those of us with limited time, a more succinct volume could accomplish the same introspection.
May 14, 2008

One of the important books no one reads

There seems to be a consensus in evolutionary biology that this is an important book representing a major advance in our understanding. However, most of the biologists saying this haven't read the book; or have, perhaps, skimmed a chapter or two. The reason for this is simple: this book is far too long, far too dense, and far too abstruse. There is a lot of potential here; rewritten as a 150-200 page book with a good editor, it could have been an excellent and influential book. At 640 pages of text with constant grammatical & spelling errors (Lamarck only has his "c" about half the time) and writing that is, even by academic standards, hopelessly tangled, this is bound to be only an excellent decoration for the academic bookshelf.

Nonetheless, for those willing to take the long slog through there really is a lot of value here. There are just so many more enjoyable ways to spend one's time...
March 16, 2007

OK but who's going to read this ?

I have a PhD in biochemistry (meaning I can understand a reasonable amount of jargon) and hoped that with this book I'd be able to understand what modern developmental biology (in particular developmental genetics, "evo-devo", etc.) is about, but this book bored me to death. There is no continuum, no logical progression in the teaching. When you reach the end of a chapter you've forgotten what it was about. I admire the central concept and the work but, frankly, as a book it's completely missed. It is not a textbook, it is not a popularization book, it's a 600+pages small print dissertation. Who wants to read that ? Who has the time to go to the library and check the details of any of the hundreds of referenced articles (all of them are treated only superficially) ? Not students, not professional scientists (their time would be better spent reading review articles), not laypersons. Who then ?
July 29, 2006

New ways of thinking about Biology

I think that Mary Jane West-Eberhard is trying to formulate a new Shyntesis in Biology, she is trying to include Development in Neo-Darwinism. Her book makes the difference in the role that gives to phenotype, every biologist needs to read it to express his/her own opinions. Really deserves to be read.
March 09, 2006

jump starting a revolutiion

Darwin developed his theory of evolution without knowing much about the mechanisms of heredity. These mechanisms were rediscovered in the 1900's as part of the science of genetics. By the 1930's a school of evolutionary thinkers came to the realization that Darwin's theory could be further developed by recasting it in terms of population genetics. The resulting synthetic theory of evolution has ruled mainstream biology ever since. But genetics has not stood still in the meantime. The rise of molecular biology has made possible a new discipline, evo-devo which seeks to explain how the genes control development. Evo-devo has developed a new approach to evolution. While the synthetic theory tended to see evolution as a matter of the loss of old genes within a population or the fixation of new ones, evo-devo has found that large parts of the genome are conserved over vast periods of time and shared by widely divergent phyla. Evolution has produced diversity by modifying the mechanisms which control the expression of these ancient genes. New ideas are now required to explain how this kind of diversity evolves. West-Eberhard proposes that genetic control mechanisms can be exposed to selection by the phenotypic adaptation of organisms to new kinds of environmemt. This phenotypic adaptation ultimately drives evolution. The germ of this idea had been put forward by J. Baldwim more than one hundred years ago but neither Baldwin or anybody else knew about evo-devo and the idea had little influence. Now its time may have come.

January 03, 2006

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