The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection / / John Tyler Bonner.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Bonner, John Tyler,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2022]; ©1988
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (272 p.)

John Tyler Bonner makes a new attack on an old problem: the question of how progressive increase in the size and complexity of animals and plants has occurred. "How is it," he inquires, "that an egg turns into an elaborate adult? How is it that a bacterium, given many millions of years, could have evolved into an elephant?" The author argues that we can understand this progression in terms of natural selection, but that in order to do so we must consider the role of development--or more precisely the role of life cycles--in evolutionary change. In a lively writing style that will be familiar to readers of his work The Evolution of Culture in Animals (Princeton, 1980), Bonner addresses a general audience interested in biology, as well as specialists in all areas of evolutionary biology. What is novel in the approach used here is the comparison of complexity inside the organism (especially cell differentiation) with the complexity outside (that is, within an ecological community). Matters of size at both these levels are closely related to complexity. The book shows how an understanding of the grand course of evolution can come from combining our knowledge of genetics, development, ecology, and even behavior.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 A Brief Summary of Darwinian Evolution, along with an Indication of the Purpose of the Book -- 2 Evidence for the Evolution of Size Increase (and Decrease) from the Fossil Record -- 3 The Size of Organisms in Ecological Communities -- 4 A Problem in Developmental Biology: Why and How Larger Plants and Animals Are Built -- 5 The Relation between the Complexity of Communities and the Size, Diversity, and Abundance of the Organisms within Them -- 6 How Size Affects the Internal Complexities of Organisms in Their Evolution and in Their Development -- 7 Animal Behavior: The Pinnacle of Biological Complexity -- 8 The Evolution of Complexity: A Conclusion with Three Insights -- Bibliography -- Index