Evolution's Wedge
eBook - PDF

Evolution's Wedge

Competition and the Origins of Diversity

  1. 320 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Evolution's Wedge

Competition and the Origins of Diversity

About this book

Evolutionary biology has long sought to explain how new traits and new species arise. Darwin maintained that competition is key to understanding this biodiversity and held that selection acting to minimize competition causes competitors to become increasingly different, thereby promoting new traits and new species. Despite Darwin's emphasis, competition's role in diversification remains controversial and largely underappreciated.

In their synthetic and provocative book, evolutionary ecologists David and Karin Pfennig explore competition's role in generating and maintaining biodiversity. The authors discuss how selection can lessen resource competition or costly reproductive interactions by promoting trait evolution through a process known as character displacement. They further describe character displacement's underlying genetic and developmental mechanisms. The authors then consider character displacement's myriad downstream effects, ranging from shaping ecological communities to promoting new traits and new species and even fueling large-scale evolutionary trends. Drawing on numerous studies from natural populations, and written for a broad audience, Evolution's Wedge seeks to inspire future research into character displacement's many implications for ecology and evolution.

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Yes, you can access Evolution's Wedge by David Pfennig,Karin Pfennig in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Ecology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Preface
  6. Chapter 1. Discovery of a Unifying Principle
  7. Chapter 2. Why Character Displacement Occurs
  8. Chapter 3. When Character Displacement Occurs
  9. Chapter 4. How Character Displacement Unfolds
  10. Chapter 5. Diversity and Novelty Within Species
  11. Chapter 6. Ecological Consequences
  12. Chapter 7. Sexual Selection
  13. Chapter 8. Speciation
  14. Chapter 9. Macroevolution
  15. Chapter 10. Major Themes and Unsolved Problems
  16. References
  17. Index