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The purpose of migration, regardless of the distance involved, is to exploit two or more environments suitable for survival or reproduction over time, usually on a seasonal basis. Yet individual organisms can practice the phenomenon differently, and birds deploy unique patterns of movement over particular segments of time. Incorporating the latest research on bird migration, this critical assessment offers a firm grasp of what defines an avian migrant, how the organism came to be, what is known about its behavior, and how we can resolve its enduring mysteries. The book clarifies key ecological, biological, physiological, navigational, and evolutionary concerns. It begins with the very first avian migrants, who traded a home environment of greater stability for one of greater seasonality, and uses the structure of the annual cycle to examine the difference between migratory birds and their resident counterparts. It ultimately connects these differences to evolutionary milestones that have shaped a migrant lifestyle through natural selection. Rather than catalogue and describe various aspects of bird migration, the book considers how the avian migrant fits within a larger ecological frame, enabling a richer understanding of the phenomenon and its critical role in sustaining a hospitable and productive environment. It concludes with a focus on population biology and conservation across time periods, considering the link between bird migration and the spread of disease among birds and humans, and the effects of global warming on migrant breeding ranges, reaction norms, and macroecology.

The concepts of evolution and complexity theory have become part of the intellectual ether permeating the life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and, more recently, management science and economics. This book synthesizes core concepts from multiple disciplines to offer a new approach to understanding how evolution works and how complex organisms, structures, organizations, and social orders can and do arise based on information theory and computational science. This book challenges readers with a nuanced understanding of evolution and complexity that offers consistent, durable, and coherent explanations for major aspects of our life experiences. Numerous examples throughout the book illustrate evolution and complexity formation in action and highlight the core function of computation lying at the work's heart.

This book follows the development of evolutionary science over the past two hundred years. It highlights the fact that life endures even though all organisms and species are transitory or ephemeral. It goes on to explain that the extinction and evolution of species—interconnected in the web of life as “eternal ephemera”—are key concerns of evolutionary biology. The book begins in France with the naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who in 1801 first framed the overarching question about the emergence of new species. It moves on to the Italian geologist Giambattista Brocchi who brought in ideas from geology and paleontology to expand the question. It details how, in 1825, at the University of Edinburgh, Robert Grant and Robert Jameson introduced the astounding ideas formulated by Lamarck and Brocchi to a young medical student named Charles Darwin and follows Darwin as he sets out on his voyage on the Beagle in 1831. The book revisits Darwin's early insights into evolution in South America and his later synthesis of his knowledge into the theory of the origin of species. It then considers the ideas of more recent evolutionary thinkers, such as George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky, as well as Niles Eldredge and Steven Jay Gould, who developed the concept of punctuated equilibria. The book provides many insights into evolutionary biology, and celebrates the organic, vital relationship between scientific thinking and its subjects.

This book explores how the human species emerged from the cosmic dust. It describes the rising complexity of life in terms of increasing information content, first in genes and then in brains. It portrays four species with high brain:body ratios—chimpanzees, elephants, ravens, and dolphins—and shows how each species shares with humans the capacity for complex communication, elaborate social relationships, flexible behavior, tool use, and powers of abstraction. The book describes this constellation of qualities as an emergent self, arguing that self-awareness is nascent in several species besides humans and that potential human characteristics are embedded in the evolutionary process and have emerged repeatedly in a variety of lineages on our planet. It demonstrates that human culture is not a unique offshoot of a language-specialized primate, but an analogue of fundamental mechanisms that organisms have used since the beginning of life on Earth to gather and process information in order to buffer themselves from fluctuations in the environment. The book also views these developments in a cosmic setting, detailing open thermodynamic systems that grow more complex as the energy flowing through them increases. Similar processes can be found in the “self-organizing” structures of both living and nonliving forms. Recent evidence indicates that planet formation may be nearly as frequent as star formation. Since life makes use of the elements commonly seeded into space by burning and expiring stars, it is reasonable to speculate that the evolution of life and intelligence that happened on our planet may be found across the universe.

Covering both the internal and external incubation of offspring, this book provides a survey of the natural history, ecology, genetics and evolution of pregnancy-like phenomena. It covers a wide variety of pregnancies in a wide range of creatures: from mammals and other live-bearing organisms to viviparous reptiles, male-pregnant fishes, larval-brooding worms, crabs, sea cucumbers, and corals. It highlights the multifaceted ways in which the world's various species display pregnancy and other forms of parental devotion. It describes how an adult female (or male) can incubate its offspring in a womb, stomach, mouth, vocal sac, gill chamber, epithelial pouch, backpack, leg pocket, or nest. By studying these diverse examples of pregnancy from a comparative vantage point, the book clearly shows the ecological and evolutionary-genetic outcomes of different reproductive models. It discusses each mode of pregnancy and the decipherable genetic signatures each has left on the reproductive structures, physiologies, and innate sexual behaviors of extant species. By considering the many biological aspects of gestation from different evolutionary angles, the book offers new insights into the significance of “heavy” parental investment in progeny.

While it is true that members of most sexually reproducing species can be defined as either male or female, those who belong to the rest of the biological world are not so simply understood. Hermaphroditic creatures reproduce both as male and as female individuals, providing a fascinating glimpse into alternative sexual practices in nature and their ecological and evolutionary successes and failures. The book traces the phenomenon throughout Earth's myriad species, accounting for the adaptive significance of alternative sexual systems. Accessible and richly illustrated, the text maps the evolutionary origins of hermaphroditism, as well as its historical instances and fictional representations, underscoring the relevance of dual sexuality to our biological, intellectual, and cultural making. It describes the genetics, ecology, phylogeny, and natural history of hermaphroditic plants, fish, and invertebrate animals and details organisms that either reproduce simultaneously as male and female or switch routinely between one sex and the other. Filled with surprising creatures and compelling revelations, the book is a comprehensive treatment of hermaphroditism and its unique challenge to the supremacy of separate sexes.

Sports are as varied as the people who play them. We run, jump, and swim. We kick, hit, and shoot balls. We ride sleds in the snow and surf in the sea. From the Olympians of ancient Greece to today’s professional athletes, from adult pickup soccer games to children’s gymnastics classes, people at all levels of ability at all times and in all places have engaged in sport. What drives this phenomenon? In Sport, the neuroscientist Jay Schulkin argues that biology and culture do more than coexist when we play sports—they blend together seamlessly, propelling each other toward greater physical and intellectual achievement. To support this claim, Schulkin discusses history, literature, and art—and engages philosophical inquiry and recent behavioral research. He connects sport’s basic neural requirements, including spatial and temporal awareness, inference, memory, agency, direction, competitive spirit, and endurance, to the demands of other human activities. He affirms sport’s natural role as a creative evolutionary catalyst, turning the external play of sports inward and bringing insight to the diversion that defines our species. Sport, we learn, is a fundamental part of human life.