CAPTIVATING LIFE

Book Description

Writing in the tradition of E. O. Wilson and Margaret D. Lowman, Avise recounts his scientific adventures with many animals in the wild and reflects more widely on the artistry of scientific discovery and the allure of the natural world. His story conveys as much about the making of a scientist as it does about the inner workings of science and nature.

Customer Reviews:

Another great book from Avise.......2004-01-18

I read this book after citing Avise's work in my thesis and in papers. I have enjoyed reading other scientist's autobiographies, such as E.O. Wilson's "Naturalist", Geerat Vermeij's "Priveleged Hands", and Eric Pianka's "The Lizard Man Speaks". Avise's autobiography is in the same vein; he recounts his childhood and his entry into academic life. I must say it was reassuring to read that he had difficulty with funding as a new professor! He also describes research he has performed, from coral to birds to turtles, and tells stories on graduate students and colleagues.
Like many scientists who have achieved so much so early in their careers, Avise has a healthy ego. (Obviously! He wrote an autobiography at what age?) However, his little bouts of bragging in the book do not make it unreadable. After I was through reading this book, I gave it to my mother. I think it is written clearly enough for a non-scientist to enjoy it and to understand the basics of phylogeography.

Dangerous Liaisons?: When Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Relatives (Syntheses in Ecology and Evolution)

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Dangerous Liaisons?: When Cultivated Plants Mate with Their Wild Relatives (Syntheses in Ecology and Evolution)
Norman C. Ellstrand
Manufacturer: Johns Hopkins University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 080187405X

Book Description

With the advent of genetic engineering, "designer" crops might interbreed with natural populations. Could such romances lead to the evolution of "superweeds", as some have suggested? But haven't crops had sex with wild plants in the past? Has such gene swapping occurred without consequences? And if consequences have indeed occurred, what lessons can be gleaned for engineered crops?

In Dangerous Liaisons? Norman Ellstrand examines these and other questions. He begins with basic information about the natural hybridization process. He then describes what we now know about hybridization between the world's most important crops -- such as wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans -- and their wild relatives. Such hybridization, Ellstrand explains, is not rare, and has occasionally had a substantial impact. In some cases, the result was problematic weeds. In others, crop genes have diluted natural diversity to the point that wild populations of certain rare species were absorbed into the gene pool of the more common crop, essentially bringing the wild species to the brink of extinction.

Ellstrand concludes with a look to the future. Will engineered crops pose a greater threat than traditional crops? If so, can gene flow and hybridization be managed to control the escape of engineered genes? This book will appeal to academics, policy makers, students, and all with an interest in environmental issues.

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Genetics in the Wild
John C. Avise
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Institution Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

Natural History | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

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Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science Of Evo Devo And The Making Of The Animal Kingdom

ASIN: 1588340694

Book Description

John C. Avise, an award-winning geneticist, guides this delightful voyage around the planet in search of answers to nature's mysteries. He clearly demonstrates how scientists directly examine DNA to address long-standing questions about wild animals, plants, and microbes. Through dozens of stories that span the Earth - from the arctic to tropical jungles to the depths of the ocean - nature emerges as a realm where truth can be far stranger than fiction. From a 100-ton mushroom to egg-swapping birds, extinct ground sloths to microbes inside our bodies, Avise examines a cornucopia of natural-history topics and explains in clear language how today's modern genetic techniques offer novel insights. Do armadillo litters really contain clones? Why do female roly-poly pillbugs outnumber males? When is a fig tree not just a single tree? Where have migratory whales traveled? Who are the mothers of the embryos carried by pregnant male seahorses? What insect was the world's earliest farmer? How closely related are Neanderthals to modern humans? Answers to these and many more questions are presented here in a straightforward manner that reveals Avise's enthusiasm for uncovering nature's hidden ways. Each entry is accompanied by a beautiful illustration from Trudy Nicholson, widely recognized as one of today's leading nature artists.

Genes from the Wild: Using Wild Genetic Resources for Food and Raw Materials (An Earthscan paperback)

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Genes from the Wild: Using Wild Genetic Resources for Food and Raw Materials (An Earthscan paperback)
Robert Prescott-Allen
Manufacturer: Intl Inst for Environment
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books

Natural Resources | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0905347447

Genetics and Conservation: A Reference Manual for Managing Wild Animal and Plant Populations (Biological Conservation)

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Genetics and Conservation: A Reference Manual for Managing Wild Animal and Plant Populations (Biological Conservation)

Manufacturer: The Blackburn Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1930665865

Book Description

In 1983, Genetics and Conservation was published to encourage the dissemination of knowledge regarding the application of scientific theory and research to conservation programs. It was also intended to encourage genetics research regarding population viability management needs that were prevalent at the time. Twenty years later the needs have not diminished. Despite its age, Genetics and Conservation still stimulates research and information translation for conservation applications. It also contributes historic perspective regarding progress in the field of conservation genetics. In the early and mid-1900s, numerous individuals who came from diverse backgrounds built the foundations of science applications in conservation. Though they are no longer with us, their contributions helped generate our own interests in genetic applications. The contributions of Archie Carr, Raymond Dasmann, John Eisenberg, Otto Frankel, Jack R. Harlan, Starker Leopold, Gene Namkoong, Ulysses Seal, George Wright and Sewell Wright remain essential in our work. Pivotal publications in the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as Otto Frankel and Michael Soulé's Conservation and Evolution and Michael Soulé and Bruce Wilcox's Conservation Biology, helped accelerate the integration of genetics into conservation applications. Over these last two decades, Genetics and Conservation accomplished its initial purpose. Its use persists in college seminars, field courses, and national and international ecologic programs. It is also used as a major planning and application reference by managers of refuges, parks, forests, reserves, ranches, aquaria, zoologic gardens and botanic gardens. This reprinting of Genetics and Conservation is ultimately an expression of professional values and of gratitude to those who have helped configure our current concepts of ecologically and culturally sustainable conservation. "Indeed, this book should be read and its message understood by everyone involved in biological conservation." American Scientist

Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction

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Creative non-analytical thought
Wild Hunger: the product of a wild imagination
The Forgotten Source of Ecstasy
Stirring cultural critique for the philosophically inclined.
Startling! Writing with passion and honesty

Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction
Bruce Wilshire
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Substance Abuse | Recovery | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Modern | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Excessive Appetites: A Psychological View of Addictions
Case Formulation in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: The Treatment of Challenging and Complex Cases
Cognitive Therapy Techniques: A Practitioner's Guide
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

ASIN: 0847689689

Book Description

This pioneering work explores why our culture is plagued by addictions--by giving serious attention to our genetic legacy from our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Customer Reviews:

Creative non-analytical thought.......2007-01-27

An earlier reviewer scoffed at Wilshire's lack of analytical reasoning within his "Wild Hunger"... Wilshire is more of a dialectical thinker. This means that he rejects cartisian thinking and the logic of analysis. In addition to this. he takes a wide range of ideas from many authors; Sartre, Heidegger, Hegel, Husserl, Aristotle, Pierce, and William James (to name but a small portion). His method of reasoning is to synthesize ideas for the purpose of creating meaning, rather than create vast structures of meaningless logical argumentation. In my opinion, his books are a good place for anyone to begin their own authentic quest for understanding human life as it is experienced, and not as some crazy elite intellectual pretends.

Wild Hunger: the product of a wild imagination.......2004-07-30

Bruce Wilshire is a [...]. Wilshire has long been senile and this work is the crowning achievement of his senility. Rather than make a philosophical argument, Wilshire uses this study as a template for various autobiographical snippets, various tangents, and vast improvable speculations.

Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction reads more like some of L. Ron Hubbard's [...] scientology than it does a serious work of philosophy. His various 'arguments', unsound speculations with no empirical evidence or analytical validity, sound like the rambling of a burnt out hippie; the entire work offers no evidence to support his thesis and consists mainly of various snapshots into the mind of a delusional old man. Also, the book stands as a testament to Wilshire's hostility for the rules and conventions of syntax; the entire work is penned with the grammatical sensibilities of a four-year old- commas are misused, fragments abound, and paragraphs lack coherence and structure.

More than anything else, Wild Hunger: The Primal Roots of Modern Addiction is evidence that some professors will publish anything for tenure and some publishers will accept any manuscript emanating from a professor from a respected department. However, the Rutgers philosophy department is excellent and renowned despite Bruce Wilshire, not because of Bruce Wilshire.

This book lacks credibility, sound methodology, and convincing argument; more akin to quackery than philosophy, this book belongs in the [...] and not on the bookshelf of a philosopher, student, human, or book retailer. Wild Hunger is naught but the product of Bruce Wilshire's wild imagination; it offers no insight into the problem of addiction and no novel take on the world or humanity.

The Forgotten Source of Ecstasy.......2000-01-23

This is one of those books you should read with a pen and notebook at your side. Ideas and connections burst into my mind as I read it. You, too, may find that questions hardly formed in your mind are suddenly being answered as you follow Wilshire's careful explorations. Addressing subjects as diverse as the city person's obsession with sex (as the only wild thing left in city life), and the psychological effects of rapid changes in technology, Wilshire seems almost to have taken the ideas for many books and listed them in one, leaving the reader to expand upon them in his own mind, in my case with great excitement. His quotations, too, from Van Gogh to Yeats to Cather to an African shaman are extraordinarily well chosen and thought-provoking. If I have a criticism, it is that he writes like a person telling you something complex very urgently: he goes rapidly from one idea to another without wrapping it in the repetition and graceful prose to which readers of less technical books are accustomed. Some readers, however, are likely to see that as a virtue rather than a fault. Caution: if you're like me, you'll want to carry this book around and quote it to friends and family, who may not be as receptive as you'd wish. However, if you're interested in issues such as the human-nature connection, ecstasy deprivation (love that term, but he does not claim to be its originator), or addictions of any kind, the kindling it causes in your synapses will be well worth the risk.

Stirring cultural critique for the philosophically inclined........1999-05-08

Think carefully: does a vague spiritual or emotional deficit sometimes gnaw at you? Are you hungry to get more out of life? If you are intrigued by the notion that modern life is not everything that it is cracked up to be and wonder about the philosophical derangement that underlies and reinforces our social and individual ills, then Bruce Wilshire's fascinating new study of modern addiction and its primal roots is the book for you.

Wilshire, a professor in Rutgers University's philosophy department, takes the phenomenon of addiction as his point of entry into the body-self of modern man. He intends to get us to see beyond addiction as simply a chemical dependency or physical sickness that can be objectively quantified and treated. Rather, he argues, addiction is a gross and inadequate attempt to fill the void formed when our irrepressible primal needs (such as security, ecstasy and coherence) go unfulfilled. Ideally, these needs would be satisfied by "consensual solidarity with other humans," and attunement with the regenerative cycles and rhythms of Nature that nourished our ancestors. "If primal needs have not been satisfied at an early age," he writes, "we have no clear idea of what they are and what could satisfy them." Bewildered, we flail for whatever is immediately at hand and becomes addicted.

There is enough substance in Wild Hunger to overwhelm even the most patient and earnest readers. This book is best digested slowly, with each sentence provoking a private tangential train of thought that leaves you hungry for more. And why shouldn't it? The power of Wild Hunger is that it incites and exposes the very same voracious hunger that it is designed to help us counterbalance and subdue. The first step towards achieving genuine gratification, as Wilshire writes often, is consciously recognizing that a cavity exists. Reading Wild Hunger may not satisfy your deepest hungers: after all, ecstasy is to be found in the wild world itself and not in the substitute gratifications of sex, drugs or exciting prose. But it will be a definite step in the right direction.

Review by Jeff Genauer, The Daily Targum.

Startling! Writing with passion and honesty.......1999-04-26

Startling! Writing with passion and honesty, Wilshire shows that in addiction we participate in degenerative vicious circles that substitute for the regenerative cycles of nature. --Parabola

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Adaptive Genetic Variation in the Wild

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 019512183X

Book Description

Two of the great mysteries of biology yet to be explored concern the distribution and abundance of genetic variation in natural populations and the genetic architecture of complex traits. These are tied together by their relationship to natural selection and evolutionary history, and some of the keys to disclosing these secrets lie in the study of wild organisms in their natural environments. This book, featuring a superb selection of papers from leading authors, summarizes the state of current understanding about the extent of genetic variation within wild populations and the ways to monitor such variation. It proposes the idea that a fundamental objective of evolutionary ecology is necessary to predict organism, population, community, and ecosystem response to environmental change. In fact, the overall theme of the papers centers around the expression of genetic variation and how it is shaped by the action of natural selection in the natural environment. Patterns of adaptation in the past and the genetic basis of traits likely to be under selection in a dynamically changing environment is discussed along with a wide variety of techniques to test for genetic variation and its consequences, ranging from classical demography to the use of molecular markers. This book is perfect for professionals and graduate students in genetics, biology, ecology, conservation biology, and evolution.

Biotechnology And The Conservation Of Genetic Diversity (SYMPOSIA OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON)

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Biotechnology And The Conservation Of Genetic Diversity (SYMPOSIA OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON)
H.D.M., ED. MOORE
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Greek | Classics | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Wildlife | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0198540302

Book Description

The conservation of many endangered species will depend on active management plans for both wild animals and those bred in captivity. A crucial factor is the maintenance of genetic variation in given populations to ensure that inbreeding effects are kept to a minimum. This volume describes
the rapid advances that have been made in reproductive biology and molecular genetics, explaining the role and practice of reproductive technology in the breeding of rare and endangered animals in captivity. Calling on both theory and example, the authors highlight three major categories of
biotechnology: techniques for managing reproduction (such as in vitro fertilization), techniques for cryopreservation of reproductive material and embryos (the `frozen zoo'), and techniques for genetic analysis. Both practical and ethical issues in captive breeding are explored here by scientists
who are leading workers in the field. The work is certain to be a valued resource for zoologists and conservation biologists concerned with issues of diversity and preservation.

Conserving Bird Biodiversity: General Principles and their Application (Conservation Biology)

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Conserving Bird Biodiversity: General Principles and their Application (Conservation Biology)

Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Genetics | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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Priorities for the Conservation of Mammalian Diversity: Has the Panda had its Day? (Conservation Biology)

ASIN: 0521783402

Book Description

Reliable information is the foundation upon which local, national and international conservation efforts are based, placing research at the heart of biodiversity conservation. The fundamental role of research is diverse and includes understanding the importance of biodiversity, defining 'units' of biodiversity, priority-setting for species and sites, managing endangered and declining populations, understanding large-scale processes, making predictions about the future, and interfacing with training, education, public awareness and policy initiatives. Using real examples, researchers consider the principles underlying these manifold issues and illustrate how these principles have been applied to address actual conservation problems.

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The earth's biodiversity currently faces an extinction crisis that is unprecedented. Conservationists attempt to intervene in the extinction process either locally by protecting or restoring important species and habitats, or at national and international levels by influencing key policies and promoting debate. Reliable information is the foundation upon which these efforts are based, which places research at the heart of biodiversity conservation. The role of research in such conservation is diverse. It includes understanding why biodiversity is important, defining 'units' of biodiversity, priority-setting for species and sites, managing endangered and declining populations, understanding large-scale processes, making predictions about the future and interfacing with training, education, public awareness and policy initiatives. Using examples from a wide range of bird conservation work worldwide, researchers consider the principles underlying these issues, and illustrate how these principles have been applied to address actual conservation problems for students, practitioners and researchers in conservation biology.

Evolution Of Wild Emmer And Wheat Improvement: Population Genetics, Genetic Resources, and Genome Organization of Wheat's Progenitor, Triticum Dicoccoides

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Evolution Of Wild Emmer And Wheat Improvement: Population Genetics, Genetic Resources, and Genome Organization of Wheat's Progenitor, Triticum Dicoccoides
E. Nevo
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 3540417508

Book Description

Wild emmer is the progenitor of most cultivated wheats and thus an important source of wheat improvement. This book draws the results from multidisciplinary studies on the ecological, genetic, genomic, agronomic, and evolutionary aspects of wild emmer, conducted at many labs around the world.
It is divided into the following parts: Origin and Evolution of Wheat - Population Genetics of Wild Emmer Wheat at the Protein and DNA Levels - Genetic Resources of Wild Emmer for Wheat Improvement - Genome Organization and Genetic Mapping - Conclusions and Prospects.
The authors describe the evolution of wild emmer as a model organism of a selfer in evolutionary biology, and its rich potential genetic resources for wheat improvement.

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