Description
Book SynopsisThis is the story of a profound revolution in the way biologists explore life''s history, understand its evolutionary processes, and reveal its diversity. It is about life''s smallest entities, deepest diversity, and greatest cellular biomass: the microbiosphere. Jan Sapp introduces us to a new field of evolutionary biology and a new brand of molecular evolutionists who descend to the foundations of evolution on Earth to explore the origins of the genetic system and the primary life forms from which all others have emerged. In so doing, he examines-from Lamarck to the present-the means of pursuing the evolution of complexity, and of depicting the greatest differences among organisms. The New Foundations of Evolution takes us into a world that classical evolutionists could never have imagined: a deep phylogeny based on three domains of life and multiple kingdoms, and created by mechanisms very unlike those considered by Darwin and his followers. Evolution by leaps seems to occur regul
Trade ReviewIt is a must-read for anyone with the slightest interest in the historical background to the current controversies regarding the role of horizontal gene transfer and how this affects the notion of a tree of life for prokaryotes. * Systematic Biology *
Table of ContentsFOREWORD; PREFACE; CONCLUDING REMARKS
