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| Evolution Through Genetic Exchange | Buy a book...
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| Author(s): | M.L. Arnold |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| ISBN: | 0198570066 |
| Format: | hardback |
| 252pp | |
| Price: | £55.00 |
| Review Date: | 16 September 2006 |
| Review: | This book is about the evolutionary role of genetic exchange. This exchange can be by natural hybridization and in other cases can be referred to as lateral or horizontal gene transfer. Yet in other instances the distinction between these processes is blurred. The author’s intention with this book is to exemplify the similarities of genetic exchange with regard to fundamental evolutionary outcomes. The author states a metaphor for the conceptual framework of the book that instead of a simple bifurcation tree of life, he believes that a better metaphor for describing evolutionary diversification is a web of life. He points out that this was not a novel view in that the recognition of divergence accompanied by ongoing, or at least episodic, genetic exchange was championed in the last century. The book chapters are: 1 History of investigation, 2 The role of species concepts, 3 Testing the hypothesis, 4 Barriers to gene flow, 5 Hybrid fitness, 6 Gene duplication, 7 Origin of new evolutionary lineages, 8 Implications for endangered taxa, 9 Human and associated lineages, 10 Emerging properties. |