Plant variation and evolution
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Plant variation and evolution
Cambridge University Press, 1997
3rd ed
- : hb
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 438-497) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Natural populations of plants show intricate patterns of variation. European botanists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used this variation to classify different 'kinds' into a hierarchy of family, genus, and species. Although useful, these classifications were based on a belief in the fixity of species and the static patterns of variation. Darwin's theory of evolution changed this view; populations and species varied in time and space and were part of a continuing process of evolution. The development of molecular techniques has transformed our understanding of microevolution and the evolutionary history of the flowering plants. This new edition reviews recent progress in its historical context, showing how hypotheses and models developed in the past have been critically tested. The authors consider the remarkable insights that molecular biology has given us into the processes of evolution in populations of cultivated, wild and weedy species, the threats of extinction faced by many endangered species and the wider evolutionary history of the flowering plants as revealed by cladistic methods.
Table of Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on names of plants
- 1. Looking at variation
- 2. From Ray to Darwin
- 3. Early work on biometry
- 4. Early work on the basis of individual variation
- 5. Post-Darwinian ideas about evolution
- 6. Modern views on the basis of variation
- 7. Breeding systems
- 8. Infraspecific variation and the ecotype concept
- 9. Recent advances in genecology
- 10. Species and speciation
- 11. Gradual speciation and hybridisation
- 12. Abrupt speciation
- 13. The species concept
- 14. Evolution: some general considerations
- 15. Conservation: confronting the extinction of species
- Glossary
- References
- Index.
by "Nielsen BookData"