INTRODUCTION

  1. Diversity in biological systems can be best defined by the number of elements within each system. In this sense, a genus or a habitat with many species is more diverse than a genus or habitat with few.

  2. See A. Begossi et al., “Are Biological Species and Higher-Ranking Categories Real? Fish Folk Taxonomy on Brazil's Atlantic Forest Coast and in the Amazon,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (April 2008): 291–306.

  3. For a broader perspective, see Eric W. Holman, “How Comparable Are Categories in Different Phyla?” Taxon 56, no. 1 (February 2007): 179–84. For a recent estimate on species numbers, see Mark J. Costello, Robert M. May, and Nigel E. Stork, “Can We Name Earth's Species before They Go Extinct?” Science 339, no. 6118 (January 25, 2013): 413–16.

  4. A multi-institutional effort is currently underway to make information available regarding all 1.8 million described species. To access this effort see the Encyclopedia of Life website.

  5. Paul Oliver et al., “Cryptic Diversity in Vertebrates: Molecular Data Double Estimates of Species Diversity in a Radiation of Australian Lizards (Diplodactylus, Gekkota),” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276, no. 1664 (June 7, 2009): 2001–2007; David R. Vieites et al., “Vast Underestimation of Madagascar's Biodiversity Evidenced by an Integrative Amphibian Inventory,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 20 (May 19, 2009): 8267–72.

  6. A recent study in China gives strong support to the notion that the species richness of land vertebrates and vascular plants are concordant; see Haigen Xu et al., “Biodiversity Congruence and Conservation Strategies: A National Test,” BioScience 58, no. 7 (July/August 2008): 632–39.

  7. For an entertaining and strongly opinionated review, see Richard Greenberg, Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon (New York: Copernicus, 2008). This delirious author even illustrates animals creeping around the fissures of Europa's icy crust (p. 249).

  8. For a nice overview regarding the physical and chemical nature of our universe, see John Gribbin, The Origins of the Future: Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

  9. For a short review of the Moon's origin, see Alex N. Halliday, “Planetary Science: Isotopic Lunacy,” Nature 450, no. 7168 (November 15, 2007): 356–57; and for more recent theories see Alex N. Halliday, “The Origin of the Moon,” Science 338, no 6110 (November 23, 2012): 1040–41.

10. Kevin J. Walsh, “Asteroids: When Planets Migrate,” Nature 457, no. 7233 (February 26, 2009): 1091–93.

11. Richard Kerr, “Planetary Two-Step Reshaped Solar System, Saved Earth?” Science 332, no. 6035 (June 10, 2011): 1255.

12. For a detailed technical book regarding life-supporting planets, see James Kasting, How to Find a Habitable Planet (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

13. John Chambers and Jacqueline Mitton, From Dust to Life: The Origin and Evolution of Our Solar System (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. xv. A fine review of the Sun and its family.

14. In fact, changes in the Earth's degree of tilt, changing eccentricity of its orbit, and changes in the time of year when we are closest to the Sun, have contributed to recent cycles of glaciation. For an overview, see Mark A. Maslin and Beth Christensen, “Tectonics, Orbital Forcing, Global Climate Change, and Human Evolution in Africa: Introduction to the African Paleoclimate Special Volume,” Journal of Human Evolution 53, no. 5 (November 2007): 443–64.

15. Eric Roston sees plate tectonics as central to sustaining life on planet Earth, second only to sunshine. See The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat (New York: Walker, 2008).

16. Venus doesn't have this particular problem because of its dynamic atmosphere. Without its dense heat-trapping atmosphere, Venus would have one side broiling under the hot Sun over many months, as the other side resides in deep frigidity. With or without its suffocating atmosphere, Venus could not support a biosphere.

17. I have even argued that, thanks to all the lucky breaks in our long history, we may have the only radio telescopes currently functioning in our galaxy; see Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).

18. Though I see “astrobiology” as a clever ploy, helping the Astronomical-Industrial-Complex continue sucking dollars out of our national budget, Lucas John Mix has written a fine book, reviewing the physical requirements for life: Life in Space: Astrobiology for Everyone (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

19. For a readable narrative regarding our universe and ourselves, see Christopher Potter, You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe (New York: HarperCollins, 2009).

20. For a fine rejoinder to arguments of those supporting “intelligent design,” and lots of evidence supporting the theory of our having evolved over time, see Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True (New York: Viking, 2009).

21. Nicholas Wade, “Evolution All Around,” New York Times Book Review, October 11, 2009: 22.

22. Michael J. Benton, “The Origins of Modern Biodiversity on Land,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, no. 1558 (November 27, 2010): 3667–79; John C. Briggs, “Species Diversity: Land and Sea Compared,” Systematic Biology 43, no. 1 (March 1994): 130–35.

23. Christopher B. Field et al., “Primary Production of the Biosphere: Integrating Terrestrial and Oceanic Components,” Science 281, no. 5374 (July 10, 1998): 237–40.

24. For a technical but well-written overview of photosynthesis, see Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).

25. Brian Groombridge and Martin D. Jenkins, World Atlas of Biodiversity: Earth's Living Resources in the 21st Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), p. 11.

26. Vaclav Smil, The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002), p. 7. It has also been suggested that 90 percent of marine biomass is microbial; see Dennis Normile, “Counting the Ocean's Creatures, Great and Small,” Science 330, no. 6000 (October 1, 2010): 25.

27. See the short review and included references by Amber Dance, “What Lies Beneath?” Nature 455, no. 7214 (October 9, 2008): 724–25.

28. Rob R. Dunn reviews our efforts at understanding the diversity of life in his book Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). Championing lone voices that spurred recent breakthroughs, together with personal field experiences, help animate this very readable survey. Unfortunately, devoting many pages to a hypothetical “nanobacteria” and to an imaginative astrobiology seems more science fiction than science fact.

29. Estimating the total number of species continues to be controversial, and many estimates seem wildly overstated. For a short review, see Robert M. May, “Tropical Arthropod Species, More or Less?” Science 329, no. 5987 (July 2, 2010): 41–42.

CHAPTER 1: BILLIONS OF BEETLES

  1. Hanno Sandvik, “An Inordinate Fondness for Mecopteriforma,” Systematics and Biodiversity 4, no. 4 (December 2006): 381–84.

  2. The “type specimen” is important in plant and animal nomenclature. This is the specimen to which the new name is forever linked. Populations vary: similar species may grow together; technical descriptions can be subject to different interpretations. Thus, when questions arise as to how to apply a specific name precisely, the type specimen serves as a touchstone.

  3. For a short general discussion, see John Tyler Bonner, “Matters of Size,” Natural History 115, no. 9 (November 2006): 54–58. For a more technical review, see Ethan P. White et al., “Relationships between Body Size and Abundance in Ecology,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22, no. 6 (June 2007): 324–30.

  4. Gilbert Waldbauer provides a nice overview in Millions of Monarchs, Bunches of Beetles: How Bugs Find Strength in Numbers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

  5. Toby Hunt et al., “A Comprehensive Phylogeny of Beetles Reveals the Evolutionary Origins of a Superradiation,” Science 318, no. 5858 (December 21, 2007): 1913–16.

  6. Michael Kaspari and Bradley Stevenson, “Evolutionary Ecology, Antibiosis, and All that Rot,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 49 (December 9, 2008): 19027–28.

  7. The numbers of little wasp species appear to be grossly underestimated; see, for example, M. Alex Smith, et al., “Extreme Diversity of Tropical Parasitoid Wasps Exposed to Iterative Integration of Natural History, DNA Barcoding, Morphology, and Collections,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 34 (August 26, 2008): 12359–64.

  8. Peter J. Mayhew, “Why Are There So Many Insect Species? Perspectives from Fossils and Phylogenies,” Biological Reviews 82, no. 3 (August 2007): 425–54.

  9. Erwin went on to estimate huge numbers of undiscovered species around the world, but these projections are probably overblown. For a short review of Erwin's work, see Rob Dunn, Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), pp.77–82. His nanobacteria, however, may be more fiction than fact.

10. Ryoko Okajima, “The Controlling Factors Limiting Maximum Body Size in Insects,” Lethaia 41, no. 4 (December 2008): 423–30.

11. David Beerling, The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

12. Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005).

13. Jan Schipper et al., “The Status of the World's Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge,” Science 322, no. 5899 (October 10, 2008): 225–30.

14. The ongoing discovery of many new species make 300,000 species a more likely “final tally” for flowering plants. In fact, most new species are being found in “biodiversity hotspots,” which we'll be discussing in chapters four and five.

15. Plant family and generic species numbers quoted in this book come from the very useful Mabberley's Plant Book (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

16. Brian D. Farrell, “‘Inordinate Fondness’ Explained: Why Are There So Many Beetles?” Science 281, no. 5376 (July 24, 1998): 555–59.

17. I discussed the significance of Angiosperms both for the planet and human history in Flowers: How They Changed the World (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).

CHAPTER 2: BACTERIA, EUKARYOTIC CELLS, AND SEX

  1. For a recent review of bacteria and their role in modern biological science, see Carl Zimmer, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008).

  2. For a terrific but dense review of photosynthesis and its effect on our planet, see Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008).

  3. If the average bacterium is about one micron wide and three microns long, this adds up to a “footprint” of three square microns. With the average printed period having a diameter between three hundred and four hundred microns, as many as 20,000 bacteria should be able to crowd together within the period at the end of this sentence.

  4. Michael Gleich et al., Life Counts: Cataloguing Life on Earth (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002), p. 29.

  5. For a short overview and references, see David S. Schneider and Moria C. Chambers, “Rogue Insect Immunity,” Science 322, no. 5905 (November 21, 2008): 1199–200.

  6. Ernst Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1963), p. 19.

  7. Elizabeth Pennisi, “Researchers Trade Insights about Gene Swapping,” Science 305, no. 5682 (July 16, 2004): 334–35.

  8. James O. McInerney and Davide Pisani, “Paradigm for Life,” Science 318, no. 5855 (November 30, 2007): 1390–91.

  9. For more detailed discussions of species identification among bacteria, see Christophe Fraser, William P. Hanage, and Brian G. Spratt, “Recombination and the Nature of Bacterial Speciation,” Science 315, no. 5811 (January 26, 2007): 476–80; John Bohannon, “Confusing Kinships,” Science 320, no. 5879 (May 23, 2008): 1031–33; and David Emerson et al., “Identifying and Characterizing Bacteria in an Era of Genomics and Proteomics,” Bioscience 58, no. 10 (November 2008): 925–36.

10. For a fine review of the Archaea, see Tim Friend The Third Domain: The Untold Story of Archaea and the Future of Biotechnology (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2007).

11. Thomas Cavalier-Smith, “Cell Evolution and Earth History: Stasis and Revolution,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361, no. 1470 (June 29, 2006): 969–1066. See also: Karou Fukami-Kobayashi et al., “A Tree of Life Based on Protein Domain Organization,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 24, no. 5 (May 2007): 1181–89.

12. Thomas Cavalier-Smith, “Origin of Mitochondria by Intracellular Enslavement of a Photosynthetic Purple Bacterium,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 273, no. 1596 (August 7, 2006): 1943–52.

13. For a short overview, see Carl Zimmer, “On the Origin of Eukaryotes,” Science 325, no. 5941 (August 7, 2009): 666–68. For a more technical argument, see T. Vellai et al., “A New Aspect to the Origin and Evolution of Eukaryotes,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 46, no. 5 (May 1998): 499–507.

14. For a detailed argument regarding the importance of mitochondria in the history of life, see Nick Lane's Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

15. Actually, oak trees don't have egg cells. The female oak flower has an ovule with a complex “egg apparatus” containing a number of nuclei. A single nucleus from the pollen tube will unite with an egg nucleus to form the basis of a new oak tree; this is similar to a sperm nucleus uniting with an egg nucleus.

16. For a technical review of current thinking regarding the origin of eukaryotes, see Yonas I. Tekle, Laura Wegener Parfrey, and Laura A. Katz, “Molecular Data Are Transforming Hypotheses on the Origin and Diversification of Eukaryotes,” Bioscience 59, no. 6 (June 2009): 471–81.

17. For a short review of the evolution of sex, see Carl Zimmer, “On the Origin of Sexual Reproduction,” Science 324, no. 5932 (June 5, 2009): 1254–56. A more recent summary is provided by Michael Brockhurst, “Sex, Death, and the Red Queen,” Science 333, no. 6039 (July 8, 2011): 166–68.

18. This mathematical analysis used Linnaean ranks to estimate eukaryotic species-numbers; see Daniel Strain, “8.7 million: A New Estimate for All the Complex Species on Earth,” Science 333, no. 6046 (August 26, 2011): 1083.

CHAPTER 3: WHAT DRIVES THE FORMATION OF NEW SPECIES?

  1. For a discussion of the “design problem” in evolutionary thought, see Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

  2. For a short summary of Darwin's achievement and suggestions for further progress, see Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, “Systemic Darwinism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 33 (August 19, 2008): 11833–38.

  3. Ernst Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard, 1963), p. 19.

  4. The complexity of population dynamics among finches in the Galapagos Islands is described by the two scientists that have been following them most closely; see Peter R. Grant and B. Rosemary Grant's How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin's Finches (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  5. Ian Tattersall, “Madagascar's Lemurs: Cryptic Diversity or Taxonomic Inflation?” Evolutionary Anthropology 16, no. 1 (January/February 2007): 12–23; C. Schwitzer et al., “Averting Lemur Extinctions amid Madagascar's Political Crisis,” Science 343, no. 6173 (February 21, 2014): 842–44.

  6. B. D. Dow and Mary V. Ashley, “High Levels of Gene Flow in Bur Oak Revealed by Paternity Analysis Using Microsatellites,” Journal of Heredity 89, no. 1 (January 1998): 62–70.

  7. For example, a recent study of fish in Brazil, both on the Atlantic shore and in the Amazon, found that local fishers’ folk taxonomy was very similar to that used by biologists. See: A. Begossi et al., “Are Biological Species and Higher-Ranking Categories Real?: Fish Folk Taxonomy on Brazil's Atlantic Forest Coast and in the Amazon,” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (April 2008): 291–306.

  8. Rolla Tryon, “Development and Evolution of Fern Floras of Oceanic Islands,” Biotropica 2, no. 2 (November 1970): 76–84.

  9. Jurgen Haffer, “Speciation of Amazonian Forest Birds,” Science 165, no. 3889 (July 11, 1969): 131–37.

10. Paul Colinvaux and P. E. De Oliveira, “Amazon Plant Diversity and Climate through the Cenozoic,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 166, no 1–2 (February 1, 2001): 51–63.

11. Menno Schilthuizen, Frogs, Flies, and Dandelions: Speciation—The Evolution of New Species (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001).

12. “The Wallace Effect” is discussed in Verne Grant's Plant Speciation (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 76–84.

13. Actually, a recent study suggests that human lice may not represent two distinct species. See: Jessica E. Light, Melissa A. Toups, and David L. Reed, “What's in a Name: The Taxonomic Status of Human Head and Body Lice,” Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 47, no. 3 (June 2008): 1203–16.

14. William Burger, “Montane Species-Limits in Costa Rica and Evidence for Local Speciation on Altitudinal Gradients,” in S. P. Churchill, H. Balsev, E. Ferero, and J. Luteyn, eds., Biodiversity and Conservation of Neotropical Montane Forests (Bronx, NY: New York Botanical Garden, 1995), pp. 127–33.

15. Christopher Schneider et al., “A Test of Alternative Models of Diversification in Tropical Rainforests: Ecological Gradients vs. Rainforest Refugia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96, no. 24 (November 23, 1999): 13869–73.

16. R. C. Albertson et al., “Phylogeny of a Rapidly Evolving Clade: The Cichlid Fishes of Lake Malawi, East Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96, no. 9 (April 27, 1999): 5107–10.

17. M. Emilia Santos and Walter Salzburger, “How Cichlids Diversify,” Science 338, no. 6107 (November 2, 2012): 619–20.

18. Tom Tregenza and Roger K. Butlin, “Speciation without Isolation,” Nature 400, no. 6742 (July 22, 1999): 311–12; Kerstin Johannesson, “Parallel Speciation: A Key to Sympatric Divergence,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16, no. 3 (March 2001): 148–53.

19. D. Luke Mahler et al., “Exceptional Convergence on the Macroevolutionary Landscape in Island Lizard Radiations,” Science 341, no. 6143 (July 19, 2013): 292–95.

20. Stefanie De Bodt, Steven Maere, and Yves Van de Peer, “Genome Duplication and the Origin of Angiosperms,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20, no. 11 (November 2005): 591–97.

21. For a recent discussion, see the symposium issue beginning with Richard J. Abbott, Michael G. Ritchie, and Peter M. Hollingsworth, “Introduction. Speciation in Plants and Animals: Pattern and Process,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, no. 1506 (September 27, 2008): 2965–69, and following.

CHAPTER 4: THE GEOGRAPHY OF SPECIES RICHNESS

  1. For an excellent text covering plant and animal distribution around the world, see C. Barry Cox and Peter D. Moore, Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). Using phylogenetic relationships, Ben Holt et. al. propose “An Update of Wallace's Zoogeographic Regions of the World,” Science 339, no. 6115 (January 4, 2013): 74–77.

  2. F. I. Woodward, M. R. Lomas, and C. K. Kelly, “Global Climate and the Distribution of Plant Biomes,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 359, no. 1450 (October 29, 2004): 1465–76. For a comprehensive text, see Susan L. Woodward, Biomes of Earth: Terrestrial, Aquatic, and Human-Dominated (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

  3. David M. Olson et al., “Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth,” BioScience 51, no. 11 (November 2001): 933–38.

  4. Robin Abell et al., “Freshwater Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Biogeographic Units for Freshwater Biodiversity Conservation,” BioScience 58, no. 5 (May 2008): 403–14.

  5. Thomas E. Lovejoy, “Biodiversity: What Is It?” in Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting our Biological Resources, ed. Marjorie L. Reaka-Kudla, Don E. Wilson, and Edward O. Wilson (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 1997), pp. 7–14.

  6. Vojtech Novotny et al., “Why Are There So Many Species of Herbivorous Insects in Tropical Rainforests?” Science 313, no. 5790 (August 25, 2006): 1115–18.

  7. Matthew Symonds and Christopher Johnson, “Species Richness and Evenness in Australian Birds,” American Naturalist 171, no. 4 (April 2008): 480–90.

  8. Northern boreal forests are a geologically recent formation and may be severely affected by global warming. See: Ralph E. Taggart and Aureal T. Cross, “Global Greenhouse to Icehouse and Back Again: The Origin and Future of the Boreal Forest Biome,” Global and Planetary Change 65, no. 3–4 (February 2009): 115–21.

  9. James M. Dyer, “Revisiting the Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America,” BioScience 56, no. 4 (April 2006): 341–52.

10. Thomas J. R. Finnie et al., “Floristic Elements in European Vascular Plants: An Analysis Based on Atlas Florae Europaeae,” Journal of Biogeography 34, no. 11 (November 2007): 1848–72.

11. Russell A. Mittermeier, Norman Myers, and Cristina G. Mittermeier, Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions (Mexico City: CEMEX, 1999), p. 37.

12. Y. Yang et al., “Biodiversity and Biodiversity Conservation in Yunnan, China,” Biodiversity and Conservation 13, no. 4 (April 2004): 813–26.

13. For an illustrated overview of Mediterranean vegetation, see: Peter R. Dallman, Plant Life in the World's Mediterranean Climates (Berkeley, CA” University of California Press, 1998).

14. F. Miranda and E. Hernandez, “Los tipos de vegetación de Mexico y su classifación,” Boletin Sociedad Botanica de Mexico 28 (1963): 29–178.

15. Mittermeier, Myers, and Mittermeier, Hotspots, p. 89.

16. Marcos Sobral and John Renato Stehmann, “An Analysis of New Angiosperm Species Discoveries in Brazil (1990–2006),” Taxon 58, no. 1 (February 2009): 227–32.

17. Mittermeier, Myers, and Mittermeier, Hotspots, pp. 149–57.

18. For a recent short review, see Alexandre Antonelli and Isabel Sanmartin, “Why Are There So Many Plant Species in the Neotropics?” Taxon 60, no. 2 (April 2011): 403–14.

19. Gordon H. Orians and Antoni V. Milewski, “Ecology of Australia: The Effects of Nutrient-Poor Soils and Intense Fires,” Biological Reviews 82, no. 3 (August 2007): 393–423.

20. Robert K. Robbins and Paul A. Opler, “Butterfly Diversity and Preliminary Comparison with Bird and Mammal Diversity,” in Biodiversity II: Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources, ed. Marjorie L. Reaka-Kudla, Don E. Wilson, and Edward O. Wilson (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 1997), pp. 69–82.

21. P. Morat and P. Lowry, “Floristic Richness in the Africa-Madagascar Region: A Brief History and Prospective,” Adansonia 19 (1997): 101–10.

22. Ronell R. Klopper et al., “Floristics of the Angiosperm Flora of Sub-Saharan Africa: An Analysis of the African Plant Checklist and Database,” Taxon 56, no 1 (February 2007): 201–208. The numbers in this compilation seems a bit generous, though it is the best estimate we currently have for any large tropical region.

23. Andrew S. Cohen et al., “Ecological Consequences of Early Late Pleistocene Megadroughts in Tropical Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 42 (October 16, 2007): 16422–27. See also: Christopher A. Scholz et al., “East African Megadroughts Between 135 and 75 Thousand Years Ago and Bearing on Early-Modern Human Origins,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 42 (October 16, 2007): 16416–21.

24. Ghillean Prance, “A Comparison of the Efficacy of Higher Taxa and Species Numbers in the Assessment of Biodiversity in the Neotropics,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 345, no. 1311 (July 29, 1994): 89–99.

25. Steven Goodman, personal communication (2009) based on work done by the Missouri Botanical Garden and its collaborators.

26. More detailed information can be found in a 1,700 page compendium edited by Steven M. Goodman and Johnathan P. Benstead, The Natural History of Madagascar (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Incidentally, a recent paper suggests that Madagascar has many more species of frogs than previously thought; see David R. Vieites et al., “Vast Underestimation of Madagascar's Biodiversity Evidenced by an Integrative Amphibian Inventory,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 20 (May 19, 2009): 8267–72.

27. Some zoologists have speculated that the ancestors of kiwis were larger birds, like their moa cousins, and, as the bird's bodies became smaller over evolutionary time, the eggs simply didn't keep pace. Thus, kiwis have unusually large eggs for their size.

28. For an insightful and well-written review of the importance of islands in biological science, see David Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction (New York: Scribner, 1996).

CHAPTER 5: PATTERNS, HOTSPOTS, AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF LINEAGES

  1. Anthony R. Bean, “A New System for Determining which Plant Species Are Indigenous in Australia,” Australian Systematic Botany 20, no. 1 (2007): 1–43.

  2. Arne Mooers, “The Diversity of Biodiversity,” Nature 445, no. 7129 (February 15, 2007): 717–18. See also, Miles Spathelf and T. A. Wiate, “Will Hotspots Conserve Extra Primate and Carnivore Evolutionary History?” Diversity and Distribution 13, no. 6 (November 2007): 746–51.

  3. Jed A. Fuhrman et al., “A Latitudinal Diversity Gradient in Planktonic Marine Bacteria,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 22 (June 3, 2008): 7774–78.

  4. Attila Kalmar and David J. Currie, “A Global Model of Island Biogeography,” Global Ecology and Biogeography 15, no. 1 (January 2006): 72–81.

  5. L. A. Dyer et al. “Host Specificity of Lepidoptera in Tropical and Temperate Forests,” Nature 448, no. 7154 (August 9, 2007): 696–99.

  6. Some recent papers have questioned Rapoport's rule; the American tropics have both more narrowly and more widely distributed tree species than do temperate areas in the Western Hemisphere. See: Michael D. Weiser et al., “Latitudinal Patterns of Range Size and Species Richness of New World Woody Plants,” Global Ecology and Biogeography 16, no. 5 (September 2007): 679–88.

  7. Jason T. Weir and Dolph Schluter, “The Latitudinal Gradient in Recent Speciation and Extinction Rates in Birds and Mammals,” Science 315, no. 5818 (March 16, 2007): 1574–76.

  8. In fact things have been getting worse over the last thirty million years, since the warmth of the Eocene gave way to general cooling and greater seasonality. See: S. Bruce Archibald et al, “Seasonality, the Latitudinal Gradient of Diversity, and Eocene Insects,” Paleobiology 36, no. 3 (June 2010): 374–98.

  9. Hong Qian, Jason D. Fridley, and Michael W. Palmer, “The Latitudinal Gradient of Species-Area Relationships for Vascular Plants of North America,” American Naturalist 170, no. 5 (November 2007): 690–701.

10. James E. Watkins Jr. et al., “Species Richness and Distribution of Ferns along an Elevational Gradient in Costa Rica,” American Journal of Botany 93, no. 1 (January 2006): 73–83.

11. Angela Nivia Ruiz and Alfredo Cascante Marin, “Distribucion de las formas de vida en la flora costaricensis,” Brenesia 69 (2008): 1–17.

12. Alwyn H. Gentry and C. H. Dodson, “Diversity and Biogeography of Neotropical Vascular Epiphytes,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 74, no. 2 (1987): 205–33.

13. Jürgen Kluge and Michael Kessler, “Fern Endemism and Its Correlates: Contribution from an Elevational Transect in Costa Rica,” Diversity and Distributions 12, no. 5 (September 2006): 535–45.

14. Jan Beck and Vun Khen Chey, “Explaining the Elevational Diversity Pattern of Geometrid Moths from Borneo: A Test of Five Hypotheses,” Journal of Biogeography 35, no. 8 (August 2008): 1452–64.

15. Hans ter Steege et al., “Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora,” Science 342, no. 6156 (October 18, 2013): 325.

16. Alfred Wegener, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, translated from the fourth revised German edition by John Biram (New York: Dover Publications, 1966).

17. Naomi Oreskes provides a detailed analysis of why North American geologists were so reluctant to accept Wegener's theory in The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

18. William Glen gives a technical account of how a variety of independent research programs contributed to a final synthesis for plate tectonics in The Road to Jaramillo: Critical Years of the Revolution in Earth Science (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). A more general discussion is found in Tjeerd van Andel, New Views on an Old Planet: A History of Global Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

19. Recent genetic evidence suggests that the ratites flew to distant regions and became flightless only later. For a terrific example of an animal lineage still hanging on to its ancient Gondwana homeland, see Sarah L. Boyer and Gonzalo Giribet, “A New Model Gondwanan Taxon: Systematics and Biogeography of the Harvestman Family Pettalidae (Arachnida, Opiliones, Cyphophthalmi), with a Taxonomic Revision of Genera from Australia and New Zealand,” Cladistics 23, no. 4 (August 2007): 337–61.

20. For a fine short review, see chapter 8 in Mark V. Lomolino, Brett R. Riddle, and James H. Brown, Biogeography (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Assoc., 2006), pp. 227–74.

21. Ze-Long Nie et al., “Evolution of Biogeographic Disjunction between Eastern Asia and Eastern North America in Phryma (Phyrmaceae),” American Journal of Botany 93, no. 9 (September 2006): 1343–56.

22. Jun Wen, “Evolution of Eastern Asian and Eastern North American Disjunct Distributions in Flowering Plants,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 30 (1999): 421–55; Richard Milne, “Northern Hemisphere Plant Disjunctions: A Window on Tertiary Land Bridges and Climate Change?” Annals of Botany 98, no. 3 (September 2006): 465–72.

23. This book was published in 1999; a short scientific article outlining the reasons for designating the same twenty-five “hotspots” was published in 2000: Norman Myers et al., “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities,” Nature 403, no. 6772 (February 24, 2000): 853–58.

24. Peter Kareiva and Michelle Marvier, “Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots,” American Scientist 91, no. 4 (June 2003): 344–51.

25. V. Obando, Biodiversidad en Costa Rica: Estao del Conociemento y Gestion (Santo Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica: INBio, 2002).

26. To get a better idea of the animals and plants of Costa Rica, check out these two recent guides: Carrol L. Henderson, Field Guide to the Wildlife of Costa Rica (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002); and Willow Zuchowski, Tropical Plants of Costa Rica: A Guide to Native and Exotic Flora (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

27. Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, MA: Belknap / Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 204.

28. John Terborgh estimated 15,000 plant species at the Manu Reserve, but this seems wildly exaggerated. He is quoted in Kim MacQuarrie, Peru's Amazonian Eden: Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve (Barcelona, Spain: Francis O. Patthey y hijos, 1998).

29. Bruce D. Patterson, Douglas F. Stotz, and Segio Solari, “Mammals and Birds of the Manu Biosphere Reserve, Peru,” Fieldiana: Zoology n.s., 110 (2006): 1–49.

30. Vincent S. Smith, Jessica E. Light, and Lance A. Durden, “Rodent Louse Diversity, Phylogeny, and Cospeciation in Manu Biosphere Reserve, Peru,” Biological Journal of the Linnaean Society 95, no. 3 (November 2008): 598–610.

31. Robert K. Robbins et al., “Taxonomic Composition and Ecological Structure of the Species-Rich Butterfly Community at Pakitza, Parque Nacional del Manu, Peru,” in Manu: The Biodiversity of Southeastern Peru, ed. Don E. Wilson and Abelardo Sanoval (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1996), pp. 217–52.

32. Victor R. Morales and Roy W. McDiarmid, “Annotated Checklist of the Amphibians and Reptiles of Pakitza, Manu National Park Reserve Zone, with Comments on the Herpetofauna of Madre de Dios, Peru,” in Manu: The Biodiversity of Southeastern Peru, pp. 503–22.

33. Russell A. Mittermeier, Norman Myers, and Cristina G. Mittermeier, Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions (Mexico City: CEMEX, 1999), pp. 319–34.

34. Ibid., pp. 279–90.

35. Ibid., pp. 297–304.

36. Ibid., pp. 309–15.

37. Ibid., pp. 353–59.

38. Marcelo F. Simon et al., “Recent Assembly of the Cerrado, a Neotropical Plant Diversity Hotspot, by In Situ Evolution of Adaptations to Fire,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 48 (December 1, 2009): 20359–64.

39. Mittermeier, Myers, and Mittermeier, Hotspots, pp. 219–26.

40. Peter Goldblatt and John Manning, Cape Plants: A Conspectus of the Cape Flora of South Africa, vol. 9 of Strelitzia (St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 2000).

41. Holger Kreft and Walter Jetz, “Global Patterns and Determinants of Vascular Plant Diversity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 14 (April 3, 2007): 5925–30.

42. Andrew M. Latimer, John A. Silander Jr., and Richard M. Cowling, “Neutral Ecological Theory Reveals Isolation and Rapid Speciation in a Biodiversity Hot Spot,” Science 309, no. 5741 (September 9, 2005): 1722–25.

43. Peter Goldblatt, “An Analysis of the Flora of Southern Africa: Its Characteristics, Relationships, and Origins,” Annals Missouri Botanical Garden 65, no. 2 (1978): 369–436.

44. Ben H. Warren and Julie A. Hawkins, “The Distribution of Species Diversity across a Flora's Component Lineages: Dating the Cape's ‘Relicts,’” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 273, no. 1598 (September 2006): 2149–58.

45. R. M. Cowling and A. T. Lombard, “Heterogeneity, Speciation/Extinction History and Climate: Explaining Regional Plant Diversity in the Cape Floristic Region,” Diversity and Distributions 8, no. 3 (May 2002): 163–79.

46. The notion that islands can promote the survival of species contradicts the MacArthur and Wilson equilibrium model of island biogeography, in which species numbers are controlled by a balance of immigration and local extinction. See Lawrence R. Heaney, “Is a New Paradigm Emerging for Oceanic Island Biogeography?” Journal of Biogeography 34, no. 5 (May 2007): 753–57.

47. See, for example, Derek Wildman et al., “Genomics, Biogeography, and the Diversification of Placental Mammals,”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 36 (September 4, 2007): 14395–400.

CHAPTER 6: SUSTAINING LOCAL BIODIVERSITY

  1. D. R. Strong, “Insect Species Richness: Hispine Beetles of Heliconia latispatha,” Ecology 58, no. 3 (Late Spring 1977): 573–82.

  2. R. H. Whittaker, “Evolution of Species Diversity in Plant Communities,” Evolutionary Biology 10 (1977): 22–23.

  3. P. J. Grubb, “The Maintenance of Species Richness in Plant Communities: The Importance of the Regeneration Niche,” Biological Reviews 52, no. 1 (February 1977): 119.

  4. Robert John et al., “Soil Nutrients Influence Spatial Distributions of Tropical Tree Species,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 3 (January 16, 2007): 864–69.

  5. J. W. Ferry Slik et al., “Environmental Correlates for Tropical Tree Diversity and Distribution Patterns in Borneo,” Diversity and Distributions 15, no. 3 (May 2009): 523–32.

  6. Kenneth P. Dial, Erick Greene, and Duncan J. Irschick, “Allometry of Behavior,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 23, no. 7 (July 2008): 394–401.

  7. This riverside sequence was described to me by tropical forest ecologist Robin Foster. See: Robin B. Foster, Javier Arce B., and Tatzyana S. Wachter, “Dispersal and Sequential Plant Communities in Amazonian Peru Floodplain,” in Frugivores and Seed Disperal, ed. Alejandro Estrada and Theodore H. Fleming, vol. 15 of Tasks for Vegetation Science (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Junk Publishers, 1986), pp. 357–70.

  8. F. Stephen Dobson, “A Lifestyle View of Life-History Evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 45 (November 6, 2007): 17565–66.

  9. Tibor Bukovinszky et al., “Direct and Indirect Effects of Resource Quality on Food Web Structure,” Science 319, no. 5864 (February 8, 2008): 804–807.

10. J. H. Vandermeer, J. Stout, and G. Miller, “Growth Rates of Welfia Georgii, Socratea durissima, and Iriartea gigantea Under Various Conditions in a Natural Rain Forest in Costa Rica,” Principes 18 (1974): 148–54.

11. S. P. Hubbell and R. B. Foster, “Biology, Chance and History and the Structure of Tropical Rain Forest Tree Communities,” in Community Ecology, ed. Jared Diamond and T. J. Case (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), pp. 314–19.

12. Peter B. Adler et al., “Climate Variability has a Stabilizing Effect on the Coexistence of Prairie Grasses,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103, no. 34 (August 22, 2006): 12793–98.

13. Christopher Wills et al., “Nonrandom Processes Maintain Diversity in Tropical Forests,” Science 311, no. 5760 (January 27, 2006): 527–31.

14. Daniel H. Janzen, “Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests,” American Naturalist 104, no. 940 (November/December 1970): 501–28.

15. Stephen J. Hubbell, “Seed Predation and the Coexistence of Tree Species in Tropical Forests,” Oikos 35, no. 2 (October 1980): 214–19. Hubbell is the author of a theory that claims chance alone can explain tropical forest diversity. Called the “neutral theory,” this idea counters the notion that rain forest biodiversity is primarily due to so many species having so many “different niches.”

16. William J. Ripple and Robert L. Beschta, “Wolves and the Ecology of Fear: Can Predation-Risk Structure Ecosystems?” BioScience 54, no. 8 (August 2004): 755–66. Virginia Morell provides a more intricate update in: “Lessons from the Wild Lab,” Science 347, no. 6228 (March 20, 2015): 1303–307. For a more general and alarming review, see: James A. Estes et al., “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,” Science 333, no. 6040 (July 15, 2011): 301–306.

17. C. K. Augspurger and C. K. Kelly, “Pathogen Mortality of Tropical Tree Seedlings: Experimental Studies on the Effects of Dispersal, Distance, Seedling Density, and Light Conditions,” Oecologia 61, no. 2 (February 1984): 211–17.

18. Peter Thompson, Seeds, Sex, and Civilization: How the Hidden Life of Plants Has Shaped Our World (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2010), p. 77.

19. James M. Cook and Jean-Yves Rasplus, “Mutualists with Attitude: Coevolving Fig Wasps and Figs,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18, no. 5 (May 2003): 241–48. For more about the complexity of figs, see: Sumner Silveus, Wendy Clement, and George D. Weiblen, “Cophylogeny of Figs, Pollinators, Gallers, and Parasitoids,” in Specialization, Speciation, and Radiation: The Evolutionary Biology of Herbivorous Insects, ed. Kelley J. Tilmon (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 225–37.

20. John Terborgh, Diversity and the Tropical Rain Forest (New York: Scientific American Library, 1992), p. 178. This book fails to discuss higher elevation “cloud forests.”

21. Eric J. Tepe, Michael A. Vincent, and Linda E. Watson, “The Importance of Petiole Structure on Inhabitability by Ants in Piper sect. Macrostachys (Piperaceae),” Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 153, no. 2 (February 2007): 181–91.

22. Ulrich Mueller and Christian Rabeling, “A Breakthrough Innovation in Animal Evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 14 (April 8, 2008): 5287–88; Ted R. Schulz and Sean G Brady, “Major Evolutionary Transitions in Ant Agriculture,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 14 (April 8, 2008): 5435–40.

23. Elizabeth Pennisi, “Body's Hardworking Microbes Get Some Overdue Respect,” Science 330, no. 6011 (December 17, 2010): 1619.

24. Luis M. Márquez et al., “A Virus in a Fungus in a Plant: Three-Way Symbiosis Required for Thermal Tolerance,” Science 315, no. 5811 (January 26, 2007): 513–15.

25. Irwin M. Brodo, Syvia Duran Sharnoff, and Stephen Sharnoff, Lichens of North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).

26. Robert Lucking, personal communication, Field Museum, 2007. See also Robert Lucking et al., “A First Assessment of the Ticolichen Biodiversity Inventory in Costa Rica: The Genus Graphis, with Notes on the Genus Hemithecium (Ascomycota: Ostropales: Graphidiaceae),” Fieldiana: Botany n.s. 46 (July 2008).

27. Yuichi Hongoh et al., “Genome of an Endosymbiont Coupling N² Fixation to Cellulolysis within Protist Cells in Termite Gut,” Science 322, no. 5904 (November 14, 2008): 1108–109.

28. Zaal Kikvidze and Ragan M. Callawy, “Ecological Facilitation May Drive Major Evolutionary Transitions,” BioScience 59, no. 5 (2009): 399–404. But mutualistic systems may become more vulnerable, whether in our financial systems or in nature; see: George Sugihara and Hao Ye, “Cooperative Network Dynamics,” Nature 458, no. 7241 (April 23, 2009): 979–80.

29. This point and many other aspects of mutualism are discussed by E. G. Leigh Jr. in “The Evolution of Mutualism,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23, no. 12 (December 2010): 2507–28.

30. For a broad discussion of dynamic ecological systems, see Menno Schilthuizen, The Loom of Life: Unravelling Ecosystems (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2008).

31. Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 37.

32. Phyllis D. Coley and Thomas A. Kursar, “On Tropical Forests and Their Pests,” Science 343, no. 6166 (January 3, 2014): 35–36.

33. E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 199.

34. John N. Thompson, The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 97.

CHAPTER 7: THE EXPANSION OF BIODIVERSITY ON PLANET EARTH

  1. Some elements and many different isotopes are unstable, breaking down (decaying) over time. Rate of decay is specific for each isotope's transformation, ranging from a few seconds to hundreds of millions of years. Because these changes take place within the nucleus of the atom, the rates are invariant; unaffected by pressure, temperature, or surrounding chemistry. Analyzing decayed isotopes locked within a specific rock allows geochemists to estimate the rock's age of formation. Thus, isotope decay rates have been essential in dating the origin of our planet and specific periods during its long history.

  2. Matthew E. Clapham, Guy M. Narbonne, and Sames G. Gehling, “Paleoecology of the Oldest Known Animal Communities: Ediacaran Assemblages at Mistaken Point, Newfoundland,” Paleobiology 29, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 527–44.

  3. For a detailed and well-illustrated review of the Ediacarans, see: Mikhail A. Fedonkin et al., The Rise of Animals: Evolution and Diversification of the Kingdom Animalia (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2008).

  4. Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), p. 179.

  5. Martin Brasier and Jonathan Antcliffe, “Decoding the Ediacaran Enigma,” Science 305, no. 5687 (August 20, 2004): 1115–16.

  6. Lee R. Kump, “The Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen,” Nature 451, no. 7176 (January 17, 2008): 277–78.

  7. D. A. Fike et al., “Oxidation of the Ediacaran Ocean,” Nature 444, no. 7120 (December 7, 2006): 744–47.

  8. Though he devotes little attention to a rise in oxygen pressure, a good recent overview is given by Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Cambrian Explosion: How Do We Use the Evidence?” BioScience 58, no. 9 (October 2008): 855–64.

  9. Mark Newman, “A New Picture of Life's History on Earth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 98, no. 11 (May 22, 2001): 5955–56.

10. Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), p. 233.

11. Jane Gray and William Shear, “Early Life on Land,” American Scientist 80, no. 5 (September/October 1992): 444–56.

12. Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 221.

13. Brigitte Meyer-Berthaud and Anne-Laure Decombeux, “A Tree Without Leaves,” Nature 446, no. 7138 (April 19, 2007): 861–62.

14. Dimitrios Floudas et al., “The Paleozoic Origin of Enzymatic Lignin Decomposition Reconstructed from 31 Fungal Genomes,” Science 336, no. 6089 (June 29, 2012): 1715–19.

15. Two fine technical reviews are: Burkhard Becker and Birger Marin, “Streptophyte Algae and the Origin of Embryophytes,” Annals of Botany 103, no. 7 (May 2009): 999–1004; and Yin-Long Qiu, “Phylogeny and Evolution of Charophytic Algae and Land Plants,” Journal of Systematics and Evolution 46, no. 3 (2008): 287–306.

16. Some estimates run the total number of flowering plants up to about 400,000 species. But this is not the number actually described at this time. Also, I prefer the lower figure of 260,000 because of the problem of synonomy, where many species carry multiple names or have been split into unnecessary segregate species.

17. Some Gymnosperms are pollinated by insects, but even these usually build seeds in advance of fertilization.

18. C. Kevin Boyce et al., “Angiosperm Leaf Vein Evolution was Physiologically and Environmentally Transformative,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276, no. 1663 (May 22, 2009): 1771–76.

19. Harald Schneider et al, “Ferns Diversified in the Shadow of Angiosperms,” Nature 428, no. 6982 (April 1, 2004): 553–56.

20. Corrie S. Moreau et al., “Phylogeny of the Ants: Diversification in the Age of Angiosperms,” Science 312, no. 5770 (April 7, 2006): 101–104.

21. Kim Roelants et al., “Global Patterns of Diversification in the History of Modern Amphibians,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 3 (January 7, 2007): 887–92.

22. Better than this, I claimed that without the flowering plants human beings and their fancy societies simply wouldn't be here; see, Flowers: How They Changed the World (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).

23. Why the dinosaurs, especially some of the herbivorous ones, became so large is an intriguing question. Even the largest mammals of the last fifty million years did not get close to the size of either the large herbivorous dinosaurs or to carnivorous Tyrannosaurus and its allies. See: P. Martin Sander and Marcus Clauss, “Sauropod Gigantism,” Science 322, no. 5899 (October 10, 2008): 200–201.

24. Important references are: L. W. Alvarez et al., “Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction,” Science 208, no. 4448 (June 6, 1980): 1095–1108; Walter Alvarez, T. Rex and the Crater of Doom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); and William Glen, ed., The Mass Extinction Debate: How Science Works in a Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).

25. For an accessible account of the end-Permian extinction, see Douglas H. Erwin, Extinction: How Life on Earth Nearly Ended 250 Million Years Ago (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). An important recent technical analysis is: Ezat Heydari, Nasser Arzani, and Jamshid Hassanzadeh, “Mantle Plume: The Invisible Serial Killer—Application to the Permian-Triassic Boundary Mass Extinction,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 264, no. 1–2 (July 7, 2008): 147–62.

26. After a long period of warmth, the world began to cool around 34 mya (at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary), and ice sheets began to grow in Antarctica. See Gabriel Bowen, “When the World Turned Cold,” Nature 445, no. 7128 (February 8, 2007): 607–608. From this point on, temperatures worldwide decline, culminating in the ice ages of the last two million years. A recent hypothesis claims that the rise of the Himalayas played a major role in cooling the world. See: E. Irving, “Why Earth Became So Hot 50 Million Years Ago and Why It Then Cooled,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 42 (October 21, 2008): 16061–62.

27. Niles Eldredge, Life Pulse: Episodes from the Story of the Fossil Record (New York: Facts on File, 1987).

28. Jennifer C. McElwain and Surangi W. Punyasena, “Mass Extinction Events and the Plant Fossil Record,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22, no. 10 (October 2007): 548–56.

29. Many mammals became distinctly larger and more diverse after the end-Cretaceous extinction, see: Felisa A. Smith et al., “The Evolution of Maximum Body Size of Terrestrial Mammals,” Science 330, no. 6008 (November 26, 2010): 1216–19.

30. Norman F. Hughes, Paleobiology of Angiosperm Origins (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 36.

31. Karl J. Niklas, Bruce H. Tiffney, and Andrew H. Knoll, “Patterns of Vascular Land Plant Diversification,” Nature 303, no. 5918 (June 16, 1983): 614–16.

32. Storrs L. Olson, “Why so Many Kinds of Passerine Birds?” BioScience 51, no. 4 (April 2001): 268–69. See also: Peter M. Bennett and Ian P. F. Owens, Evolutionary Ecology of Birds (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002).

33. Michael J. Benton and Brent C. Emerson, “How Did Life Become So Diverse? The Dynamics of Diversification According to the Fossil Record and Molecular Phylogenetics,” Paleontology 50, no. 1 (January 2007): 23–40.

34. J. J. Sepkoski, “A Factor Analytic Description of the Phanerozoic Marine Fossil Record,” Paleobiology 7, no. 1 (Winter 1981): 36–53; Andrew M. Bush and Richard J. Bambach, “Did Alpha Diversity Increase during the Phanerozoic? Lifting the Veils of Taphonomic, Latitudinal, and Environmental Biases,” Journal of Geology 112, no. 6 (November 2004): 625–42.

35. John Alroy et al., “Phanerozoic Trends in the Global Diversity of Marine Invertebrates,” Science 321, no. 5885 (July 4, 2008): 97–100.

36. Peter J. Wagner, Mathew A. Rosnik, and Scott Lidgard, “Abundance Distributions Imply Elevated Complexity of Post-Palaeozoic Marine Ecosystems,” Science 314, no. 5803 (November 24, 2006): 1289–92. Also see the commentary by Wolfgang Kiessling in the same issue: 1254–55.

37. For a negative view regarding increased marine biodiversity over geological time, see: Patrick D. Wall et al., “Revisiting Raup, Exploring the Influence of Outcrop Area on Diversity in Light of Modern Sample-Standardization Techniques,” Paleobiology 35, no. 1 (November 2009): 146–47.

38. James S. Crampton et al., “The Ark Was Full! Constant to Declining Cenozoic Shallow Marine Biodiversity on an Isolated Midlatitude Continent,” Paleobiology 32, no. 4 (2006): 509–32.

39. An authoritative and up-to-date overview on land diversity is Michael Benton's “The Origin of Modern Biodiversity on Land,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, no. 1558 (November 27, 2010): 3667–79.

CHAPTER 8: A WORLD OF EVER-INCREASING COMPLEXITY

  1. Eric D. Beinhocker, The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2006), p. 18. I have replaced natural selection for the author's evolution in this quotation; this is a common error. An important book, but the author has little to say about the energy needed to drive further economic growth or its environmental effects.

  2. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 274. A challenging text, but nothing about sustainability.

  3. Steven Strogatz, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order (New York: Hyperion Books, 2003), p. 286.

  4. Daniel W. McShea and Robert H. Brandon discuss their idea of continuing diversification over time in their book Biology's First Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

  5. Mitch Leslie provides a concise review: “On the Origin of Photosynthesis,” Science 323, no. 5919 (March 6, 2009): 1286–87. For a well-written survey of photosynthesis, see Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

  6. This is paraphrased from a lecture by physicist Martin Kamen, as reported on page 125 of Oliver Morton's book Eating the Sun.

  7. For a series of recent technical reviews, see Euan Nisbet et al, eds., “Photosynthetic and Atmospheric Evolution,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, 1504 (August 27, 2008): 2623–801.

  8. Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008), p. 46.

  9. You may prefer to see this grand epic as one created and guided by a creative Deity, and that is fine. The problem for science is that a belief in God's “intelligent design” cannot be tested. This is the fundamental difference between religious belief and scientific practice. The former is based on a tradition of revealed truth; the latter has been constructed from data we find in nature or is revealed by experiment. Religious debates are framed within accepted scripture. Scientific debates are supposed to be based on the latest data derived directly from an analysis of nature. Of course, both traditions are enlivened by arguments regarding the interpretation of scripture or the interpretation of data. For an accessible review of the scientific evidence for evolution, see Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True (New York: Viking, 2009).

10. Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo-Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom (New York: Norton, 2005).

11. Elizabeth Pennisi, “Working the (Gene Count) Numbers: Finally a Firm Answer?” Science 316, no. 5828 (May 25, 2007): 1113.

12. Nessa Carey, Junk DNA: A Journey through the Dark Matter of the Genome (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).

13. For those interested in a mathematical look at the complexity of life, Ricard Solé and Brian Goodwin provide significant insights in their Signs of Life: How Complexity Pervades Biology (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

14. Wallace Arthur, Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), pp. 43, 25.

15. Keiko Sakakibara et al., “KNOX2 Genes Regulate the Haploid-to-Diploid Morphological Transition in Land Plants,” Science 339, no. 6123 (March 1, 2013): 1067–70. See also: William E. Friedman, “One Genome, Two Ontogenies,” Science 339, no. 6123 (March 1, 2013): 1045–46.

16. The rise of Angiosperms has been a major triumph in the history of mutualism, see: E. G. Leigh Jr., “The Evolution of Mutualism,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23, no. 12 (December 2010): 2507–28.

17. The KTR concept and the importance of flowering plants are well summarized by Michael Benton in “The Origins of Modern Biodiversity on Land,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 365, no. 1558 (November 27, 2010): 3667–80. See also: Michael Novacek, Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem—and the Threats that Now Put It at Risk (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). This book includes considerable earth science. For a simpler overview, see my Flowers: How They Changed the World (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).

18. Steven Jay Gould, “Play It Again, Life,” Natural History 95, no. 2 (February 1986): 18–26.

19. Simon Conway Morris, Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (London: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

20. Sakakibara et al., “KNOX2 Genes.” See also: Friedman, “One Genome, Two Ontogenies.”

21. Scott Turner argues that homeostasis is a central governing factor in the history of life; see his The Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

22. T. S. Kemp, “The Concept of Correlated Progression as the Basis of a Model for the Evolutionary Origin of Major Taxa,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274, no. 1618 (July 7, 2007): 1667–73.

23. For a technical review, see: Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).

24. Darwinism suffered many other criticisms over the last century. For a short but insightful overview by a philosopher, see: R. G. Winther, “Systemic Darwinism,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 33 (August 19, 2008): 11833–838.

25. Leigh Van Valen, “A New Evolutionary Law,” Evolutionary Theory 1 (1973): 1–30. But note that the Red Queen Hypothesis has also been used to explain the maintenance of sex; see: G. Bell, The Masterpiece of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982).

26. David M. Raup, Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? (New York: Norton, 1991).

27. For a recent discussion regarding animal camouflage, see: Martin Stevens and Sami Merilaita, “Animal Camouflage: Current Issues and New Perspectives,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, no. 1516 (February 27, 2009): 423–27, and related articles.

28. John T. Bonner, The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

29. For a taste of astrobiology and the argument that we might find life within the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa, see: Marc Kaufman, First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life beyond Earth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).

30. Geerat J. Vermeij, Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).

31. John Warren Huntley and Michal Kowalewski, “Strong Coupling of Predation Intensity and Diversity in the Phanerozoic Fossil Record,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 38 (September 18, 2007): 15006–10.

32. For a short overview, see: John J. Flynn, “Splendid Isolation,” Natural History 118, no. 5 (June 2009): 26–32. A more detailed review is by S. David Webb, “The Great American Biotic Interchange: Patterns and Process,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93, no. 2 (August 2006): 245–57.

33. Paul S. Martin, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Berkeley, CA: University California Press, 2005).

34. Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson, The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).

35. Ted R. Schultz and Sean G. Brady, “Major Evolutionary Transitions in Ant Agriculture,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 14 (April 8, 2008): 5435–40.

36. The concept of “group selection” has been wrongly rejected for more than three decades. See the arguments by David Sloan Wilson in “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology,” Quarterly Review of Biology 82, no. 4 (December 2007): 327–46.

37. Edward O. Wilson, “One Giant Leap: How Insects Achieved Altruism and Colonial Life,” BioScience 58, no. 1 (January 2008): 17–25. See also, William O. H. Hughes et al., “Ancestral Monogamy Shows Kin Selection Is Key to the Evolution of Sociality,” Science 320, no. 5880 (May 30, 2008): 1213–16.

38. Zhe-Xi Luo, “Transformation and Diversification in Early Mammal Evolution,” Nature 450, no. 7172 (December 13, 2007): 1011–19.

39. Robert W. Meredith et al., “Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and End-Cretaceous Extinction on Mammal Diversification,” Science 334, no. 6055 (October 28, 2011): 521–24.

40. Maureen A. O’Leary et al., “The Placental Mammal Ancestor and Post-K-Pg Radiation of Placentals,” Science 339, no. 6120 (February 8, 2013): 662–69.

41. Juliane Kaminski et al., “Word Learning in a Domestic Gog: Evidence for ‘Fast Mapping,’” Science 304, no. 5677 (June 11, 2004): 1682–83.

42. Unfortunately, the large majority of fossils are of marine life, but they also give evidence for increasing diversity over time; see: Steven M. Stanley, “An Analysis of the History of Marine Animal Diversity,” Paleobiology 33, no. S4 (Fall 2007): 1–55.

43. Though biological science has focused on negative and competitive interactions in the history of life, a strong case can be made for positive effects as well. See: Zaal Kikvidze and Ragan M. Callaway, “Ecological Facilitation May Drive Major Evolutionary Transitions,” BioScience 59, no. 5 (May 2009): 399–404.

44. W. Brian Arthur, “On the Evolution of Complexity,” in Complexity: Metaphors, Models, and Reality, ed. G. Cowan, D. Pines, and D. Meltzer, vol. 19 of Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1994), pp. 65–81.

45. Gerald Schönknecht et al., “Gene Transfer from Bacteria and Archae Facilitated Evolution of an Extremophilic Eukaryote,” Science 339, no. 6124 (March 8, 2013): 1207–10.

46. W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology (New York: Free Press, 2009), p. 10. This book is an incisive review of human technology and its elaboration over time.

47. Dirk K. Morr, “Lifting the Fog of Complexity,” Science 343, no. 6169 (January 24, 2014): 382–83.

48. Karen M. Kaphelm et al., “Genomic Signatures of Evolutionary Transitions from Solitary to Group Living,” Science 348, no. 6239 (June 5, 2015): 1139–42. A study of bee species informs our own evolution.

49. Lizzie Wade, “Birth of the Moralizing Gods,” Science 349, no. 6251 (August 28, 2015): 919–22. Large societies required strong moralistic religions.

CHAPTER 9: BIOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY TRIUMPHANT: THE HUMAN MIND

  1. Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 236.

  2. Peter Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 126.

  3. For a detailed review regarding how our biosphere has changed since flowering plants proliferated, see: Michael Novacek, Terra: Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem—and the Threats That Now Put It at Risk (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

  4. Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.108.

  5. Gould even wrote that progress “is a delusion based on social prejudice and psychological hope.” (Stephen J. Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin [New York: Harmony Books, 1996], p.20.) For a short critical review of this book see the Dawkins reference below.

  6. Daniel W. McShea, “Metazoan Complexity and Evolution: Is There a trend?” Evolution 50, no. 2 (April 1996): 489. McShea provides a clear discussion of his concerns and lists a wide array of references.

  7. See: Brendon M. H. Larson, “The Social Resonance of Competitive and Progressive Evolutionary Metaphors,” BioScience 56, no. 12 (December 2006): 997–1004.

  8. Seth Finnegan, Jonathan L. Payne, and Steve C. Wang, “The Red Queen Revisited: Reevaluating the Age Selectivity of Phanerozoic Marine Genus Extinctions,” Paleobiology 34, no. 3 (2008): 318–41; Steve C. Wang and Andrew M. Bush, “Adjusting Global Extinction Rates to Account for Taxonomic Susceptibility,” Paleobiology 34, no. 4 (2008): 434–55.

  9. Wallace Arthur calls this his “lawn with molehills perspective” of life's history. The lawn represents increased species diversity without increasing complexity. The molehills are his occasional advances in complexity. See: Wallace Arthur, Creatures of Accident: The Rise of the Animal Kingdom (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), p. 5.

10. Michael Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 146.

11. Aaron Clauset and Douglas H. Erwin, “The Evolution and Distribution of Species Body Size,” Science 321, no. 5887 (July 18, 2008): 399–401.

12. Jonathan Payne et al., “Two-Phase Increase in the Maximum Size of Life over 3.5 Billion Years Reflects Biological Innovation and Environmental Opportunity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 1 (January 6, 2009): 24–27.

13. Richard Dawkins, “Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress,” chapter 5.4 in A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (New York: Mariner Books, 2004), p. 214; first published as “Human Chauvinism,” Evolution 51, no. 3 (June 1997): 1015–20.

14. Harry Jerison, Evolution of the Brain and Intelligence (New York: Academic Press, 1973).

15. John Allman, Evolving Brains, vol. 68 in Scientific American Library (New York: Freeman, 1999).

16. See: Marcia Ponce de Leon et al., “Neanderthal Brain Size at Birth Provides Insights into the Evolution of Human Life History,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 105, no. 37 (September 16, 2008): 13764–68.

17. A major new discovery is reported by David Lordkipanidze et al., “A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo,” Science 342, no. 6156 (October 18, 2013): 326–31.

18. I'm sure that the “Out-of-Africa” scenario is nowhere near as simple as usually characterized. See, for example: Philipp Gunz et al, “Early Human Diversity Suggests Subdivided Population Structure and a Complex Out-of-Africa Scenario,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 15 (April 14, 2009): 6094–98.

19. G. A. Lyras et al., “The Origin of Homo floresiensis and Its Relation to Evolutionary Processes under Isolation,” Anthropological Science 117, no. 1 (2009): 33–43. For a review, see: Leslie C. Aiello, “Five Years of Homo floresiensis,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 142, no. 2 (June 2010): 167–79.

20. Christopher Heesy, “Seeing in Stereo: The Ecology and Evolution of Primate Binocular Vision and Stereopsis,” Evolutionary Anthropology 18, no. 1 (January/February 2009): 21–35.

21. R. W. Sussman, “Primate Origins and the Evolution of Angiosperms,” American Journal of Primatology 23, no. 4 (1991): 209–23. Also: Robert W. Sussman, “How Primates Invented the Rainforest and Vice Versa,” in Creatures of the Dark: The Nocturnal Prosimians, ed. L. Alterman et al. (New York, Plenum Press, 1995), pp. 1–9; Dario Maestripieri, Machavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macques and Humans Have Conquered the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 159.

22. Robert Martin, How We Do It: The Evolution and Future of Human Reproduction (New York: Basic Books, 2013), p.124. An excellent evolutionary overview.

23. Donald Johanson and B. Edgar, From Lucy to Language (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). See also: Tim D. White et al., “Ardipithecus ramidus and the Paleobiology of Early Hominids,” Science 326, no. 5949 (October 2, 2009): 64. Part of a special issue.

24. Lucy had a foot very much like the one we walk on; see: Carol V. Ward, William H. Kimbel, and Donald C. Johanson, “Complete Fourth Metatarsal and Arches in the Foot of Australopithecus afarensis,” Science 331, no. 6018 (February 11, 2011): 750–53.

25. “The human foot is our most distinctive adaptation,” declare Robin H. Crompton and Todd C. Pataky in a short review: “Stepping Out,” Science 323, no. 5918 (February 27, 2009): 1174–75.

26. Alan Walker, “The Strength of Great Apes and the Speed of Humans,” Current Anthropology 50, no. 2 (April 2009): 229–34.

27. A few relevant references are: M. C. Corballis, “The Gestural Origin of Language,” American Scientist 87, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 138–45; Marc Hauser and T. Bever, “A Biolinguistic Agenda,” Science 322, no. 5904 (November 14, 2008): 1057–59; Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

28. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York, Viking. 2010), p. 26.

29. How brains achieve cognition and perception is being examined using new mathematical and neural models. See: Misha Rabinovich, Ramon Huerta, and Giles Laurent, “Transient Dynamics for Neural Processing,” Science 321, no. 5885 (July 4, 2008): 48–50.

30. For a broader perspective, see: Robert D. Martin, “The Evolution of Human Reproduction: A Primatological Perspective,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 134, no. S45 (2007): 59–84.

31. Ann Gibbons, “The Birth of Childhood,” Science 322, no. 5904 (November 14, 2008): 1040–43.

32. Jean-Jacques Hublin, “The Prehistory of Compassion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 16 (April 21, 2009): 6429–30.

33. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Both a mother and astute scientist, Hrdy has written several insightful books on the evolution and sociology of mothering.

34. David P. Barash, Natural Selections: Selfish Altruists, Honest Liars and Other Realities of Evolution (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2008), p. 62.

35. J. M. Burkart, S. B. Hrdy, and C. P. Van Schak, “Cooperative Breeding and Human Cognitive Evolution,” Evolutionary Anthropology 18, no. 5 (September/October 2009): 175–86. For a short review, see: Elizabeth Pennisi, “On the Origin of Cooperation,” Science 325, no. 5945 (September 4, 2009): 1196–99.

36. Richard Potts, Humanity's Descent: The Consequences of Ecological Instability (New York: Wm. Morrow, 1996).

37. David Berreby, Us and Them: The Science of Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p.327. Richly documented, this is an important text. Politically correct on occasion, Berreby never relates “race” to geography and claims, incorrectly, that DNA studies do not support the concept.

38. For a discussion regarding the origins of human conflict, see: Laurent Lehmann and Marcus W. Feldman, “War and the Evolution of Belligerence and Bravery,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275, no. 1653 (December 22, 2008): 2877–85.

39. The reluctance of humanists to address our warlike and nasty behavior is surely a reflection of intellectual fashion. One of the few recent studies on human nastiness is Kathleen Taylor's Cruelty: Human Evil and the Human Brain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

40. Y. Fernández-Jalvo et al., “Evidence of Early Cannibalism,” Science 271, no. 5247 (January 19, 1996): 277–78. These finds are similar to earlier work in southern France; see: P. Villa et al., “Cannibalism in the Neolithic,” Science 233, no. 4762 (July 25,1986): 431–37. For a short review, see: Tim D. White, “Once Were Cannibals,” Scientific American 284, no. 1 (January 2001): 58–65.

41. E. O. Wilson, quoted by Amanda Ruggeri in U.S. News and World Report December 15, 2008, p. 16.

42. Richard D. Alexander, “The Evolution of Social Behavior,” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 5 (1974): 325–83; Richard D. Alexander, The Biology of Moral Systems (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter, 1987).

43. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sexual Selection, second revised ed. (New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1896), p.132.

44. Samuel Bowles, “Conflict: Altruism's Midwife,” Nature 456, no. 7220 (November 20, 2008): 326. Charles Darwin expressed very similar views, as cited in the previous reference.

45. Samuel Bowles, “Did Warfare among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors?” Science 324, no. 5932 (June 5, 2009): 1293–98. See also: David Berreby, Us and Them: the Science of Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

46. Actually, human brain expansion was already well underway before the sapiens-neanderthal split—during the time of Homo erectus, 1.8 mya. See: Scott W. Simpson et al, “A Female Homo erectus Pelvis from Gona, Ethiopia,” Science 322, no. 5904 (November 14, 2008): 1089–92.

47. Francis Thackeray, in a lecture at Field Museum, April 2009. See also: Juli G. Pausas and Jon E. Keeley, “A Burning Story: The Role of Fire in the History of Life,” BioScience 59, no. 7 (July/August 2009): 593–601.

48. For more in this regard, see: Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (New York: Basic Books, 2009).

49. For a fine review of human energy use, see: Alfred W. Crosby, Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).

50. Hillard S. Kaplan, Paul L. Hooper, and Michael Gurven, “The Evolutionary and Ecological Roots of Human Social Organization,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, no. 1533 (November 12, 2009): 3289–99.

51. For a fine discussion of gender differences and how they can be ameliorated, see: Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps—And What We Can Do About It (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

52. Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap between Us and Them (New York: Penguin Press, 2013). Another significant text is: Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012).

53. Erik Trinkhaus, “European Early Modern Humans and the Fate of the Neanderthals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 18 (May 1, 2007): 7367–72.

54. Richard E. Green et al., “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome,” Science 328, no. 5979 (May 7, 2010): 710–22.

55. Thomas Wynn, “Hafted Spears and the Archaeology of Mind,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 24 (June 16, 2009): 9544–45; Lyn Wadly, Tamaryn Hodgskiss, and Michael Grant, “Implications for Complex Cognition from the Hafting of Tools with Compound Adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South Africa,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, no. 24 (June 16, 2009):9590–94. The earliest dates for stone spear points are close to 500,000 years ago: Jayne Wilkins et al., “Evidence for Early Hafted Hunting Technology,” Science 338, no. 6109 (November 16, 2012): 942–46.

56. Kenny Smith et al, “Introduction: Cultural Transmission and the Evolution of Human Behavior,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363, no. 1509 (November 12, 2008): 3471. An introduction to a special issue of ten papers, this article is, in part, an effort to counter the claims of “evolutionary psychology” with cultural dynamics. Seems to me that both approaches are valid and cannot really be disentangled.

57. Actually something like Lamarckian evolution (epigenetics), where experience changes heredity, is found in bacterial grade organisms. Epigenetics is also a current focus of research in higher, eukaryotic organisms, like ourselves.

58. Ludwig Huber et al, “The Evolution of Imitation: What Do the Capacities of Non-Human Animal Tell Us about the Mechanisms of Imitation?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364, no. 1528 (August 27, 2009): 2293–98.

59. Ignore those who declare that climate change or an asteroid impact wiped out much of the megafauna of North America 11,000 years ago. Instead, read: Paul S. Martin, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005), but ignore “rewilding.”

CHAPTER 10: EVER MORE COMPLEXITY: HUMAN CULTURAL ADVANCE

  1. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (New York: Basic Books, 2007), p. 15.

  2. Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008), p. 240.

  3. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), p. 58.

  4. Anthropologists often refer to this dramatic innovation as the Neolithic Revolution. For a good review, see: Bruce D. Smith, The Emergence of Agriculture (New York: Scientific American Library, 1995). For more recent technical views, see: Tim Denham, Jose Iriarte, and Luc Vrydaghs, eds. Rethinking Agriculture: Archaeological and Ethnoarcaeological Perspectives (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007).

  5. Some think that it was the ending of the ice age itself that helped initiate agriculture; see, for example: Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: Harper, Collins Publisher, 2008), p. 301.

  6. Geerat J. Vermeij, “Escalation and Its Role in Jurassic Biotic History,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology 263, no. 1–2 (June 13, 2008): 3.

  7. Jonathan A Foley et al., “Our Share of the Planetary Pie,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 31 (July 31, 2007): 12585–86.

  8. For a fine review of trading in human history, see: William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008).

  9. Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff, “The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality,” Science 322, no. 5898 (October 3, 2008): 58–62.

10. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). A fine overview, but there is no suggestion that iron and steel technology may have been a uniquely Middle Eastern innovation.

11. Keith Parsons, It Started with Copernicus: Vital Questions about Science (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2014), p. 197.

12. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). By developing a new legal system, separate from religious dictates, Europe set itself free in a way that other societies had not.

13. Patrick Alitt, A Climate of Crisis. America in the Age of Environmentalism (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), p. 10.

14. “The price of firewood in Britain rose 700% between 1500 and 1630.” (Alfred W. Crosby, Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy [New York: W. W. Norton, 2006], p. 69.)

15. For a fine review of energy utilization in both the natural and human world, see: Vaclav Smil, Energy in Nature and Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

CHAPTER 11: A FOUR-BILLION-YEAR EPIC

  1. Neil Shubin gives a fine account of the evidence found within our own bodies that attests to our long evolutionary ancestry, see: Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008).

  2. Franklin M. Harold, In Search of Cell History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), p.75. A technical but masterful review of how cells may have arisen.

  3. Christian de Duve discusses these ideas with clarity and depth in Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative (New York: Basic Books, 1995).

  4. For a detailed and well-written survey of how we have come to understand photosynthesis, as well as its effect on the biosphere over time, see: Oliver Morton, Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

  5. We reviewed the importance of mitochondria in chapter 2, and how endosymbiosis created a new platform for bio-complexity.

  6. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: HarperCollins, 2015), pp. 3–39. An insightful analysis!

  7. Martin A. Nowak, Super Cooperators: Altruism, Evolution and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed (New York: Free Press, 2011), p. xiv.

  8. Paul Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature: The Future of American Environmentalism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. xiv. For more views on our culture's representations of “nature,” see: William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995).

  9. Gaia Vince, Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of a Planet We Made (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014), p. 67. Travelling around the world, the author has put together a very informative book. However, statements like “Humans have the power to heat the planet further or cool it right down” undermine her optimistic narrative.

CHAPTER 12: TRILLIONS OF TRANSISTORS: AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

  1. Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012), p. 13.

  2. Paul K. Conkin, The State of the Earth: Environmental Challenges on the Road to 2100 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), p. 281.

  3. W. Brian Arthur, The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves (New York: Free Press, 2009), p. 10. This book is a brilliant analysis of technology and its elaboration over time. Unfortunately, the author has nothing to say regarding how technology might threaten our biosphere.

  4. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 187. A magisterial overview you ought to read, though energy consumption and resource diminution simply aren't there.

  5. Ibid., p. 143. The idea that our genes might be adapting to our modern age ignores the fact that really smart and successful people have relatively low birthing rates.

  6. Many of my recent numbers regarding population growth are from Wikipedia and from a special section regarding population in Science 333, no. 6042 (July 29, 2011): 529–86.

  7. Robert B. Laughlin, Powering the Future: How We Will (Eventually) Solve the Energy Crisis and Fuel the Civilization of Tomorrow (New York: Basic Books, 2011). For a somewhat different perspective, see: Scott L. Montgomery, The Powers That Be: Global Energy in the Twenty-First Century and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

  8. Lionel Tiger, Optimism: The Biology of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 15, 21.

  9. Tali Sharot, The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011), p. 22.

10. Julian Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995).

11. Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, first rev. ed. (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2006). I cite this book because it reflects journalism's inattention to the population explosion.

12. Eric Roston, The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat (New York: Walker and Co., 2008), p. 188.

13. Ben J. Wattenberg, “The Population Explosion Is Over,” New York Times Magazine, 23 November 1997: 60–63.

14. Alexander Skutch, Life Ascending (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1985), p. 197.

15. Peter Gill, Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 123.

16. The two thick but demography-deficient books are Ross Garnaut, The Garnaut Climate Change Review (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and Nicholas Stern, The Economics of Climate Change (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

17. Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principal of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society (London: J. Johnson, 1798).

18. Sabrina Tavernise, “Survey of Pakistan's Young Predicts ‘Disaster’ if Their Needs Aren't Addressed,” New York Times, International, November 22, 2009, p. 15.

19. Ross Gelbspan, Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis and What We Can Do to Avert the Disaster (New York: Basic Books, 2004), p.70.

20. Mark Van Putten, “How to Save a Planet: A Users Guide,” BioScience 58, no. 9 (October 2008): 874–79.

21. David E. Bloom, “7 Billion and Counting,” Science 333, no. 6042 (July 29, 2011): 562–69. This issue features a special section on population.

22. V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng, “On Avoiding Dangerous Anthropogenic Interference with the Climate System: Formidable Challenges Ahead,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, no. 38 (September 23, 2008): 14245–50.

23. Peter Ward, The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008). Ward's thesis, I fear, is correct, though I disagree with a number of his opinions.

24. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York: Viking, 2005). Vaclav Smil dismisses Diamond's thesis, even citing a paper claiming that Easter Island's demise was due to an invasion of rats, followed by the influx of Western diseases. I see Smil's attitude as another example of our eagerness to deny negative human agency. See reference 29, below.

25. Simon A. Levin, “Self-Organization and the Emergence of Complexity in Ecological Systems,” BioScience 55, no. 12 (December 2005): 1075–79.

26. Deborah MacKenzie, “What Price More Food?” New Scientist, 2660 (June 14, 2008): 28–33.

27. Peter Dauvergne, The Shadows of Consumption: Consequences for the Global Environment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), p. 5.

28. Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), p.139. This is an excellent overview, which remains optimistic despite awesome obstacles.

29. Vaclav Smil, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Smil has published a number of highly informative books on global issues.

30. Brahma Chellaney, Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2013).

31. For a thorough account of how we got to the place we are and why population growth is so great a problem, see: Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008).

32. Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), p. 186. Unfortunately, more and more growth is utterly unsustainable, which explains why I am so pessimistic about our technological civilization's future: core human values must change, but that seems unlikely.

33. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), pp. 27, 125.

34. Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2005).

35. Laurence C. Smith, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (New York: Dutton, 2010), p. 261. This book surveys many ways in which we impact our planet.

36. Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), p. 187. See also her more recent volume: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt, 2014).

37. Thomas Merton, Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (New York: Maryknoll, 2004), p. 276.

38. Daniel Alpert, The Age of Oversupply: Overcoming the Greatest Challenge to the Global Economy (New York: Penguin Publishers, 2013), p. 200.

39. The “length of life of industrial societies” was the last factor in Frank Drake's famous equation, estimating how many radio-broadcasting civilizations might exist in our Milky Way Galaxy. See the final chapter in my book, Perfect Planet, Clever Species: How Unique Are We? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003).

40. Philip Smith and Nicolas Howe, Climate Change as Social Drama: Global Warming in the Public Sphere (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 3. This book examines many aspects of human societies, which will, I believe, make any concerted solutions unlikely.

41. Roger V. Short, “Population Growth in Retrospect and Prospect,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 164, no. 1532 (October 27, 2009): 2971.

42. Alan Weisman, Countdown: Our Last Best Hope for a Future on Earth? (New York: Little, Brown, 2013), p. 306. Having visited many societies around the globe, Weisman reports on how our species is affecting the planet: a good read!