文档介绍：This page intentionally left blank
Modular Evolution
How Natural Selection Produces plexity
Natural selection is more than the survival of the fittest: it is a
force engendering higher plexity. Presenting a new
explanation for the tendency of life to e plex
through evolution, this book offers an introduction to the key
debates in evolutionary theory, including the role of genes and
sex in evolution, the adaptive reasons for senescence and death
and the origin of neural information. The author argues that
plexity increased through the process of ‘modularity
transfer’: modular phenotypes (proteins, somatic cells, learned
behaviours) evolved into new modular information carriers
(regulatory proteins, neural cells, words), giving rise to new
information systems and higher levels of anisation.
Modular Evolution makes sense of the unique place of humans
in evolution, both as the pinnacle of plexity and as
inventors of non-biological evolution.
lu c i o vinicius is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for
Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, UK. He has published
articles in various fields including life history evolution,Drosophila
ics, brain evolution and human growth.
Modular
Evolution
How Natural Selection
Produces Biological
Complexity
l u c i o vinicius
Leverhulme Centre for Human
Evolutionary Studies, Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
Information on this title: 0521429641
© L. Vinicius Castilho 2010
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the
provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part
may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First publis