Evolutionary Paleobiology of Behavior and Coevolution

By A.J. Boucot

This book is the culmination of many years of research by a scientist renowned for his work in this field. It contains a compilation of the data dealing with the known stratigraphic ranges of varied behaviors, chiefly animal with a few plant and fungal, and coevolved relations. A significant part of the data consists of frozen behavior'', i.e. those in which an organism has been preserved while actually doing'' something, as contrasted with the interpretations of behavior of an organism deduced from functional morphology, important as the latter may be. coevolved relations appear infrequently, following which there is relative fixity of the relation, i.e., two rates of evolution, very rapid and essentially zero. This conclusion complies well with the author's prior conclusion that community evolution followed the same rate pattern. In fact, communities are regarded here, as in large part, expressions of both behavior and coevolved relations, rather than as random aggregates controlled almost wholly by varied, unrelated physical parameters tracked by organisms, i.e., the concept that communities have no biologic reality, being merely statistical abstractions. drawings. It will be of interest to ethologists, evolutionists, parasitologists, paleontologists, and palaeobiologists at research and post-graduate levels.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0444880348
• ISBN13: 9780444880345
• Release Date: June 1990
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Length: 725 Pages
• Weight: 2.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.5" x 1.5" x 8.0"