The Speciation and Biogeography of Birds

Book Description

This book should be of value to anyone interested in bird evolution and taxonomy, biogeography, distributional history, dispersal and migration patterns. It provides an up-to-date synthesis of current knowledge on species formation, and the factors influencing current distribution patterns. It draws heavily on new information on Earth history, including past glacial and other climatic changes, on new developments in molecular biology and palaeontology, and on recent studies of bird distribution and migration patterns, to produce a coherent account of the factors that have influenced bird species diversity and distribution patterns worldwide.

Received the Best Bird Book of the Year award for 2004 from British Birds magazine.

* Winner of the British Birds/British Trust for Ornithology, Bird Book of the Year 2004!
* The first book to deal comprehensively with bird speciation and biogeography
* Up-to-date synthesis of new information
* Clearly written
* No previous book covers the same ground
* Many maps and diagrams
* Makes difficult and widely scattered information accessible and easily understood
* A sound base for future research
* Takes full account of recent developments in molecular biology

The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, and Biogeography

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The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, and Biogeography
Ernst Mayr , and Jared Diamond
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195141709

Book Description

Speciation is the process by which co-existing daughter species evolve from one ancestral species - e.g., humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas arising from a common ancestor around 5,000,000 years ago. However, many questions about speciation remain controversial. The Birds of Northern Melanesia provides by far the most comprehensive study yet available of a rich fauna, composed of the 195 breeding land and fresh-water bird species of the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes east of New Guinea. This avifauna offers decisive advantages for understanding speciation, and includes famous examples of geographic variation discussed in textbooks of evolutionary biology. The book results from 30 years of collaboration between the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and the ecologist Jared Diamond. It shows how Northern Melanesian bird distributions provide snapshots of all stages in speciation, from the earliest (widely distributed species without geographic variation) to the last (closely related, reproductively isolated species occurring sympatrically and segregating ecologically). The presentation emphasizes the wide diversity of speciation outcomes, steering a middle course between one-model-fits-all simplification and ungeneralizable species accounts. Questions illuminated include why some species are much more prone to speciate than others, why some water barriers are much more effective at promoting speciation than others, and whether hypothesized taxon cycles, faunal dominance, and legacies of Pleistocene land bridges are real. These years of study have resulted in a huge database, complete with distributions of all 195 species on 76 islands, together with their taxonomy, colonization routes, ecological attributes, abundance, and overwater dispersal. Color plates depict 88 species and allospecies, many of which have never been seen before. For students of speciation, Northern Melanesian birds now constitute a model system against which other biotas can be compared. For population biologists interested in other problems besides speciation, this rich database can now be mined for insights.

Speciation specifics. (Scientists Bookshelf).: An article from: American Scientist

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Speciation specifics. (Scientists Bookshelf).: An article from: American Scientist

Manufacturer: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, and Biogeography
Ernst Mayr; Jared Diamond
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKNLWK

Book Description

This volume commemorates the 50th anniversary of the appearance in Volume 4 in 1948 of Dr. Jeffries Wyman's famous paper in which he "laid down" the foundations of linkage thermodynamics. Experts in this area contribute articles on the state-of-the-art of this important field and on new developments of the original theory. Among the topics covered in this volume are electrostatic contributions to molecular free energies in solution; site-specific analysis of mutational effects in proteins; allosteric transitions of the acetylcholine receptor; and deciphering the molecular code of hemoglobin allostery.

Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 51: Linkage Thermodynamics of Macromolecular Interactions (Advances in Protein Chemistry)

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Advances in Protein Chemistry, Volume 51: Linkage Thermodynamics of Macromolecular Interactions (Advances in Protein Chemistry)
Frederic M. Richards
Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

This is the tenth volume in Avner Friedman's collection of Mathematics in Industrial Problems. These books aim to foster interaction between industry and mathematics at the "grass roots" level of specific problems. The problems presented in this book arise from models developed by industrial scientists engaged in research and development of new or improved products. The author's sources are affiliated with a variety of industrial enterprises including Motorola, IBM, Ford Motor Company, Eastman Kodak, 3M, AT&T Labs, Honeywell, and Schlumberger-Doll Research. The topics explored in this volume include semiconductor devices and microaccelerometers, computational aeroacoustics, coating flows, coalescence, electrorheological fluids, mass transport in particle- loaded beds, metal cutting processes, network traffic analysis, risk management, micromagnetics, and cooling systems. Open problems and references to mathematical literature are incorporated into most of the chapters. The final chapter contains solutions to problems raised in previous parts of the series, Mathematics in Industrial Problems, published in the IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications.

Customer Reviews:

O Times, O Customs.......2007-08-08

An excellent book. I was really only interested in The Power of Sympathy because of its billing as the first American novel. I had never heard of "The Coquette," a separate novel included in the Penguin Classic version. It turned out that The Coquette was the far more interesting of the two...much better writing and much better insight into the thinking of the times on the subjects of the role of women in the new United States and of the existence and the consequences of seduction. The actions of women have changed immeasurably since that time but the thinking remains remarkably the same.

(Power = 2 stars) + (Coquette = 3)/2 = 2.5.......2003-03-30

Brown's The Power of Sympathy is a strange set of letters that form a strange world where sentimentality is outrageously rampant and its characters drawn in flat, lifeless tones. The main story (although that's a hard definition to give to anything in this jumble) is that of Harriot and Harrington, who fall in love. The correspondence that makes up the novel is mainly between Harrington and his friend Worthy - Harriot has one of the smallest roles in the story. Other seduction stories are told, all of them a little ridiculous. In one instance, a woman is tricked into a man's carriage, and her faithful, loving fiance immediately despairs and drowns himself in the river. Other men of the village track down the carriage and bring her back, but the man who apparantly loved her gave up all hope when she lost her innocence. What a bleak tale. This novel of morality is actually very shallow, enforcing and reinforcing one idea only: that of the sin of being seduced or seducing. Of course, Brown wrote for a female audience, so it can perhaps be assumed that the only sin they really needed to worry about was losing their virtue. And of the ten main characters in all the seduction stories in Sympathy (there are five separate seductions, I think), 6 do not survive to the end. According to Brown, the wages of sin are most definitely death.
These characters are either so boring or so over the top emotional that I found it hard to draw a good lesson from any of it. At the end, when tragedy has struck, Harrinton sends a series of distraut letters to Worthy, each one saying, in effect, "I'm going to kill myself." Worthy's somewhat delayed response is a dismal attempt to save the life of his friend. "Our prison grows familiar," Worthy tells Harrinton, "there is not one but finds his partiality for his dungeon increase...how few are they who are hardy enough to break their prison?" That's not a very good attempt to keep a grieving man from taking his life, and that last part almost seems like Worthy is egging Harrington on, saying, "c'mon, chicken, I bet you WON'T kill yourself, you aren't hardy enough!"

The Coquette - this is a far more interesting tale, starting out with a sort of anti-heroine in Eliza Wharton. She does enjoy society, and seems to have her heart in the right place, but is easily and repeatedly misled by the novel's rake, one Major Sanford. The story gets muddled as it tries to fictionalize a true account of Elizabeth Whitman, who bore an illegitimate child and died shortly after. The introduction by Carla Mulford gives us some information on the real woman, and it seems pretty clear that Whitman fully encouraged the love affair that led to her ultimate ruin. Foster attempts to make Eliza Wharton into a fully sympathetic character - Wharton denies to everyone that Sanford wishes ill for her, and seems never to notice (until too late) that he does not have good intentions. The effort to reconcile the real Whitman, 37 and completely in control of her (mis)conduct with the completely guileless woman who elicits pity from even the hardest heart does not quite work, and leaves a mysterious chasm.
All of Eliza's friends, her mother, her rejected ex-fiance, warn her about the intentions of Sanford. The fact that Eliza still believes he is a good man means that she is either completely oblivious, or pretending not to know his true colors so that she has an excuse to remain in his company. I think that Foster probably did not intend the second character to come across, but I think THAT Eliza would have been more compelling than the one we are given. What an interesting tale that would have been...sort of another Shamela. But, especially when compared to Brown's "Sympathy," "The Coquette" is really an interesting morality tale. Eliza, before descending into pure imbecility, makes a lot of compelling arguments for her freedom and her desire to remain as she was in society, which her society would not tolerate.

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Early American woman writer

Coquettry in Early America

Women show power and weakness in Revolutionary America

The Coquette (Oxford Paperbacks)
Hannah W. Foster
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195042395

Book Description

The Coquette tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Written as a series of letters--between the heroine and her friends and lovers--it describes her long, tortuous courtship by two men, neither of whom perfectly suits her. Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) wavers between Major Sanford, a charming but insincere man, and the Reverend Boyer, a bore who wants to marry her. When, in her mid-30s, Wharton finds herself suddenly abandoned when both men marry other women, she willfully enters into an adulterous relationship with Sanford and becomes pregnant. Alone and dejected, she dies in childbirth at a roadside inn. Eliza Wharton, whose real-life counterpart was distantly related to Hannah Foster's husband, was one of the first women in American fiction to emerge as a real person facing a dilemma in her life. In her Introduction, Davidson discusses the parallels between Elizabeth Whitman and the fictional Eliza Wharton. She shows the limitations placed on women in the 18th century and the attempts of one woman to rebel against those limitations.

Customer Reviews:

Early American woman writer.......2006-09-14

one of the best-selling american novels of the 18th century, Written as a series of letters between friends and lovers.

Coquettry in Early America.......2002-06-07

Hannah Foster's 1797 novel, "The Coquette," seems, at first glance, like an early American ripoff of such famous 18th century British novels like Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" or "Clarissa," and indeed it contains references and allusions to both, and to a wealth of other 18th century British fiction. In its historical context, though, "The Coquette" acquires added significance and cultural depth, as a response to the guiding philsophies and political stances of the new American nation.

"The Coquette" begins with death and a rebirth. The main character, your title coquette, if you will, Eliza Wharton, rejoices in her freedom from the structure of her family's controls. Her betrothed, an elderly man named Haly, has just died, releasing Eliza from an unloving engagement. Free now to indulge her native sprightliness and sociability, Eliza goes to New Haven, Connecticut, to spend some time with and in the society of her married friend, Mrs. Richman. In New Haven, Eliza, already in her late 20's-early 30's, is the darling of society, where her cultivated mind, and liberal temperament are given free reign. Here, she is wooed by two men, Reverend Boyer, about to come into a residency in a fashionable parish, and Major Sanford, widely known as a libertine, but permitted into polite society because of his rank and apparent wealth. The action of the novel concerns Eliza's choice between the two.

The choice, simple as it may seem, is complicated by its inflections by way of the political and social culture of the early American republic. In such contexts, Eliza, with the help and advice of her confidants, Mrs. Richman, Lucy Freeman, Julia Granby, and her own mother, must try to negotiate newly-found freedom and independence within the gendered constraints of virtue and propriety. This is the philosophical and political crux of the novel - Foster asks the reader throughout the novel how individual freedoms are to be understood within a newly centralized federal government.

Alongside the common romance-epistolary tropes of seduction and violation, we read "The Coquette" with an eye toward agricultural and commercial expansion. In a novel where seemingly no one works to earn a living, we must extrapolate the typically early American notions of self-making and industrious citizenry through the characters' discussions of personal and social identity, as well as in the way that people create themselves through personal writings. This is evinced, of course, most obviously in early America by folks like Benjamin Franklin in his "Autobiography" and Thomas Jefferson in his "Notes on the State of Virginia".

Foster's "The Coquette" isn't the best novel. Shoot, in terms of artistry, it's really not very good at all. But as a barometer of one woman's opinions on the early American nation, and the place of women within it, it is an invaluable fictional resource.

Women show power and weakness in Revolutionary America.......1999-09-29

Hannah Foster Webster uses letters to tell a story of Eliza and her lovers. Although this is an ingenious method, it makes the reading so complex.Webster also explores the power that women have in Revolutionary America. It is a good portrayal of the exception. In a time when most women are ruled by their father or husband, Eliza and her mother are both independent. The most striking detail of the book is that Eliza is actually "past her prime" in terms of that era. She is 37 years old; many women would have been married at 16. Altogether this book was a good and quick read and I would recommend it to those who like history or women's studies.

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The Power of Sympathy and The Coquette
William Hill Brown / Mrs. Hannah Foster
Manufacturer: College and University Press Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IUC1FE

The power of sympathy: The coquette, (The Masterworks of literature series)

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The power of sympathy: The coquette, (The Masterworks of literature series)
William Hill Brown
Manufacturer: College & University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0006C0IGS

The Case of the Cautious Coquette (A Perry Mason Mystery, #1009)

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The Case of the Cautious Coquette (A Perry Mason Mystery, #1009)
Earl Stanley Gardner
Manufacturer: Pocket Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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The Case of the Deadly Toy (Perry Mason Mystery)

ASIN: B000H09X6A

The case of the cautious coquette: The case of the crimson kiss ; The case of the crying swallow

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The case of the cautious coquette: The case of the crimson kiss ; The case of the crying swallow
Erle Stanley Gardner
Manufacturer: W. Morrow
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: B0007DSFQ6

The Coquette: The History of Eliza Wharton

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The Coquette: The History of Eliza Wharton
Hannah Webster Foster
Manufacturer: BiblioBazaar
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America

ASIN: 1426460570
Release Date: 2006-12-02

Book Description

The melancholy, the gloom, the condolence which surrounded me for a month after the death of Mr. Haly had depressed my spirits, and palled every enjoyment of life. Mr. Haly was a man of worth—a man of real and substantial merit. He is, therefore, deeply and justly regretted by his friends.

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The Case of the Cautious Coquette

Manufacturer: Pocket Books, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HW67CQ

The Acting Edition of coquette- a Play in Three Acts

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The Acting Edition of coquette- a Play in Three Acts
George and Ann Preston Bridges Abbott
Manufacturer: Samuel French
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K08OYO

The beautiful coquette;: Or, The love that won her

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The beautiful coquette;: Or, The love that won her
Laura Jean Libbey
Manufacturer: N.L. Munro
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00087ASZW

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