Understanding Reproduction

Giuseppe Fusco is Associate Professor of Zoology at the Department of Biology of the University of Padova. His research is in the area of evolutionary biology, with a focus on the variation produced in each generation through reproduction and development, the 'raw material' on which natural selection and other mechanisms of evolutionary change operate. He is editor of the volumes Evolving Pathways: Key Themes in Evolutionary Developmental Biology (2008), From Polyphenism to Complex Metazoan Life Cycles (2010), Arthropod Biology and Evolution: Molecules, Development, Morphology (2013), Perspectives on Evolutionary and Developmental Biology (2019) and author, with Alessandro Minelli, of The Biology of Reproduction (2019). Alessandro Minelli was Professor of Zoology at the University of Padova until his retirement in 2011. He previously served as the Speciality Chief Editor for evolutionary developmental biology for the journal, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He was previously Vice-President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. Having studied animals for the majority of his career, on retirement he decided to study plant evolutionary development. He is the author of Biological Systematics (1993), The Development of Animal Form (2003), Forms of Becoming (2009), Perspectives in Animal Phylogeny and Evolution (2009), Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology (2018), The Biology of Reproduction (2019, with Giuseppe Fusco), and Understanding Development (2021).

'Fusco and Minelli provide a very clear and accessible overview of the strange and wonderful diversity of reproductive strategies and mechanisms in animals, plants and other organisms. They explain key concepts, define important terms, and place reproductive modes within an ecological and evolutionary context. This book will be a useful reference for biologists, students and even curious non-specialists.' Russell Bonduriansky, University of New South Wales, Australia

• 1. Individuals and Reproduction; 2. Reproduction in the Life Cycle; 3. Reproduction Without Sex; 4. Reproduction with Sex; 5. Two-Parent Sexual Reproduction; 6. One-Parent (or Nearly so) Sexual Reproduction; 7. Development of Sexual Traits; 8. Widening the View: Reproductive Strategies; Concluding Remarks: Difficult Boundaries.