Jonathan Silvertown – författare

For all the "selfishness" of genes, they team up to survive. Is the history of life in fact a story of cooperation?Amid the violence and brutality that dominates the news, it's hard to think of ourselves as team players. But cooperation, Jonathan Silvertown argues, is a fundamental part of our make-up, and deeply woven into the whole four-billion-year history of life. Starting with human society, Silvertown digs deeper, to show how cooperation is key to the cells forming our organs, to symbiosis between organisms, to genes that band together, to the dawn of life itself. Cooperation has enabled life to thrive and become complex. Without it, life would never have begun.

What do eggs, flour, and milk have in common? They form the basis of waffles, of course, but these staples of breakfast bounty also share an evolutionary function: eggs, seeds (from which we derive flour by grinding), and milk have each evolved to nourish offspring. Indeed, ponder the genesis of your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and you'll soon realize that everything we eat and drink has an evolutionary history. In Dinner with Darwin, join Jonathan Silvertown for a multicourse meal of evolutionary gastronomy, a tantalizing tour of human taste that helps us to understand the origins of our diets and the foods that have been central to them for millennia from spices to spirits. A delectable concoction of coevolution and cookery, gut microbiomes and microherbs, and both the chicken and its egg, Dinner with Darwin reveals that our shopping lists, recipe cards, and restaurant menus don't just contain the ingredients for culinary delight. They also tell a fascinating story about natural selection and its influence on our plates and palates.Digging deeper, Silvertown's repast includes entrees into GMOs and hybrids and looks at the science of our sensory interactions with foods and cooking the sights, aromas, and tastes we experience in our kitchens and dining rooms. As is the wont of any true chef, Silvertown packs his menu with eclectic components, dishing on everything from Charles Darwin's intestinal maladies to taste bud anatomy and turducken. Our evolutionary relationship with food and drink stretches from the days of cooking cave dwellers to contemporary creperies and beyond, and Dinner with Darwin serves up scintillating insight into the entire, awesome span. This feast of soup, science, and human society is one to savor. With a wit as dry as a fine pinot noir and a cache of evolutionary knowledge as vast as the most discerning connoisseur's wine cellar, Silvertown whets our appetites and leaves us hungry for more.

Jonathan Silvertown here explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary novelties - and exotic plant life - have earned it the sobriquet "the Galapagos of botany." Along the way, Silvertown looks closely at the evolution of plant diversity in these locales and explains why such variety persists in light of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes. In novel and useful ways, he also investigates the current state of plant diversity on the planet to show the ever-challenging threats posed by invasive species and humans.This paperback edition will include an entirely new chapter on the astonishing diversity of plant life in the Western Cape of South Africa that focuses on fynbos, a vegetation endemic to the Cape.Bringing the secret life of plants into more colorful and vivid focus than ever before, "Demons in Eden" is an empathic and impassioned exploration of modern plant ecology that unlocks evolutionary mysteries of the natural world.

The story of seeds, in a nutshell, is a tale of evolution. With "An Orchard Invisible", Jonathan Silvertown presents the oft-ignored seed with the natural history it deserves, one nearly as varied and surprising as the earth's flora itself. In a clear and engaging style, he delves into the science of seeds: How and why do some lie dormant for years on end? How did seeds evolve? The wide variety of uses that humans have developed for seeds of all sorts also receives a fascinating look, studded with examples, including foods, oils, perfumes, and pharmaceuticals. An able guide with an eye for the unusual, Silver-town is happy to take readers on unexpected - but always interesting - tangents, from Lyme disease to human color vision to the Salem witch trials. But he never lets us forget that the driving force behind the story of seeds - its theme, even - is evolution, with its irrepressible habit of stumbling upon new solutions to the challenges of life.

The story of seeds, in a nutshell, is a tale of evolution. With "An Orchard Invisible", Jonathan Silvertown presents the oft-ignored seed with the natural history it deserves, one nearly as varied and surprising as the earth's flora itself. In a clear and engaging style, he delves into the science of seeds: How and why do some lie dormant for years on end? How did seeds evolve? The wide variety of uses that humans have developed for seeds of all sorts also receives a fascinating look, studded with examples, including foods, oils, perfumes, and pharmaceuticals. An able guide with an eye for the unusual, Silver-town is happy to take readers on unexpected - but always interesting - tangents, from Lyme disease to human color vision to the Salem witch trials. But he never lets us forget that the driving force behind the story of seeds - its theme, even - is evolution, with its irrepressible habit of stumbling upon new solutions to the challenges of life.

Everything that lives will die. That's the fundamental fact of life. But not everyone dies at the same age: people vary wildly in their patterns of aging and their life spans - and that variation is nothing compared to what's found in other animal and plant species. A giant fungus found in Michigan has been alive since the Ice Age, while a dragonfly lives but four months, a mayfly half an hour. What accounts for these variations - and what can we learn from them that might help us understand, or better manage, our own aging? With The Long and the Short of It, biologist and writer Jonathan Silvertown offers readers a fascinating tour through the scientific study of longevity and aging. Dividing his daunting subject by theme - death, life span, aging, heredity, evolution, and more - Silvertown draws on the latest scientific developments to paint a picture of what we know about how life span, senescence, and death vary within and across species. At every turn, he addresses fascinating questions that have far-reaching implications: What causes aging, and what determines the length of an individual life?What changes have caused the average human life span to increase so dramatically - fifteen minutes per hour - in the past two centuries? If evolution favors those who leave the most descendants, why haven't we evolved to be immortal? The answers to these puzzles and more emerge from close examination of the whole natural history of life span and aging, from fruit flies to nematodes, redwoods, and much more. The Long and the Short of It pairs a perpetually fascinating topic with a wholly engaging writer, and the result is a book that will reward curious readers of all ages.

What do eggs, flour, and milk have in common? They form the basis of waffles, of course, but these staples of breakfast bounty also share an evolutionary function: eggs, seeds (from which we derive flour by grinding), and milk have each evolved to nourish offspring. Indeed, ponder the genesis of your breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and you'll soon realize that everything we eat and drink has an evolutionary history. In Dinner with Darwin, join Jonathan Silvertown for a multicourse meal of evolutionary gastronomy, a tantalizing tour of human taste that helps us to understand the origins of our diets and the foods that have been central to them for millennia--from spices to spirits. A delectable concoction of coevolution and cookery, gut microbiomes and microherbs, and both the chicken and its egg, Dinner with Darwin reveals that our shopping lists, recipe cards, and restaurant menus don't just contain the ingredients for culinary delight. They also tell a fascinating story about natural selection and its influence on our plates--and palates. Digging deeper, Silvertown's repast includes entrees into GMOs and hybrids, and looks at the science of our sensory interactions with foods and cooking--the sights, aromas, and tastes we experience in our kitchens and dining rooms. As is the wont of any true chef, Silvertown packs his menu with eclectic components, dishing on everything from Charles Darwin's intestinal maladies to taste bud anatomy and turducken. Our evolutionary relationship with food and drink stretches from the days of cooking cave dwellers to contemporary creperies and beyond, and Dinner with Darwin serves up scintillating insight into the entire, awesome span. This feast of soup, science, and human society is one to savor. With a wit as dry as a fine pinot noir and a cache of evolutionary knowledge as vast as the most discerning connoisseur's wine cellar, Silvertown whets our appetites--and leaves us hungry for more.

The profound consequences of the deceptively obvious statement that plants stand still but their genes don't are only just becoming clear. In this volume, an international team of authors, experts in the field of population biology, aim to advance our understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes by integrating them within a common frame of reference: space. Processes operating at three different spatial scales are examined: that of the population, metapopulation and the geographical range. Themes that recur at these different scales include spatial population dynamics, population genetics at boundaries, the imprint of spatial population dynamics upon genetic structure, adaptation, evolution of mating systems and the consequences of population genetics for ecological dynamics. Whilst the focus is largely on plants, the questions addressed are equally applicable to animals. It will be a valuable tool for researchers and advanced students, not only in this field, but also evolutionary biology and resource management.

Plant Life Histories re-examines patterns of relationship between plant life history traits in phylogenetic perspective. The re-examination first recognises that because evolution is a branching process, traits are not randomly distributed across taxa and that therefore analysis of trait correlations cannot treat species as independent data points. It then discusses the use of phylogeny to reconstruct the evolutionary pathways of traits. Part I looks at the use of the phylogenetic perspective on trait correlation. Parts II-IV examine traits from the reproductive phase from seed production and dispersal to recruitment and growth. The final section looks at interactions between plants and competitors, herbivores and microbial symbionts, recognising that these interactions may have an ancient evolutionary history. Students and researchers of evolution, ecology and botany will find much of value here.

The profound consequences of the deceptively obvious statement that plants stand still but their genes don't are only just becoming clear. In this volume, an international team of authors, experts in the field of population biology, aim to advance our understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes by integrating them within a common frame of reference: space. Processes operating at three different spatial scales are examined: that of the population, metapopulation and the geographical range. Themes that recur at these different scales include spatial population dynamics, population genetics at boundaries, the imprint of spatial population dynamics upon genetic structure, adaptation, evolution of mating systems and the consequences of population genetics for ecological dynamics. Whilst the focus is largely on plants, the questions addressed are equally applicable to animals. It will be a valuable tool for researchers and advanced students, not only in this field, but also evolutionary biology and resource management.

This completely revised, fourth edition of Introduction to Plant Population Biology continues the approach taken by its highly successful predecessors. Ecological and genetic principles are introduced and theory is made accessible by clear, accurate exposition with plentiful examples. Models and theoretical arguments are developed gradually, requiring a minimum of mathematics. The book emphasizes the particular characteristics of plants that affect their population biology, and evolutionary questions that are particularly relevant for plants. Wherever appropriate, it is shown how ecology and genetics interact, presenting a rounded picture of the population biology of plants.Topics covered include variation and its inheritance, genetic markers including molecular markers, plant breeding systems, ecological genetics, intraspecific interactions, population dynamics, regional dynamics and metapopulations, competition and coexistence, and the evolution of breeding systems and life history. An extensive bibliography provides access to the recent literature that will be invaluable to students and academics alike. Effective integration of plant population ecology, population genetics and evolutionary biology. The new edition is thoroughly revised and now includes molecular techniques. The genetics chapters have been completely rewritten by a new co-author, Deborah Charlesworth.

From the broad leaves of Britain's forests to the curious patterns of desert succulents – uncover how leaves shape our world.Unless you’re an avid gardener, leaves might slip your notice. But from the smallest pavement crevices to the trees that line our streets, they’re everywhere. In fact, there are more leaves on Earth than stars in the galaxy. And they power much of the natural world – from salad to soil. Leaves are solar panels, rainmakers, lunch boxes, chemistry sets, mulch-makers and building material – all in one.From the lush rainforests of the tropics, where the fight for light has given rise to magnificent leaves of all shapes, sizes and colours, to the strange, spectacular adaptations of desert plants, Jonathan Silvertown revels in the wondrous science and evolutionary success of these magicians of the natural world.