Peter R. Grant – författare

The extraordinary life story of the celebrated naturalist who transformed our understanding of evolutionEnchanted by Daphne is legendary ecologist Peter Grant’s personal account of his remarkable life and career. In this revelatory book, Grant takes readers from his childhood in World War II–era Britain to his ongoing research today in the Galápagos archipelago, vividly describing what it''s like to do fieldwork in one of the most magnificent yet inhospitable places on Earth. This is also the story of two brilliant and courageous biologists raising a family together while balancing the demands of professional lives that would take them to the far corners of the globe.In 1973, Grant and his wife, Rosemary, embarked on a journey that would fundamentally change how we think about evolution. Over the next four decades, they visited the Galápagos every year to observe Darwin’s famous finches on the remote, uninhabited island of Daphne Major. Documenting how eighteen species have diversified from a single ancestral species, they demonstrated that we could actually see and measure evolution in a natural setting. Grant recounts the blind alleys and breathtaking triumphs of this historic research as he and Rosemary followed in Darwin’s footsteps—and ushered in a new era in ecology.A wonderfully absorbing portrait of a life in science, Enchanted by Daphne is an unforgettable chronicle of the travels and discoveries of one of the world’s most influential naturalists.

A new edition of Peter and Rosemary Grant’s classic account of their groundbreaking forty-year study of Darwin’s finches40 Years of Evolution is a landmark study of the finches first made famous by Charles Darwin, one that documents as never before the evolution of species through natural selection. In this now-legendary study, renowned evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant draw on a vast and unparalleled range of ecological, behavioral, and genetic data to continuously measure changes in finch populations over a period of four decades on the small island of Daphne Major in the Galápagos archipelago. In the years since the book’s publication, the field of genomics has developed greatly. In this newly revised edition of 40 Years of Evolution, the Grants combine the results of their historic field study with genomic analyses of their primary findings, resolve unanswered questions from the field, and provide invaluable insights into the genetic basis of beak and body size variation and the history of this iconic adaptive radiation.

Evolutionary biology has witnessed breathtaking advances in recent years. Some of its most exciting insights have come from the crossover of disciplines as varied as paleontology, molecular biology, ecology, and genetics. This book brings together many of today''s pioneers in evolutionary biology to describe the latest advances and explain why a cross-disciplinary and integrated approach to research questions is so essential. Contributors discuss the origins of biological diversity, mechanisms of evolutionary change at the molecular and developmental levels, morphology and behavior, and the ecology of adaptive radiations and speciation. They highlight the mutual dependence of organisms and their environments, and reveal the different strategies today''s researchers are using in the field and laboratory to explore this interdependence. Peter and Rosemary Grant--renowned for their influential work on Darwin''s finches in the Galápagos--provide concise introductions to each section and identify the key questions future research needs to address. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Myra Awodey, Christopher N. Balakrishnan, Rowan D. H. Barrett, May R. Berenbaum, Paul M. Brakefield, Philip J. Currie, Scott V. Edwards, Douglas J. Emlen, Joshua B. Gross, Hopi E. Hoekstra, Richard Hudson, David Jablonski, David T. Johnston, Mathieu Joron, David Kingsley, Andrew H. Knoll, Mimi A. R. Koehl, June Y. Lee, Jonathan B. Losos, Isabel Santos Magalhaes, Albert B. Phillimore, Trevor Price, Dolph Schluter, Ole Seehausen, Clifford J. Tabin, John N. Thompson, and David B. Wake.