Author: Dr. George B. Johnson,
Washington University
ISBN: 0072347201 Copyright year: 2003
Book Preface
Writing The Living World has been the most enjoyable of my academic pursuits. I wrote it to create a text that would be easy for today's students to learn from - a book that focused on concepts rather than information. More than most subjects, biology is at its core a set of ideas, and if students can master these basic ideas, the rest comes easy.
Unfortunately, while most of today's students are very interested in biology, they are put off by the terminology. When you don't know what the words mean, it's easy to slip into thinking that the matter is difficult, when actually the ideas are simple, easy to grasp, and fun to consider. It's the terms that get in the way, that stand as a wall between students and science. With this text I have tried to turn those walls into windows, so that readers can peer in and join the fun.
Analogies have been my tool. In writing The Living World I have searched for simple analogies that relate the matter at hand to things we all know. As science, analogies are not exact, but I do not count myself compromised. Analogies trade precision for clarity. If I do my job right, the key idea is not compromised by the analogy I use to explain it, but rather revealed.
A second barrier stands between students and biology, and that is the mass of information typically presented in an introductory biology text. The fun of learning biology becomes swamped by a sea of information. To make the ideas of biology more accessible to students, I have trimmed away a lot of detail traditionally taught in freshman biology courses.
My first step was to attack the traditional table of contents (usually a formidable list of chapters covering a broad range of topics). The number of chapters in biology textbooks has grown over the years, until today the most widely used short text has 44 chapters! I have cut back ruthlessly on this overwhelming amount of information, reducing the number of chapters in this edition of The Living World to 31. I think this matches more closely what is actually being taught in classrooms, and, as you will see, all that is really important is preserved.
I have deliberately combined photosynthesis and cellular respiration into a single chapter in The Living World, not because metabolism is unimportant, but because the basic principles a student needs to understand are simple and easy to explain. The metabolic activities of organisms are most easily grasped when the many similarities between photosynthesis and cellular respiration reveal their underlying unity.
There is no way to avoid the fact, however, that some of the important ideas of biology are complex. No student encountering photosynthesis for the first time gets it all on the first pass. To aid in learning the more difficult material, I have given special attention to key processes like photosynthesis and osmosis, the ones that form the core of biology. The key processes of biology are not optional learning. A student must come to understand every one of them if he or she is to master biology as a science. A student's learning goal should not be simply to memorize a list of terms, but rather to be able to visualize and understand what’s going on. With this goal in mind, I have prepared special "This is how it works" process boxes for some four dozen important processes that students encounter in introductory biology. Each of these process boxes walks the student through a complex process, one step at a time, so that the central idea is not lost in the details.
It is no accident that The Living World begins with a chapter on evolution and ecology. These ideas, central to biology, provide the student a framework within which to explore the world of the cell and gene which occupy the initial third of the text. Biology at the gene and cellular level is every bit as much an evolutionary accomplishment as are the animal phyla encountered later in the text. Students learn about cells and genes much more readily when they are presented in an evolutionary context, as biology rather than as molecular machinery.
In organizing The Living World, I set out to present the concepts of biology - as much as my writing skills would allow - as a story. I teach that way, and students learn more easily that way. Evolution and diversity are no longer treated in separate sections of the text, for example, but rather are combined into one continuous narrative. Traditionally, students are exposed to weeks of evolution before tackling animal diversity, struggling past the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and population growth equations (microevolution) and on through Darwin's discoveries (macroevolution). Then, when all that is done, they are dragged through a detailed tour of the animal phyla, followed by a long excursion into botany. In large measure, the three areas are presented as if unrelated to each other. In The Living World I have chosen instead to combine all three of these areas into one treatment, presenting biological diversity as an evolutionary journey. It is a lot more fun to teach this way, and students learn a great deal more, too.New This Edition: Content Enhancement
Deep into the task of preparing this third edition of The Living World, I was challenged by my daughter Caitlin, who was resenting my absence from family: "If your book is so good," she asked, "why do you need to work so much on its revision?" Good question. The answer, of course, is that biology has changed a lot in the few brief years since the last edition.Genomics
Consider, for example, the Human Genome Project (chapter 10, Genomics). To gain some idea of why the explosion of interest in the human genome, consider the following. If the DNA molecule in one of your cells were to be stretched out straight, it would extend about six feet - very nearly the height of a human. How much of that DNA do you suppose is devoted to genes - to sequences encoding proteins? About an inch. That's right, less than 2% of your DNA is devoted to genes! Over half of the human genome is composed of independently replicating "transposable elements." This astonishing result goes right to the heart of what it means to be human.Stem Cells
As a second item, consider stem cells. Barely mentioned in the previous edition, stem cells occupy the front pages of today's newspapers. The desirability of federal funding of stem cell research has become one of the major political issues of the day. An early human embryo, prior to implantation at six days, is composed of an outer layer of protective cells, and an inner cell mass of some 200 so-called embryonic stem cells. Each of these stem cells, as yet undeveloped, is capable of becoming any tissue in the body. In mice, these cells, if transplanted, can replace damaged heart muscle lost in heart attacks, neurons from severed spines, brain cells whose loss leads to Parkinson's, or insulin-producing pancreatic cells.
Why the controversy? The great promise of stem cell regenerative medicine is balanced by the fact that embryonic stem cell lines can only be obtained by harvesting embryonic stem cells from human embryos. This raises many ethical questions. Researchers point out that infertile couples using in vitro fertilization to conceive provide the chief source of human embryos - many more embryos are produced than are needed to conceive. These excess embryos would be destroyed if not used to obtain stem cells, researchers claim, mitigating any ethical concerns. Not so, respond critics, who believe that human life begins at conception, and that destroying a human embryo, for whatever purpose, is simply murder. Few issues in science so polarize public opinion. The enhancement chapter, "The Revolution in Cell Technology," provides an in-depth look at this controversial issue.Cancer
Yet another area of major recent progress that affects every American is the search for a cure for cancer. Great progress has been made in the last few years, as researchers learn more about how cancer "happens." It turns out that everyone who gets cancer has accumulated mutations that accelerate cell proliferation, and other mutations that disable the brakes that cells normally apply when cell division starts to accelerate. To block cancer, researchers are inventing ways to inhibit the out-of-kilter accelerating step, and ways to reestablish brakes on the process. New progress is announced practically every month.Gene Engineering
Few areas of biology have engendered as much sustained controversy among the general public as the prospect of using genetic engineering to produce so-called genetically modified food (GM food). Over the last two years much of the complexion of the argument has changed. Panic at the rapid pace of change has been replaced with a grudging acceptance, as the very real benefits of modifications have become more apparent. One clear example is provided by so-called "golden rice." A significant fraction of the world's people use rice as their staple food, but because rice is deficient in iron and vitamin A, these people often experience iron deficiency and poor vision. Addressing the problem head on, gene engineers added a battery of genes to rice to correct the deficiencies. As a result of these gene modifications, rice can be a far superior human food.Bioterrorism
The anthrax attack on America in 2001 removes any doubt that the threat of bioterrorism is real. While a detailed treatment of infectious disease is usually far beyond the scope of an undergraduate nonmajor's text, this issue cries out to be addressed. The enhancement chapter "Infectious Disease and Bioterrorism" is intended to provide the information and background necessary to understand this important topic.Ribosomes
Not all important progress in biology in the last few years has been reported on the evening news. One extremely important advance occurred in what may seem a prosaic area, ribosomes. Ribosomes are very complex organelles within cells that carry out protein synthesis. Each ribosome is made up of over 50 different proteins and several RNA molecules. It used to be thought that the catalysis of protein synthesis was carried out by the proteins, arrayed on an RNA framework. We have now learned that exactly the opposite is true. RNA molecules catalyze the assembly of protein chains from amino acids, with proteins stabilizing the relative positions of the individual RNA molecules.
Throughout the text, The Living World, Third Edition, has been updated to reflect the many changes that have occurred in biology in these last very active years. New This Edition:
The eBRIDGE
The single greatest change that has occurred in biology in the few years since the last edition of The Living World has been the blossoming of the Internet as a teaching resource. No student wants a 10-pound textbook, so in the past there have been serious constraints on how much "end-of-chapter" material could be crammed into a text. The Internet has now lifted that limitation. Because the Internet takes up no space in a textbook, I have been free to develop a battery of new tools to facilitate student learning. In this new edition of The Living World the Internet serves as an electronic bridge to a wealth of materials that drill, test, explore, and enhance a student’s learning. I have called this electronic bridge between text and Internet resources the "eBRIDGE." No other text presents anything remotely like it.
How do you use the eBRIDGE? When you purchased The Living World, Third Edition, you received a free 6-month subscription to The Living World's Online Learning Center. When you want to use the eBRIDGE, go to The Living World's Online Learning Center, www.mhhe.com/tlw3. The first time you go there you will be asked to register by entering the passcode you received in your textbook and creating your individual user name and password. After you have registered, go to student center" and click on "eBRIDGE." Select the chapter you want, say chapter 5, and a screen will appear that looks exactly like the eBRIDGE pages at the back of chapter 5 of the text—except that on your computer screen version all the underlined items are live. To explore any item, just click on the underlined name of that item, and you will immediately cross the eBRIDGE and enter the virtual space where that item resides.
For each chapter of The Living World, Third Edition, four sorts of resources can be reached via the eBRIDGE. On the left page of the eBRIDGE (illustrated above right), you will find Reinforcing Key Points, and Electronic Learning. On the right page of the eBRIDGE, discussed on page xiii, you will find video streaming lectures delivered by me in the Virtual Classroom, and open-ended laboratory investigations in the Virtual Lab.
Reinforcing Key Points
Every chapter is organized as a series of numbered one-page or two-page modules. The Reinforcing Key Points portion of the eBRIDGE is a within-chapter search engine devoted to helping a student explore all the resources of the Online Learning Center that apply to that particular numbered module. This saves a lot of running around looking for things.Electronic Learning
The eBRIDGE links the student to a rich array of electronic learning resources.Visual Learning
The eBRIDGE provides a rich assortment of animations, art labeling activities, and "helping you learn" drills. These visual resources provide a powerful learning tool, particularly for students who learn better visually.Explorations
Explorations are fully interactive exercises that delve into interesting points covered in the chapter. One exploration allows you to analyze enzyme kinetics, another to construct a gene map from the results of a three-point cross, yet another to use DNA fingerprinting to examine real courtroom cases. While a lot of fun, these explorations are not simply games or simulations. Based on actual lab data, they allow students to gather and analyze data much as they might in a real lab.Author’s Corner
The Author's Corner takes the student to a collection of short "On Science" articles written by me on a topic intended to amplify and enrich some aspect of the chapter. The articles stress issues of current interest such as cloning and stem cells, forging a link between what students are learning and the world in which they live.Enhancement Chapters
One of the unfortunate limitations of a printed text is that it cannot present detailed treatments of everything that a student might enjoy exploring, topics like dinosaurs and stem cells. The eBRIDGE provides a ready solution to this dilemma, as there is no length limitation to material accessed via the Internet. In this edition of The Living World you will find four "enhancement chapters," each a complete chapter written by the author devoted to presenting a topic of wide interest, beyond the scope of the printed text but well worth exploring:
The Revolution in Cell Technology.
(eBRIDGE, Chapter 9) Stem cells and therapeutic cloning are both medically exciting and ethically controversial.
Infectious Disease and Bioterrorism.Infectious Disease and Bioterrorism
(eBRIDGE, Chapter 13) The anthrax attack on America leaves no doubt about the threat.
Dinosaurs. (eBRIDGE, Chapter 20) Dinosaurs dominated life on land for 150 million years, the many kinds presenting a long parade of evolutionary change.
Conservation Biology. (eBRIDGE, Chapter 31) Among the greatest challenges facing the biosphere in the new century is the accelerating rate of species extinction. Virtual Classroom
In this edition of The Living World, students can view, in a virtual classroom, the lectures I present in my Washington University in St. Louis course, "Biology and Society." The course is intended for nonmajors and focuses on how biology today is impacting society. Lectures examine topics like AIDS, cancer, and environmental destruction, issues that affect all of us, every day. Captured on streaming video, each lecture provides a student using The Living World with a detailed look at the way the material of a particular chapter is impacting the student's life.
About 50 minutes in length, lectures do not attempt to teach the material presented in the chapter they accompany. Rather, they explore in depth a single issue related to that chapter. The discussion is not technical - students have not learned enough yet for that - but rather serves to frame the issue so that students can better see the science behind it. It is important that an informed public, and not just scientists, understand how biology is shaping our world, and these lectures are an attempt to address that need.Virtual Lab
The greatest single limitation to teaching biology to a large freshman class is the inability to expose students to open-ended laboratory investigation. There is no substitute for this sort of hands-on experience. However, the interactive nature of the internet provides an opportunity for students to experience the intellectual challenge of scientific inquiry. The Virtual Labs that accompany each chapter of The Living World, Third Edition are open-ended investigations of real scientific problems. They require the student to think like a scientist, examining an issue, phrasing a question, forming a testable hypothesis, devising a way to test it, carrying out the experiment and gathering data, analyzing the data, and assessing whether or not the data support the student's hypothesis. Challenging and fun, the Virtual Lab experiments provide a student experience with open-ended inquiry, the intellectual process that real scientists go through every day in research.The Living World, Third Edition contains 31 Virtual Labs, addressing topics as varied as how gecko lizards can walk on ceilings, to how hormones protect seed development in peas. The experiments in each case are real ones, involving actual data presented in a published research paper. No two replicas of an experiment yield the same data points, as the student experiences the same experimental error the investigator reports. Taken as a whole, the Virtual Labs are a powerful resource for experiencing how science is done, for learning how a scientist thinks.Virtual Lab: A Closer Look
The Virtual Lab that accompanies each chapter of The Living World, Third Edition, provides students with an open-ended experience of scientific inquiry. As an example, consider the Virtual Lab accompanying chapter 31, an experiment attempting to gain a better understanding of why many amphibian populations today are exhibiting decreasing numbers and numerous individuals with severe developmental deformities. By going to the eBRIDGE for chapter 31 and clicking on the Virtual Lab devoted to this experiment, "Identifying the Environmental Culprit Harming Amphibians," a student can undertake an in-depth exploration of this experiment.EXPLORE THE ISSUE BEING
INVESTIGATED provides a detailed look at the experimental issue of amphibian decline, a problem of great concern to environmental scientists today. Frogs and other amphibians have been around since before the dinosaurs. If something in the environment is causing their abrupt decline, we need to know what it is. This initial discussion provides a conceptual framework for the student’s examination of Andrew Blaustein's experiment, outlining the extent of the problem and reviewing the sorts of theories that have been advanced to explain the decline.READ THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER allows the student to read the scientific paper Blaustein published to report his work, Blaustein, Andrew R. et al., "Ambient UV-B radiation causes deformities in amphibian embryos," Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 1997 (vol. 94):13735–13737, and a related paper, Blaustein, Andrew et al., "UV repair and resistance to solar UV-B in amphibian eggs: A link to population declines?" Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 1994 (vol. 9):1791–1795. There is no better introduction to the reality of an experiment than reading the actual research paper that reports it. While the paper might seem indigestible by itself, read in the context of the supporting materials of the Virtual Lab, it is quite approachable, and adds concreteness to the student’s research experience.MEET THE INVESTIGATOR lets the student into Blaustein’s thinking about this experiment. In a personal interview, he describes why he was drawn to this particular hypothesis, why he set up his experiment the way he did, what controls he felt were important, and what he would do different if he could go back in time and do the experiment over again. The interview does not introduce Blaustein, so much as his experiment. GAIN AN OVERVIEW OF THE
EXPERIMENT provides a brief summary of what Blaustein actually did. The overview first describes the experiment that Blaustein and his coworkers carried out to investigate the issue of amphibian disappearance. His experimental design involved allowing fertilized eggs to develop in their natural environment with and without a UV-B protective shield. The experimental procedure is outlined, with a discussion of necessary controls, followed by a report of his results - what he found, and what he concluded from these findings.RUN VIRTUAL EXPERIMENTS allows a student to take Blaustein's place, and carry out his or her own investigation. No hands get dirty in this experiment, but all the thought processes of creative scientific investigation are here. The student proposes alternative hypotheses about the cause of amphibian disappearance, devises ways to test the hypotheses, carries out the experiment (virtually), and collects relevant data. Real data are obtained, based on Blaustein’s results, with his experimental errors used to introduce variability into the data set much as it was encountered by Blaustein (thus doing the same procedure twice does not yield exactly the same data, but rather similar points, as alike as experimental error would produce). Analyzing the data obtained, the student evaluates the validity of the hypothesis being tested, and comes to a conclusion.READINGS AND ADDITIONAL
RESOURCES provides the student with references to related papers, and to websites of interest. It is important for students encountering research for the first time to realize that experiments like these are not an endpoint, but rather a beginning. If a student's experience in the Virtual Lab is successful, it will open doors to other lines of interest and inquiry.Real People Doing Real Science
In selecting experiments for the Virtual Lab, I felt it important that the student experience science the way it is actually carried out in most labs. Not every good experiment wins a Nobel Prize or makes the newspapers. In laboratories all over the country, researchers are doing good experiments that most students never read about. With this in mind, I sought to select experiments for the Virtual Labs from the world of real people doing real science - the nuts-and-bolts research upon which scientific progress depends. There is no better way to appreciate how scientific progress occurs than to get down in the trenches with the researchers doing the work.
Chapter 1 John Endler (University of California, Santa Barbara) and David Reznick (University of California, Riverside)—Catching Evolution in Action.
Chapter 2 Mark Boyce (University of Alberta, Edmonton) - Why Do Tropical Songbirds Lay Fewer Eggs?
Chapter 3 Kellar Autumn (Lewis & Clark College) and Robert Full (University of California, Berkeley) - Unraveling the Mystery of How Geckos Defy Gravity.
Chapter 4 Richard Cyr (Pennsylvania State University) - How Do the Cells of a Growing Plant Know in Which Direction to Elongate?
Chapter 5 Andrew Webber (Arizona State University) - How Do Proteins Help Chlorophyll Carry Out Photosynthesis?
Chapter 6 Randall Johnson (University of California, San Diego) - Can Cancer Tumors Be Starved to Death?
Chapter 7 Simon Rhodes (Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis) - How Regulatory Genes Direct Vertebrate Development.
Chapter 8 James Golden (Texas A&M) - Cyanobacteria Control Heterocyst Pattern Formation /through Intracellular Signaling.
Chapter 9 Hamid Habibi and Maurice Moloney (University of Calgary) - Trading Hormones Among Fishes: Gene Technology Lets Us Watch What Happens.
Chapter 10 John Schiefelbein (University of Michigan) - The Control of Patterning in Plant Root Development.
Chapter 11 Julian Adams (University of Michigan) - Do Some Genes Maintain More Than One Common Allele in a Population?
Chapter 12 Todd Barkman (Western Michigan University) and Claude de Pamphilis (Pennsylvania State University) - Unearthing the Root of Flowering Plant Phylogeny.
Chapter 13 Vojo Deretic (University of New Mexico) and Donald Rowen (University of Nebraska, Omaha) - How Pseudomonas "Sugar-Coats" Itself to Cause Chronic Lung Infections.
Chapter 14 Michael McKay (Bowling Green State
University) - Tracking Iron Stress in Diatoms
Chapter 15 David Drubin (University of California, Berkeley) - How Actin-Binding Proteins Interact with the Cytoskeleton to Determine the Morphology of Yeasts.
Chapter 16 Robert Boyd (Auburn University) and Scott Martens (University of California, Davis) - Why Do Some Plants Accumulate Toxic Levels of Metals?
Chapter 17 James Bidlack (University of Central Oklahoma) - Which Pest Control Method Is Best for Basil?
Chapter 18 Jocelyn Ozga (University of Alberta, Edmonton) - How Hormones Protect Seed Development in Peas.
Chapter 19 Nels Troelstrup, Jr. (South Dakota State University) - In Pursuit of Preserving Freshwater Mussels.
Chapter 20 M. Christopher Barnhart (Southwest Missouri State University) - Amphibian Eggs Hatching in Shallow Ponds Thirst for Oxygen.
Chapter 21 Larry Gilbert (University of Texas, Ausin) - Plotting an Aerial Attack on Marauding Fire Ants.
Chapter 22 Jon Harrison (Arizona State University) - How Honeybees Keep Their Cool.
Chapter 23 Elizabeth Brainerd (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) - Why Some Lizards Take a Deep Breath.
Chapter 24 Michael Houghton (Chiron)—Discovering the Virus Responsible for Hepatitis C.
Chapter 25 John Dankert (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) - In Search of New Antibiotics: How Salamander Skin Secretions Combat Microbial Infections.
Chapter 26 Paul Hamilton (University of Central Arkansas) - How Snails "See" an Invisible Trail.
Chapter 27 Deborah Clark (Middle Tennessee State University) - Pheromones Affect Sexual Selection in Cockroaches.
Chapter 28 Louis Guillette (University of Florida) - Are Pollutants Affecting the Sexual Development of Florida's Alligators?
Chapter 29 Kevin Carman, John Fleeger, and Steven Pomarico (Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge) - Why Does Contamination of a Coastal Salt Marsh with Diesel Fuel Lead to Increased Microalgal Biomass?
Chapter 30 Jerry Wolff (University of Memphis) - Factors Limiting the Home Range of Male Voles.
Chapter 31 Andrew Blaustein (Oregon State University) - Identifying the Environmental Culprit Harming Amphibians. SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE INSTRUCTOR AND STUDENT
McGraw-Hill offers various tools and technology products to support the third edition of The Living World.
For the InstructorDigital Content Manager - a multimedia tool that enables the user to easily create customized presentations. This CD-ROM is made up of easy to use folders containing the following content:
Active Art Library - files that allow the instructor to manipulate art and adapt figures to meet the needs of the lecture environment.
Animations Library - animations created from figures from the textbook.
Art Libraries - contain all the images in the book in alternate formats (labeled, unlabeled, grayscale). These images are also placed in a PowerPoint presentation for ease of use.
Photo Libraries - contain images from the textbook.
PowerPoint Lectures - outlines for instructors to follow the structure of the text; can be manipulated to add your own topics.
Tables Library - every table found in the text is provided in electronic form.
Online Learning Center - provides a wealth of opportunities for the instructor. It can be found at www.mhhe.com/tlw3. All the libraries found in the Digital Content Manager can be found within the Online Learning Center as well as the following:
BioCourse.com - an electronic meeting place for students and instructors. It provides a comprehensive set of resources in one easy place that is up-to-date and easy to navigate.
Course Integration Guide - helps professors correlate all the ancillary materials to the chapters in the book.
Instructor's Manual - provides the following instructional aides for each chapter: lecture outlines, learning objectives, key terms, lecture suggestions, critical thinking questions, and films/media suggestions.
BioLabs - give instructors and students the opportunity to run online lab simulations to enhance or supplement the wet lab experience. The labs can provide a lab experience when wet labs are impractical due to time constraints, costs, or other factors.
PageOut - McGraw-Hill's exclusive tool for creating your own website for your biology course. It requires no knowledge of coding and is hosted by McGraw-Hill.
PowerWeb - an online supplement with access to the following: course-specific, current articles refereed by content experts; course-specific, real-time news; weekly course updates; refereed and updated research links; daily news; and access to the Northernlight.com Special Collection™ of journals and articles.
Additional features include lecture suggestions, web links, case studies, author's bookshelf, and essays on science. Transparencies - every piece of line art in the textbook is included with better visibility and contrast than ever before. Labels are large and bold for clear projection.Computerized Test Bank - available on CD-ROM in both Mac and Windows platforms. These questions are the same as those included in the Test Item File of the Instructor’s Manual.Life Science Animations Library CD-ROM - this CD-ROM contains over 400 animations in an easy to use program that enables users to quickly view the animations and import the animations into PowerPoint to create multimedia presentations.For the StudentOnline Learning Center - offers an extensive array of learning tools for the student. The site includes chapter-specific quizzing, interactive activities, flashcards, crossword puzzles, case studies, and links to related websites. Additional features to the Online Learning Center include:
BioCourse.com - the student portion of this site allows students to search for information specific to the course area they are studying. Information is also available on tips for studying and test taking, surviving the first year of college, and job searches. Essential Study Partner - contains over 120 animations and more than 800 learning activities to help students grasp complex concepts. Explorations - interactive modules that cover key concepts in biology. BioLabs - give students the opportunity to run online lab simulations to enhance or supplement the wet lab experience. BioLabs help students gain understanding of the scientific method as they improve their data gathering and data handling skills. PowerWeb - an online supplement with access to the following: course-specific, current articles refereed by content experts; course-specific, real-time news; weekly course updates; refereed and updated research links; daily news; and access to the Northernlight.com Special Collection™ of journals and articles. Student Study Guide - contains chapter reviews, practice quizzes, art exercises and web references for each chapter.
Acknowledgments
My goal for The Living World has always been to present the science in an interesting and engaging manner while maintaining a clear and authoritative text. This is a lofty goal considering the mountains of information and research I must go through just to update the text from one edition to the next. Too lofty for me to accomplish by myself. This third edition would not have been possible without the contributions of many, on the shoulders of whose efforts I have labored. The visuals are critically important in a biology textbook. Many of the superb illustrations were conceived and rendered by Bill Ober and Claire Garrison. I would also like to thank Donald Murie of Meyers Photo-Art for his excellent research of new photographs for this and past editions. Of course I am also indebted to my colleagues from across the country and around the globe who have provided numerous suggestions on how to improve the third edition. Every one of you has my thanks.
A major feature of The Living World continues to be the presentation of the information in conceptual modules. It is no small feat to take the information I write, along with my suggestions for figures and tables, and combine them into a conceptual module. This formidable task would not have been possible without the efforts of Megan Jackman, my longtime off-site developmental editor. Her intelligence and perseverance continue to play a major role in the high quality of this book. Liz Sievers, my second off-site developmental editor and other right arm, played an invaluable role in helping organize and produce the Virtual Labs. Their quality directly reflects her effort.
As any author knows, a textbook is made not by a writer but by a publishing team, a group of people that guide the raw book written by the authors through a year-long process of reviewing, editing, fine-tuning, and production. This edition was particularly fortunate in its book team, led by Patrick Reidy, sponsoring editor and supporter; Michael Lange, friend, publisher, and tough critic; Kris Tibbets, developmental editor and reliable anchor; Peggy Selle, dextrous project manager committed to getting the best possible book; Stuart Paterson, creative and patient design manager; Lisa Gottshalk, tireless marketing manager; and many, many more people behind the scenes.
As in earlier editions, the side-splitting "The Far Side" cartoons of Gary Larson grace each chapter opener, and I want to explicitly thank Gary Larson and Toni Carmichael for letting The Living World continue to use so many of their cartoons.
For the third time the powerful and intriguing art of Charles Bragg graces The Living World with an arresting cover. Covers have always seemed important to me, the first sniff of what awaits within, and Charles Bragg's pictures speak volumes about the fun and mystery of biology.
This is the seventeenth time I have thanked my family in the preface of one of my books, the twentieth year of a long detour into text writing. I looked for the first time at my first child the same night I held the first edition of my first book in my hands. Since then, as I have written, my family has grown around me. My three girls, Nikki (18), Caitlin (16), and Susie (14), are a far richer reward than any book. They have become accustomed to the many hours this book draws me away from them, a hidden price of textbook writing of which they are fully aware. My wife Barbara, giver of this rich bounty, and in my absence bearer of much of the stress and bother of raising three girls, has provided support without which I could not have written any book, much less seventeen.Acknowledgments would not be complete without thanking the generations of students and teachers who have used the many editions of my texts. No one is born able to write a textbook of introductory biology. The knowledge and judgment needed to sift through mountains of information, trying always to understand not only the details of what is going on in a particular process but also how it relates to the broader picture of what biology should be to a beginning student - this knowledge and judgment are gifts an author is given by a long parade of teachers and students.
I have been gifted indeed in my teachers. I went to Dartmouth College in 1960 fully intending to be a writer - but of fiction. The change in my career path was a course in biology I took to fulfill a distribution requirement. The course was taught by a new biology faculty member, David Dennison, and it changed my life. His lectures were a model of clarity, intellectually exciting to a young open mind. For the first time, in Dennison's lectures, I saw science as process rather than information, as a give-and-take of inquiry and investigation. I would not have embarked on a career in biology had Dave Dennison not done such a superlative job as a teacher. His example always serves to remind me of the importance of what we do as teachers, that every single student matters, that every lecture we give is important.
An appreciation of what makes a successful experiment lies at the heart of the education of every biologist. In my first year of graduate school at Stanford, I was in the laboratory of a prominent molecular geneticist named Charles Yanofsky. Every week or so the graduate students, postdocs, and faculty of this and a few other labs with related interests got together for lunch and "journal club," and one person described and evaluated a current experiment recently reported in a scientific journal. Faculty and students all took their turns, and were expected to spend weeks preparing. There was no mercy shown to the presenter during the discussion that followed if he or she had not clearly and accurately analyzed the experiment, its results, and its relation to other findings. The free-for-all discussion might involve Paul Berg (now a Nobel Laureate), or any of dozens of other sharp minds, and students were expected to hold their own, to justify their opinions, and to argue for what they thought was right. No experience in my life has done more to shape my appreciation of the nature of scientific inquiry than the shattering experience of preparing for these journal club presentations. To this day I can recount the experiments I presented over 30 years ago. I have taught undergraduates biology for 29 years, and I have increasingly come to believe that Charlie Yanofsky had it right - that the best way to understand science in general is to study science in particular. Whatever scientific judgment I have been able to bring to bear in writing this text, I owe in large measure to Charlie.
Finally, I need to thank my reviewers. Every text owes a great deal to those faculty across the country who review it. Serving as sensitive antennae for errors and sounding boards for new approaches, reviewers are among the most valuable tools at an author's disposal. Representing a very diverse array of institutions and interests, they have provided me with invaluable feedback. Many new features and improvements in this edition are the direct result of their suggestions. Every one of them has my sincere thanks.
George Johnson
St. Louis, MO
2002
To obtain an instructor login for this Online Learning Center, ask your local sales representative.
If you're an instructor thinking about adopting this textbook, request a free copy for review.
2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education