Up-to-date Treatment

The core of any majors' biology course is the exploration of cells and genetics, always covered in the first half of any majors' text. This book has been particularly aggressive in keeping its treatment of cell biology and genetics comprehensive and up-to-date. It was the first to present a chapter on cell communication, for example (other books soon followed). We are continuing in that tradition by incorporating such cutting edge topics as the structure of ATP synthetase, small RNAs and RNA editing. This edition also includes a new chapter 17 that explores what we can learn about genomes, covering topics ranging from human health issues and concerns about privacy, agricultural applications, and the potential of genomics in minimizing bioterrorism.

We did not contain this revision to a few select chapters in the first half of the text, however, and it's possible to point to many areas where treatment of recent breakthroughs has been integrated. By concluding our evolution section with a comparative approach to genomes and evolution of development, we were able to connect new breakthroughs in these areas and provide a springboard into the diversity section. Major changes in our understanding of phylogenetic relationships among land plants, protists, and fungi along with other major groups, are reflected in the extensive revision of the diversity chapters. Rapid advances in our knowledge of plant defense responses led to a new chapter on this topic.

Writing Style

Students of biology are responsible for an ever-growing volume of information, and that amount of detail is reflected in today's textbooks, which are increasingly becoming encyclopedic references as opposed to teaching texts. But students are more likely to succeed with a text that they enjoy reading, that gives them a sense of the wonderment that inspired their own instructors to study biology. For this reason, we have endeavored to strike a balance; an inviting and accessible writing style with the level of authority and rigor expected of a majors' level text.

To further aid the student, every page or two-page spread in this book functions as a semi-independent learning module, organized under its own heading at the top of the left-hand page, with its own summary at the bottom of the right-hand page. This modular presentation makes the conceptual organization of the chapter clear, greatly enhancing student learning.

Illustrations

This book is set apart form others in that its artists, William Ober, M.D. and Claire Garrison, R.N., are part of the author team. Their respective backgrounds as a practicing physician and pediatric registered nurse, and their experience creating art for highly successful anatomy and physiology, zoology and marine biology textbooks, bring an invaluable contribution to the text. The close collaboration between text and illustration authors results in dynamic, accurate figures that aid student understanding and instructor presentation.

• Combination Figures These pieces combine a photo or micrograph with a line drawing, to make the connection between conceptual figures and what the student may encounter in lab (Figure 5.10, page 88).
• Biochemistry Pathway Icons Found in the discussion of metabolism, these icons help students follow complex processes by highlighting the step currently under discussion (Figure 9.15, page 174).
• Phylogeny Guideposts This icon is presented as each group is introduced, to remind students of relationships among diverse organisms (TA 32.1, page 636).
• Process Boxes These figures include step-by-step descriptions to walk the student through a compact summary of important concepts (Figure 6.18, page 121)

We have also been fortunate in that this collaboration has allowed us to carefully integrate explanatory text into the figures. The end results are uncluttered, easy to follow illustrations that guide a student through a concept. They also benefit the instructor, as figures without distracting captions can be used for presentation while still allowing instructors to tell their own story.

What Sets this Book Apart

Those who have not used or reviewed previous editions will want to know how this book differs from others.

Evolutionary Focus

The treatment of evolution in this book differs from others in a simple but very important way: Evolution is the organizing principle guiding the teaching of each chapter. Instead of leaping from chemistry directly to cell structure as in other books, this book uses the chemistry of the first chapters to examine the origin of life and the evolution of cells; the cell chapters that follow can then be seen in a broader evolutionary context. Similarly, the treatment of animal anatomy and physiology in other books is largely limited to structure and function—this is the organ and this is how it functions. This book examines each animal body system in terms of how it has evolved. Every section of this book, whether it is genetics or plant biology, presents biology from an evolutionary perspective.

Chemistry in a Biological Context

In talking to students over 30 years of teaching freshman biology, a consistent student complaint has been that the introductory biology course begins with a heavy jolt of chemistry. In other books, only after as many as 100 pages of chemistry do students encounter any biology. This is very off-putting for many students, and gets the course off to a rocky start. This book, by contrast, integrates the chemistry of the first section with biological themes. The treatment of macromolecules in Chapter 3 starts with proteins, which can be easily understood without detailed knowledge of carbohydrates. This arrangement has the distinct advantage of starting the student off with material of obvious relevance to biology.

A Modern Approach

Some of the most obvious differences between this book and others can be seen in the second half of the book, that part devoted to coverage of evolution, diversity, plant biology, anatomy and physiology, and ecology.

Evolution.
Our approach to evolutionary biology is unique in two respects. First, we strongly emphasize the role of experiments in studying evolution. Although much of evolutionary biology concerns the study of what happened in the past, that does not mean that experimental approaches are impossible. We emphasize the role that experiments play in studying evolutionary phenomena. More generally, like any detective story, we point out how various approaches must be integrated to fully understand evolutionary diversity.

Second, our book devotes an entire chapter to the evidentiary basis for evolutionary biology. Unlike other aspects of biology, or science in general, the factual basis of evolutionary biology is disputed by some segments of society. Thus, we feel that it is important to clearly present the diversity and depth of evolution that leads almost all biologists to conclude that evolution has occurred. We feel that it is essential for all college biology students—regardless of their own opinions—to understand the scientific basis for this view.

Diversity
Our text has been organized so the diversity section is framed by a discussion of the revolution in taxonomy and phylogenetics (Chapter 25). Complete with vivid examples of dramatic changes in our understanding of relationships among organisms, this chapter can be used alone as an abbreviated approach to diversity or as a foundation for a more comprehensive evolutionary investigation of the diversity of life in the chapters that follow.

The book also differs from other majors' biology textbooks in that its coverage of diversity is more extensive. Consider for example the invertebrates. Other books devote as few as 30 pages to the invertebrates, presenting only the briefest of sketches of what used to be the core of traditional biology courses. This book devotes more than twice as many pages to the invertebrates, followed by a more comprehensive chapter on the vertebrates than is found in other books. Why is this more extensive treatment of diversity important? Even in courses that don't cover diversity in detail, it is important that students be able to uncover for themselves the relations among animal groups.

Plant Biology
The plant biology chapters have undergone extensive revision, and are now organized to lead the student through the plant life cycle. In addition, we have carefully integrated both developmental and genetic perspectives, a fusion not found in other texts. For example, Chapter 36, Vegetative Plant Development, explores root formation in the context of the monopterous mutant of Arabidopsis that fails to make a root. The shift from its developmental role to its functional role as an auxin receptor begins to move students toward a physiological understanding of plant function.

Anatomy and Physiology
Most books devote nearly the same amount of space to anatomy and physiology, about 250 pages. The differences lie primarily in approach, this book having a more evolutionary focus than others, and in its emphasis on fundamentals.

Ecology and Behavior
We take an integrative view to understanding how the environment functions and how organisms interact with it. This section is broken into different chapters, such as behavioral ecology, population ecology, and community ecology, but the topics are carefully integrated. Moreover, we apply this information extensively in Chapters 56 and 57 (The Biosphere and Conservation Biology) to address the environmental issues facing our planet. We believe it is of the utmost importance that students understand the scientific bases to current problems so they can evaluate efforts to solve them.