Extract
Have you ever wondered what evolutionary ecologists do? What sorts of questions drive them and how do they approach the answers to these questions? Are you interested in understanding patterns and phenotypes seen in nature? Are you wondering what to do with the next 20 years of your life? If you answered yes to at least two of these questions, then I recommend that you read “In the Light of Evolution,” a volume of 17 essays edited by Jonathan Losos. He has brought together a loosely connected set of individuals, many from Harvard, where he works, together with others who he has collaborated with, shares interests with, or simply admires, to write about their obsessions. Yes, for the most part, these are people who obsess and in doing so they have illuminated aspects of nature that were in the dark prior to their probing. They have helped us understand their small part of the world in the light of evolution and thereby provide us with parts of a framework that can be applied to other systems. As I tell my students in my evolution course, it is worth trying to see the world through the eyes of an evolutionary biologist, which is what this volume is all about and something I hope my students can learn to do.
