Life History Invariants : Some Explorations of Symmetry in Evolutionary Ecology

In this book, noted biologist Eric Charnov uses ideas about symmetry, invariance, and scaling laws to explain many formerly puzzling regularities in population biology. Aspects of life history evolution and population dynamics are illuminated by his synthesis of symmetry and symmetry-breakingarguments. For example, he develops sex allocation evolution to reveal how symmetry-breaking leads to biased sex ratios, and also demonstrates how the process plays an important role in the evolution of alternative male life histories. A detailed evolutionary theory is developed and tested for theallometric structure of life histories in female mammals. The symmetry perspective is also applied to studies of aging as well as to the study of allometry in population dynamics. This work will attract interest among a wide range of students and researchers in ecology, evolution, behavior, andother fields within organismal biology.Charnov, Eric L. is the author of 'Life History Invariants : Some Explorations of Symmetry in Evolutionary Ecology', published 1993 under ISBN 9780198540724 and ISBN 0198540728.