Peyton on Futuyma

February 4, 2015 • 5:30 pm

by Greg Mayer

Today was the first day of class for Biological Sciences 314 Evolutionary Biology, and already last night Peyton, the Philosophickal Cat, was well into her reading of Doug Futuyma‘s Evolution.

Peyton reading Futuyma

Here, she’s boning up on the evolutionary developmental biology of wing and bristle morphology in insects. To her right is a list of historically prominent evolutionary biologists, along with some notes on the lecture sequence.

22 thoughts on “Peyton on Futuyma”

  2. I Had no idea cats were so interested in biology. I thought cats divided the world into Things I Can Eat, Things That Might Eat Me, and Slaves. Examples of these are cellophane tape, the rocking chair, and the dog.

  3. Awww she looks so cute! She is probably imagining all the fun she will have in school! 🙂

    1. Although my daughter would undoubtedly and emphatically agree with the sentiment, it was I, her daddy, who typed that last comment. Just a slight slip-up with my abbreviation expander.

    2. There’s no accounting for tastes. Dogs apparently prefer to read Bergstrom and Dugatkin or Zimmer and Emlen over Futuyma’s 3rd Edition, but it’s all good.

      1. My dog has carefully looked at all 3 texts. He likes Futuyma for the sheer depth of detail and wonderful examples. He will often purloin some of that for extra examples in his Evolushun 4 Dawgs Klass, but the B&D text is easier to cover in depth over a semester so he uses that. And besides, he wags his tail over how B&D covers some topics. The Z&E text is similar and very good in different ways, but it came out after he chose his text, so you know…

  5. Would you be interested in info. of Missouri HS prinipal on here last summer doing “great” things at LHS again?

  9. Hei,

    I have a question: What is the best graduate level textbook in Evolutionary Biology? To me it seems like there are a LOT of textbooks both for the undergraduate and graduate level (English-speaking ones). It is kind of hard to choose between the different options.

    In my undergraduate class we used Evolutionary Analysis by Freeman and Herron. I have often heard/seen the one by Futuyma hailed as THE best textbook on the market, maybe with Evolution by Mark Ridley as a close second.

    What do you think?

    Tom

  11. [In answer to questions above about which book is best.]

    Futuyma’s Evolution (3rd edition, 2013) is the best graduate/advanced undergraduate text available. It’s well written, the most comprehensive, and chock full of empirical examples. It’s closest rival is actually the last edition of his earlier book, Evolutionary Biology (3rd edition, 1998). In writing the new book, Doug tried to resist the temptation of “textbook bloat”– continually adding things to later editions– and so reduced and consolidated some things. The older book has a fuller treatment of population genetic theory, that most graduate students would need, and is in general a bit more comprehensive. It is, of course, a bit out of date now, not in being wrong, but in lacking fuller treatment of developments in fast moving fields such as evo-devo and genomics. That said, it is still edifying and quite worth the read, and includes a number of things not in the later book.

    Zimmer and Emlen’s Evolution: Making Sense of Life is a fine book: also well written, up to date, and very easy to teach from. Each chapter reads as a fine lecture or two. It would be my choice for a sophomore level class, and I’ve recommended it to colleagues teaching evolution for the first time, as it is possible to sync the lectures and reading of the text in a way that allows the contents to be covered fairly completely. That is also it’s drawback– less comprehensive, and with fewer examples than Futuyma, the text does not provide a lot greater depth than what can be done in class.

    I’ve nothing against Herron and Freeman, and have been repaid each time I’ve consulted it. Bergstrom and Dugatkin is a very attractive looking book, but I’ve not had much opportunity yet to use it. Ridley has not had a new edition since 2003, but was fine for its time.

    GCM

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