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Evolutionary linguistics or Darwinian linguistics is a sociobiological approach to the study of language. Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. The approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics. Studying languages as the products of nature, it is interested in the biological origin and development of language. Evolutionary linguistics is contrasted with humanistic approaches, especially structural linguistics.
John Maynard Smith was a British theoretical and mathematical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution with George R. Price, and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.
George Christopher Williams was an American evolutionary biologist.
Leda Cosmides is an American psychologist, who, together with anthropologist husband John Tooby, helped develop the field of evolutionary psychology.
John Tooby is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology.
Elliott R. Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sober is noted for his work in philosophy of biology and general philosophy of science.
Donald Symons is an American anthropologist best known as one of the founders of evolutionary psychology, and for pioneering the study of human sexuality from an evolutionary perspective. He is one of the most cited researchers in contemporary sex research. His work is referenced by scientists investigating an extremely diverse range of sexual phenomena. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker describes Symons' The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1979) as a "groundbreaking book" and "a landmark in its synthesis of evolutionary biology, anthropology, physiology, psychology, fiction, and cultural analysis, written with a combination of rigor and wit. It was a model for all subsequent books that apply evolution to human affairs, particularly mine." However, Symons and Evolution have been accused of misogyny and slut-shaming.
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture continually interact in a feedback loop, changes in genes can lead to changes in culture which can then influence genetic selection, and vice versa. One of the theory's central claims is that culture evolves partly through a Darwinian selection process, which dual inheritance theorists often describe by analogy to genetic evolution.
Paleobiology is an interdisciplinary field that combines the methods and findings found in both the earth sciences and the life sciences. Not to be confused with geobiology, which focuses more on the interactions between the biosphere and the physical Earth.
Darwinian literary studies is a branch of literary criticism that studies literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection, including gene-culture coevolution. It represents an emerging trend of neo-Darwinian thought in intellectual disciplines beyond those traditionally considered as evolutionary biology: evolutionary psychology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, behavioural genetics, evolutionary epistemology, and other such disciplines.
The Oxford Companion to Food is an encyclopedia about food. It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. It was also issued in softcover under the name The Penguin Companion to Food. The second and third editions were edited by Tom Jaine and published by Oxford in 2006 and 2014.
Phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) use information on the historical relationships of lineages (phylogenies) to test evolutionary hypotheses. The comparative method has a long history in evolutionary biology; indeed, Charles Darwin used differences and similarities between species as a major source of evidence in The Origin of Species. However, the fact that closely related lineages share many traits and trait combinations as a result of the process of descent with modification means that lineages are not independent. This realization inspired the development of explicitly phylogenetic comparative methods. Initially, these methods were primarily developed to control for phylogenetic history when testing for adaptation; however, in recent years the use of the term has broadened to include any use of phylogenies in statistical tests. Although most studies that employ PCMs focus on extant organisms, many methods can also be applied to extinct taxa and can incorporate information from the fossil record.
The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) annual Outstanding Reference Sources awards are considered the highest awards honoring academic reference books or media,. Besides these awards, the American Library Association (ALA) also grants other medals and honors including the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction and the Dartmouth Medal for the "creation of a reference work of outstanding quality and significance." In addition, the ALA List of Notable Books for Adults, selected by the RUSA Notable Books Council, has been chosen yearly since 1944.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by Donald B. Redford and published in three volumes by Oxford University Press in 2001, contains 600 articles that cover the 4,000 years of the history of Ancient Egypt, from the predynastic era to the seventh century CE. Articles cover art, architecture, religion, language, literature, politics, trade, everyday social life, and court culture in the Nile Valley.
Paul H. Harvey is a British evolutionary biologist. He is Professor of Zoology and was head of the zoology department at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2011 and Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 2000 to 2011, holding these posts in conjunction with a professorial fellowship at Jesus College, Oxford.
Mary Jane West-Eberhard is an American theoretical biologist noted for arguing that phenotypic and developmental plasticity played a key role in shaping animal evolution and speciation. She is also an entomologist notable for her work on the behavior and evolution of social wasps.
Mark David Pagel FRS is an evolutionary biologist and professor. He heads the Evolutionary Biology Group at the University of Reading. He is known for comparative studies in evolutionary biology. In 1994, with his spouse, anthropologist Ruth Mace, Pagel pioneered the Comparative Method in Anthropology.
The term phylogenetic niche conservatism has seen increasing use in recent years in the scientific literature, though the exact definition has been a matter of some contention. Fundamentally, phylogenetic niche conservatism refers to the tendency of species to retain their ancestral traits. When defined as such, phylogenetic niche conservatism is therefore nearly synonymous with phylogenetic signal. The point of contention is whether or not "conservatism" refers simply to the tendency of species to resemble their ancestors, or implies that "closely related species are more similar than expected based on phylogenetic relationships". If the latter interpretation is employed, then phylogenetic niche conservatism can be seen as an extreme case of phylogenetic signal, and implies that the processes which prevent divergence are in operation in the lineage under consideration. Despite efforts by Jonathan Losos to end this habit, however, the former interpretation appears to frequently motivate scientific research. In this case, phylogenetic niche conservatism might best be considered a form of phylogenetic signal reserved for traits with broad-scale ecological ramifications. Thus, phylogenetic niche conservatism is usually invoked with regards to closely related species occurring in similar environments.
Ruth Mace FBA is a British anthropologist, biologist, and academic. She specialises in the evolutionary ecology of human demography and life history, and phylogenetic approaches to culture and language evolution. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London.
Jonathan B. Losos is an American evolutionary biologist and Herpetologist.
References
- ↑ Encyclopedia of Evolution: Edited by: Mark Pagel Oxford University Press: Oxford Reference, ISBN 978-0-19-512200-8
- ↑ Encyclopedia of Evolution Oxford University Press
- ↑ Outstanding Reference Sources 2003, Bloom, Vicki D., American Libraries, May 2003, p.45
