The Ecology And Evolution Of Heliconius Butterflies Hardcover

Chris D. Jiggins

The Heliconius butterflies are one of the classic systems in evolutionary biology and have contributed hugely to our understanding of evolution over the last 150 years. Their dramatic radiation and remarkable mimicry has fascinated biologists since the days of Bates, Wallace, and Darwin. The Ecology and Evolution of Heliconius Butterflies is the first thorough and accessible treatment of the ecology, genetics, and behaviour of these butterflies, exploring how they offer remarkable insights into tropical biodiversity. The book starts by outlining some of the evolutionary questions that Heliconius research has helped to address, then moves on to an overview of the butterflies themselves and their ecology and behaviour before focussing on wing pattern evolution, and finally, speciation. Richly illustrated with 32 colour plates, this book makes the extensive scientific literature on Heliconius butterflies accessible to a wide audience of professional ecologists, evolutionary biologists, entomologists, and amateur collectors.

9780199566570

English

Oxford University Press

22-02-2017

288

Chris Jiggins is Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Director of Studies and Fellow at St John's College, Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. His research group is currently working on many aspects of Heliconius evolutionary biology, including evolutionary developmental biology of wing patterning, the genetic and behavioural basis for speciation, the sensory ecology of mimicry and analysis of the Heliconius melpomene genome.

Jiggins provides a review of recent and classical work on Heliconius that is exhaustive enough to interest specialists, without losing general readers in the process. The Ecology and Evolution of Heliconius Butterflies is destined to become a standard textbook in the libraries of both lepidopterists and evolutionary biologists. * George Poinar Jr, The Quarterly Review of Biology * An excellent book for individuals wanting a primer on understanding the relationship between ecology and evolution. The book is well organized and is quite comprehensive, providing a wealth of information that is easily digestible while, in select cases, presenting both sides of an argument for questions in the field with no consensus. * Chris D. Jiggins, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine * Overall, this is a great book for students who want to better understand the mechanisms behind speciation and a must-read for researchers who study Heliconius * Conservation Biology