Publisher's Synopsis
The simple Darwinian principles of the evolutionary process have long been of interest to students and scientists. Evolutionary problems have usually arisen at interfaces of evolutionary genetics, ecology, molecular biology, embryology, palaeontology and various branches of mathematics.;This collection of papers is the result of an international symposium on some of the current problems of evolution. The papers are arranged in five parts. The first part focuses upon constraints posed by molecular or cellular structure and organization, which appear to be important in the origin of life and consequently in the basic similarity of all living creatures on this Earth. The second part discusses the problems of developmental constraints in evolution and deals almost exclusively with animals, where the existence of the highly complex organism, especially the nervous system, seems to be difficult if not impossible to explain by conventional Neo-Darwinism.;The third section consists of various papers connected with reproductive and genetic constraints in the dynamics of population, such as sexuality. The fourth part is more homogeneous, concentrating on life history and its role in directing evolutionary changes in populations, while the fifth part reaches the "community level" to explain what kind of new rules enter into the evolutionary processes, thus creating further limitations upon the possible evolutionary changes.
