{"product_id":"the-birds-of-northern-melanesia-speciation-ecology-and-biogeography-9780195141702","title":"The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation  Ecology  and Biogeography","description":"\u003cp\u003eSpeciation is the process by which co-existing daughter species evolve from one ancestral species - e.g.  humans  chimpanzees  and gorillas arising from a common ancestor around 5 000 000 years ago. However  many questions about speciation remain controversial. The Birds of Northern Melanesia provides by far the most comprehensive study yet available of a rich fauna  composed of the 195 breeding land and fresh-water bird species of the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes east of New Guinea. This avifauna offers decisive advantages for understanding speciation  and includes famous examples of geographic variation discussed in textbooks of evolutionary biology. The book results from 30 years of collaboration between the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and the ecologist Jared Diamond. It shows how Northern Melanesian bird distributions provide snapshots of all stages in speciation  from the earliest (widely distributed species without geographic variation) to the last (closely related  reproductively isolated species occurring sympatrically and segregating ecologically). The presentation emphasizes the wide diversity of speciation outcomes  steering a middle course between one-model-fits-all simplification and ungeneralizable species accounts. Questions illuminated include why some species are much more prone to speciate than others  why some water barriers are much more effective at promoting speciation than others  and whether hypothesized taxon cycles  faunal dominance  and legacies of Pleistocene land bridges are real. These years of study have resulted in a huge database  complete with distributions of all 195 species on 76 islands  together with their taxonomy  colonization routes  ecological attributes  abundance  and overwater dispersal. Color plates depict 88 species and allospecies  many of which have never been seen before. For students of speciation  Northern Melanesian birds now constitute a model system against which other biotas can be compared. For population biologists interested in other problems besides speciation  this rich database can now be mined for insights.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651712376885,"sku":"ByrdShop_0195141709","price":85.48,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780195141702.jpg?v=1781838054","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-birds-of-northern-melanesia-speciation-ecology-and-biogeography-9780195141702","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}