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It is a matter of contention whether or not a general explanatory framework for the biological sciences would be of scientific value, or whether it is even achievable. In this paper we suggest that both are the case, and we outline proposals for a framework capable of generating new scientific questions. Starting with one clear characteristic of biological systems—that they all have the potential to make mistakes—we aim to describe the nature of this potential and the common processes that lie behind it. Given that under most circumstances biological systems function effectively, an examination of different kinds of mistake-making provides pointers to mechanisms that must exist to make failure uncommon. This, in turn, informs a framework for systematic inquiry, which in this paper we apply to the hemostatic system, but we believe could be applied to any system across biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

. Edited by Victor S. Kennedy and Brian F. Beal. Bethesda (Maryland): American Fisheries Society. $79.00 (paper). xiv + 595 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-1-934874-74-5. 2023. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses a book titled "Evolutionary Biology: Contemporary and Historical Reflections Upon Core Theory. Evolutionary Biology—New Perspectives on Its Development, Volume 6," edited by Thomas E. Dickins and Benjamin J. A. Dickins. The book explores the debate surrounding the need for an "Extended Evolutionary Synthesis" (EES) and includes 12 original papers from 19 biologists and philosophers. While some chapters reiterate arguments for or against the EES, others evaluate specific claims made by proponents of the EES. The book also features a unique structure with each chapter followed by a response from another contributor, allowing for further discussion and analysis. [Extracted from the article]

Science progresses faster when researchers operate within an explicit framework of concepts and theories, but currently biology has no explicit, overarching conceptual framework and few general theories. The single general theory currently recognized is that of evolution, which was put forth by Charles Darwin 150 years ago. Recently, Scheiner and Willig (2008) explicated a similarly general theory of ecology. In this paper, using the theory of evolution as an exemplar, I discuss the nature of theory in biology and put forth an overarching theory, as well as new general theories for cells, organisms, and genetics. Along with the theories of evolution and ecology, these constitute a general conceptual framework for the biological sciences. This framework reveals linkages among the various parts of biology, makes explicit the assumptions behind more narrow theories and models, and provides new insights into the structures of biological theories. This framework can also be used as a teaching tool, moving the teaching of biology beyond the transference of a vast compendium of facts. My hope is that this essay will lead to a vigorous discussion and debate across all of biology about the nature and structure of its theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictive models of plant diversity have typically focused on either a landscape's capacity for richness (equilibrium models), or on the processes that regulate competitive exclusion, and thus allow species to coexist (nonequilibrium models). Here, we review the concepts and purposes of a hierarchical, multiscale model of the controls of plant diversity that incorporates the equilibrium model of climatic favorability at macroscales, nonequilibrium models of competition at microscales, and a mixed model emphasizing environmental heterogeneity at mesoscales. We evaluate the conceptual model using published data from three spatially nested datasets: (1) a macroscale analysis of ecoregions in the continental and western U.S.; (2) a mesoscale study in California; and (3) a microscale study in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon and California. At the macroscale (areasfrom 3889 km² to 638,300 km²), climate (actual evaporation) was a strong predictor of tree diversity (R² = 0.80), as predicted by the conceptual model, but area was a better predictor for vascular plant diversity overall (R² = 0.38), which suggests different types of plants differ in their sensitivity to climatic controls. At mesoscales (areas from 1111 km² to 15,833 km²), climate was still an important predictor of richness (R² = 0.52), but, as expected, topographic heterogeneity explained an important share of the variance (R² = 0.19), showed positive correlations with diversity of trees, shrubs, and annual and perennial herbs, and was the primary predictor of shrub and annual plant species richness. At microscales (0.1 ha plots), spatial patterns of diversity showed a clear unimodal pattern along a climate-driven productivity gradient and a negative relationship with soil fertility. The strong decline in understory and total diversity at the most productive sites suggests that competitive controls, as predicted, can override climatic controls at this scale. We conclude that this hierarchical, multiscale model provides a sound basis to understand and analyze plant species diversity. Specifically, future research should employ the principles in this paper to explore climatic controls on species richness of different life forms, better quantify environmental heterogeneity in landscapes, and analyze how these large-scale factors interact with local nonequilibrium dynamics to maintain plant diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edited by Ignacio Fernández Monzón and Jorge M. O. Fernandes. Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and New York: Elsevier. [Extracted from the article]

Research in ecology and evolution today often emphasizes an equilibrium view of dynamical systems, to the point where historical explanations are largely ignored. Such views are especially prominent in the mathematical modeling of such systems where "solving" a model means finding and characterizing the stability of its equilibria. I argue that history is far too important in biology to be discounted in this way. I then outline a number of different "flavors" of history, by which I mean potentially overlapping ways in which history can play a critical role in biological processes. I illustrate these flavors with examples from the ecological and evolutionary literature, and demonstrate that adding an explicitly historical perspective leads to a deeper understanding of the relevant biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography on the subject of biology is presented which includes the books "Emboss Administrator's Guide: Bioinformatics Software Management," by Alan Bleasby, "Visualizing the Invisible: Imaging Techniques for the Structural Biologist," by Peter B. Moore and "The Laboratory Rabbit, Guinea Pig, Hamster and Other Rodents," edited by Mark A. Suckow.

Understanding the maintenance of sexual reproduction constitutes a difficult problem for evolutionary biologists because of the immediate costs that sex seems to incur. Typically, general benefits to sex and recombination are investigated that might outweigh these costs. However, several factors can strongly influence the complex balance between costs and benefits of sex; these include constraints on the evolution of asexuality, ecological differentiation, and certain life-history traits. We review these factors and their empirical support for the first time in a unified framework and find that they can reduce the costs of sex, circumvent them, or make them inapplicable. These factors can even tip the scales to a net benefit for sex. The reviewed factors affect species and species groups differently, and we conclude consequently that understanding the maintenance of sex could turn out to be more species-specific than commonly assumed. Interestingly, our study suggests that, in some species, no general benefits to sex and recombination might be needed to understand the maintenance of sex, as in our case study of dandelions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational systems are useful in neuroscience in many ways. For instance, they may be used to construct maps of brain structure and activation, or to describe brain processes mathematically. Furthermore, they inspired a powerful theory of brain function, in which the brain is viewed as a system characterized by intrinsic computational activities or as a "computational information processor." Although many neuroscientists believe that neural systems really perform computations, some are more cautious about computationalism or reject it. Thus, does the brain really compute? Answering this question requires getting clear on a definition of computation that is able to draw a line between physical systems that compute and systems that do not, so that we can discern on which side of the line the brain (or parts of it) could fall. In order to shed some light on the role of computational processes in brain function, available neurobiological data will be summarized from the standpoint of a recently proposed taxonomy of notions of computation, with the aim of identifying which brain processes can be considered computational. The emerging picture shows the brain as a very peculiar system, in which genuine computational features act in concert with noncomputational dynamical processes, leading to continuous self-organization and remodeling under the action of external stimuli from the environment and from the rest of the organism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the study of play behavior, marked by much empirical research and theoretical review. These efforts suggest that play may be of greater biological significance than most scientists realize. Here we present a brief synopsis of current play research covering issues of adaptive function, phylogeny, causal mechanisms, and development. Our goal is to selectively highlight contemporary areas of research in which the underlying processes and consequences of play should not be ignored. We elucidate some of the new and burgeoning areas of play research and interpret them from an integrative biological theoretical perspective that highlights areas in need of further experimental, comparative, and field research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Darwinian medicine is a still-expanding new discipline, one of whose principal aims is to arrive at an evolutionary understanding of those aspects of the body that leave it vulnerable to disease. Historically, there was a precedent for this research; between 1880 and 1940, several scientists tried to develop some general evolutionary theories of disease as arising from deleterious traits that escape elimination by natural selection. In contrast, contemporary Darwinian medicine uses evolutionary theory to consider all the possible reasons why selection has left humans vulnerable to disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communal egg-laying is widespread among animals, occurring in insects, mollusks, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, just to name a few. While some benefits of communal egg-laying may be pervasive (e.g., it saves time and energy and may ensure the survival of mothers and their offspring), the remarkable diversity in the life histories of the animals that exhibit this behavior presents a great challenge to discovering any general explanation. Reptiles and amphibians offer ideal systems for investigating communal egg-laying because they generally lack parental care--a simplification that brings nest site choice behavior into sharp focus. We exhaustively reviewed the published literature for data on communal egg-laying in reptiles and amphibians. Our analysis demonstrates that the behavior is much more common than previously recognized (occurring in 481 spp.), especially among lizards (N = 255 spp.), where the behavior has evolved multiple times. Our conceptual review strongly suggests that different forces may be driving the evolution and maintenance of communal egg-laying in different taxa. Using a game theory approach, we demonstrate how a stable equilibrium may occur between solitary and communal layers, thus allowing both strategies to co-exist in some populations, and we discuss factors that may influence these proportions. We conclude by outlining future research directions for determining the proximate and ultimate causes of communal egg-laying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review describes new developments in the study of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, a component of epigenetics. We start by examining the basic concepts of the field and the mechanisms that underlie epigenetic inheritance. We present a comprehensive review of transgenerational cellular epigenetic inheritance among different taxa in the form of a table, and discuss the data contained therein. The analysis of these data shows that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous and suggests lines of research that go beyond present approaches to the subject. We conclude by exploring some of the consequences of epigenetic inheritance for the study of evolution, while also pointing to the importance of recognizing and understanding epigenetetic inheritance for practical and theoretical issues in biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on group selection. It explains why the rejection of group selection was deemed as important and how it has been reintroduced based on a more careful formulation and subsequent research. The author believes that multilevel selection theory, including group selection, offers a noble theoretical foundation for sociobiology in the future.

The article examines how Viennese biologists Paul A. Weiss and Ludwig von Bertalanffy began to develop their own perspectives toward a system theory of life. Also highlighted in this section is the significance of their works in the renaissance of system thinking in biology. It mentioned that the early work of Weiss in developmental biology was focused on the regeneration and transplantation of vertebrates.

The article presents the author's views on issues related to the field of biology. The author refers to an essay on literature and science by Aldous Huxley and says that he seeks and finds the difference between the man of science and the man of letters in the focus of the former on the generalization of experience, of the latter on the uniqueness of the experience. According to the author, for the highest level of artistic communication the highest level of relevant knowledge and interpretative skill must always remain indispensable.

In his classic Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought (1966), George Williams showed definitively that our understanding of adaptation, a central concept of evolutionary theory, must be gene-centered. The purpose of adaptations is to further the replication of genes. Genes are machines for turning out more genes; and adaptations are the means by which genes pluck resources from the world to promote this self-replication. Thus adaptations transform potential resources from part of the indifferent world-at-large into tailor-made environments, environments brimming with resources for organisms' distinctive adaptive needs. Systematically different adaptive problems therefore give rise to different environments; and so different species, for example, have different environments. Thus a gene-centered analysis of adaptations implies a gene-centered theory of environments. Without genes to specify what constitutes an environment, environments would not exist Rather than being separate from biology, an autonomous, independent force, environments are themselves the products of biology. So a gene-centered view, far from depreciating the environment, furnishes a rich and precise understanding of its importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this section is to give brief indications of the character, content and cost of new books in the various fields of biology. More books are received by The Quarterly than can be reviewed critically. All submitted books, however; are carefully considered for originality, timeliness, and reader interest, and we make every effort to find a competent and conscientious reviewer for each book selected for review. Of those books that are selected for consideration, some are merely listed, others are given brief notice, most receive critical reviews, and a few are featured in lead reviews. Listings, without comments, are mainly to inform the reader that the books have appeared; examples are books whose titles are selfexplanatory, such as dictionaries and taxonomic revisions, or that are reprints of earlier publications, or are new editions of well-established works. Unsigned brief notices, written by one of the editors, may be given to such works as anthologies or symposium volumes that are organized in a fashion that makes it possible to comment meaningfully on them. Regular reviews are more extensive evaluations and are signed by the reviewers. The longer lead reviews consider books of special significance. Each volume reviewed becomes the property of the reviews: Most books not reviewed are donated to libraries at SUNY Stony Brook or other appropriate recipient. The price in each case represents the publisher's suggested list price at the time the book is received for review, and is for purchase directly from the publisher. Authors and publishes of biological books should bear in mind that The Quarterly can consider for notice only those books that are sent to The Editors, The Quarterly Review of Biology, C-2615 Frank Melville, Jr. Memorial Library, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3349 USA. We welcome prepublication copies as an aid to early preparation of reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]