Earth's first interstellar mission ... An alien colony in ruins ... Their fight for survival has only just begun. Called "True Science Fiction" ... A must-read! When Jack Harrison climbed down the short ladder from the airlock and stepped onto the debris covered soil, the ground crackled with the sound of dried leaves and twigs. Warm sunlight shined through his helmet, making him almost forget the decade he just spent captaining Earth's first ship to another star system. The serene tropical surroundings, though, stood in stark contrast to the long abandoned structures that lay nearby. Evidence points to a massacre - the systematic extermination of an alien colony hundreds of millennia ahead of humanity. Time, however, has erased any trace of the attackers. Jack and his crew barely start probing the ruins before their curiosity betrays them as an abandoned alien device cuts them off from their main ship. Lost and short on supplies, survival soon becomes their only goal. Even their short-lived rescue by an alien race, who themselves are under siege, offers little hope. As they struggle to find a way home, signs begin pointing to a danger darker than any they could have foreseen. Jack knows that playing it safe may no longer be an option - but his only other choice is to confront a threat that they don't even begin to understand.

"An Introduction to Conservation Biology is well suited for a wide range of undergraduate courses, as both a primary text for conservation biology courses and a supplement for ecological and environmental science courses. This new edition focuses on engaging students through videos and activities, and includes new pedagogy to scaffold students' learning. Coverage of recent conservation biology events in the news-such as global climate change and sustainable development-keeps the content fresh and current"--

In the Retro Hugo Award–nominated novel that inspired the Syfy miniseries, alien invaders bring peace to Earth—at a grave price: “A first-rate tour de force” (The New York Times). In the near future, enormous silver spaceships appear without warning over mankind’s largest cities. They belong to the Overlords, an alien race far superior to humanity in technological development. Their purpose is to dominate Earth. Their demands, however, are surprisingly benevolent: end war, poverty, and cruelty. Their presence, rather than signaling the end of humanity, ushers in a golden age . . . or so it seems. Without conflict, human culture and progress stagnate. As the years pass, it becomes clear that the Overlords have a hidden agenda for the evolution of the human race that may not be as benevolent as it seems. “Frighteningly logical, believable, and grimly prophetic . . . Clarke is a master.” —Los Angeles Times

Quantitative approaches to evolutionary biology traditionally consider evolutionary change in isolation from an important pressure in natural selection: the demography of coevolving populations. In Analysis of Evolutionary Processes, Fabio Dercole and Sergio Rinaldi have written the first comprehensive book on Adaptive Dynamics (AD), a quantitative modeling approach that explicitly links evolutionary changes to demographic ones. The book shows how the so-called AD canonical equation can answer questions of paramount interest in biology, engineering, and the social sciences, especially economics. After introducing the basics of evolutionary processes and classifying available modeling approaches, Dercole and Rinaldi give a detailed presentation of the derivation of the AD canonical equation, an ordinary differential equation that focuses on evolutionary processes driven by rare and small innovations. The authors then look at important features of evolutionary dynamics as viewed through the lens of AD. They present their discovery of the first chaotic evolutionary attractor, which calls into question the common view that coevolution produces exquisitely harmonious adaptations between species. And, opening up potential new lines of research by providing the first application of AD to economics, they show how AD can explain the emergence of technological variety. Analysis of Evolutionary Processes will interest anyone looking for a self-contained treatment of AD for self-study or teaching, including graduate students and researchers in mathematical and theoretical biology, applied mathematics, and theoretical economics.

Examines extinction in birds, with case studies of critically endangered species and the research initiatives designed to save them.