Our Ancient Lakes: A Natural History

McKinnon, Jeffrey

  • 出版商: MIT
  • 出版日期: 2023-10-17
  • 售價: $1,250
  • 貴賓價: 9.5$1,188
  • 語言: 英文
  • 頁數: 336
  • 裝訂: Hardcover - also called cloth, retail trade, or trade
  • ISBN: 0262047853
  • ISBN-13: 9780262047852
  • 海外代購書籍(需單獨結帳)

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商品描述

The unexpected diversity, beauty, and strangeness of life in ancient lakes--some millions of years old--and the remarkable insights the lakes are yielding about the causes of biodiversity.

Most lakes are less than 10,000 years old and short-lived, but there is a much smaller number of ancient lakes, tectonic in origin and often millions of years old, that are scattered across every continent but Antarctica: Baikal, Tanganyika, Victoria, Titicaca, and Biwa, to name a few. Often these lakes are filled with a diversity of fish, crustaceans, snails, and other creatures found nowhere else in the world. In Our Ancient Lakes, Jeffrey McKinnon introduces the remarkable living diversity of these aquatic bodies to the general reader and explains the surprising, often controversial, findings that the study of their faunas is yielding about the formation and persistence of species.

The first single-authored volume to synthesize studies of ancient lakes, Our Ancient Lakes provides an overview of the lakes and their distinctive geological origins; accounts of the evolutionary processes that have generated the incredible diversity found in the lakes and produced some of the fastest speciation rates known for vertebrates; the surprisingly important role of interspecies mating in the most rapid diversifications; the uniquely complete records of the creatures that inhabited the lakes, which are being extracted from deep lake sediments; the prospects for the lakes as we tumble into the Anthropocene; and much more.

Shining a light on a class of biodiversity hotspot that is equivalent to coral reefs in the ocean or tropical rainforests on land, Our Ancient Lakes chronicles in a refreshingly personal and accessible way the often singular wonders of these venerable waterbodies.

The MIT Press gratefully acknowledges Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

商品描述(中文翻譯)

古老湖泊中意想不到的多樣性、美麗與奇特性——這些湖泊有些已存在數百萬年——以及這些湖泊對生物多樣性成因所提供的卓越見解。

大多數湖泊的年齡不到一萬年,且壽命短暫,但有一小部分古老湖泊,源於地殼運動,年齡往往達數百萬年,分布於除了南極洲以外的每個大陸:例如貝加爾湖、坦噶尼喀湖、維多利亞湖、的的喀喀湖和琵琶湖等。這些湖泊通常擁有多樣的魚類、甲殼類、蝸牛及其他在世界上無法找到的生物。在《我們的古老湖泊》中,傑佛瑞·麥金農向一般讀者介紹了這些水體的驚人生命多樣性,並解釋了對其動物群的研究所揭示的關於物種形成與持續性的驚人且常具爭議性的發現。

《我們的古老湖泊》是第一本綜合古老湖泊研究的單一作者著作,提供了湖泊及其獨特地質起源的概述;描述了產生湖泊中驚人多樣性的進化過程,以及已知脊椎動物中最快的物種形成速率;探討了物種間交配在最迅速多樣化中的意外重要角色;從深湖沉積物中提取的生物完整記錄;以及在我們步入人類世時湖泊的前景等更多內容。

《我們的古老湖泊》以清新個人且易於理解的方式,記錄了這些古老水體的獨特奇觀,這些生物多樣性熱點的地位可與海洋中的珊瑚礁或陸地上的熱帶雨林相提並論。

麻省理工學院出版社感謝J.M. Kaplan基金會的Furthermore計畫。

作者簡介

Jeffrey McKinnon received his BSc from the University of British Columbia and his PhD from Harvard University. A Professor of Biology at East Carolina University, his research has taken him to every continent but Antarctica and has appeared in journals including Nature and the American Naturalist.

作者簡介(中文翻譯)

傑佛瑞·麥金農(Jeffrey McKinnon)在不列顛哥倫比亞大學獲得理學士學位,並在哈佛大學獲得博士學位。他是東卡羅來納大學的生物學教授,研究足跡遍及除南極洲外的每一大陸,並發表於《自然》(Nature)和《美國自然學家》(American Naturalist)等期刊。