This volume is motivated by the desire to explain why Neanderthals were replaced by modern humans, in terms of cultural differences between the two (sub-) species. It provides up-to-date coverage on the theory of cultural evolution as is being used by anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists and psychologists to decipher hominin cultural change and diversity during the Palaeolithic. The contributing authors are directly involved in this effort and the material presented includes novel a...

From an infant’s first grasp of quantity to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the human experience of number has intrigued researchers for centuries. Numeracy and mathematics have played fundamental roles in the development of societies and civilisations, and yet there is an essential mystery to these concepts, evidenced by the fear many people still feel when confronted by apparently simple sums.Including perspectives from anthropology, education and psychology, The Nature and ...

Individual-Based Models of Cultural Evolution shows readers how to create individual-based models of cultural evolution using the programming language R. The field of cultural evolution has emerged in the last few decades as a thriving, interdisciplinary effort to understand cultural change and cultural diversity within an evolutionary framework and using evolutionary tools, concepts, and methods.Given its roots in evolutionary biology, much of cultural evolution is ground...

A renowned cognitive neuroscientist?s fascinating and highly informative account of how the brain acquires readingHow can a few black marks on a white page evoke an entire universe of sounds and meanings? In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene provides an accessible account of the brain circuitry of reading and explores what he calls the ?reading paradox?: Our cortex is the product of millions of years of evolution in a world without writing, so how did ...

Cognitive science is a cross-disciplinary enterprise devoted to understanding the nature of the mind. In recent years, investigators in philosophy, psychology, the neurosciences, artificial intelligence, and a host of other disciplines have come to appreciate how much they can learn from one another about the various dimensions of cognition. The result has been the emergence of one of the most exciting and fruitful areas of inter-disciplinary research in the history of science. This volume...

Mutualistic interactions among plants and animals have played a paramount role in shaping biodiversity. Yet the majority of studies on mutualistic interactions have involved only a few species, as opposed to broader mutual connections between communities of organisms. Mutualistic Networks is the first book to comprehensively explore this burgeoning field. Integrating different approaches, from the statistical description of network structures to the development of new analytical f...

A plethora of different theories, models, and concepts make up the field of community ecology. Amid this vast body of work, is it possible to build one general theory of ecological communities? What other scientific areas might serve as a guiding framework? As it turns out, the core focus of community ecology—understanding patterns of diversity and composition of biological variants across space and time—is shared by evolutionary biology and its very coherent conceptual framework, populati...

First published in 2012. Why does understanding really matter? Why do some learners fail to understand? At a time when league tables can be everything, examination grades matter. Perhaps more than many would admit, the cost is a lack of understanding. The new edition of Teaching for Understanding provides practical advice about how to support understanding in both children and adults. It is for all teachers and lecturers, experienced or otherwise, who want learners to do more than simply m...

Urban Remote Sensing is designed for upper level undergraduates, graduates, researchers and practitioners, and has a clear focus on the development of remote sensing technology for monitoring, synthesis and modeling in the urban environment. It covers four major areas: the use of high-resolution satellite imagery or alternative sources of image date (such as high-resolution SAR and LIDAR) for urban feature extraction; the development of improved image processing algorithms and tec...

The long-awaited revision of the industry standard on phylogeneticsSince the publication of the first edition of this landmark volume more than twenty-five years ago, phylogenetic systematics has taken its place as the dominant paradigm of systematic biology. It has profoundly influenced the way scientists study evolution, and has seen many theoretical and technical advances as the field has continued to grow. It goes almost without saying that the next twenty-five...

Fish travel in schools, birds migrate in flocks, honeybees swarm, and ants build trails. How and why do these collective behaviors occur? Exploring how coordinated group patterns emerge from individual interactions, Collective Animal Behavior reveals why animals produce group behaviors and examines their evolution across a range of species.Providing a synthesis of mathematical modeling, theoretical biology, and experimental work, David Sumpter investigates how animals move...

This accessible and timely book provides a comprehensive overview of how to measure biodiversity. The book highlights new developments, including innovative approaches to measuring taxonomic distinctness and estimating species richness, and evaluates these alongside traditional methods such as species abundance distributions, and diversity and evenness statistics.Helps the reader quantify and interpret patterns of ecological diversity, focusing on the measurement and estimati...