Evolutionary Analysis

I do not give 5 star ratings on textbooks often, and am typically very critical but I can't deny that I am extremely impressed with this book. It is very well written, they are able to easily explain what is occurring during the stages of viral life cycles and thouroghly explain the statistics and graphs presenting in case studies and articles. It provides multiple case studies to support the claims they are making. So if one example doesn't work for you another will. I am normally not a textbook heavy user, in classes I prefer to pay attention to the professors lecture and slides and what they say but this book is so well written that it blasts my professors lecture out of the park. It is detailed and although each chapter is a little long the language is not overbearing enough that the reading is fatiguing. It is user friendly and hard to get lost in the lingo even 25 pages into a concept. Authors Jon C. Herron and Scott Freeman should really be proud of this piece of art they have made. I rented this book for a semester but I am almost certain I will buy it because it seems like a resource I would like to have on my shelf for reference in the future when I inevitably get assigned a book written by an idiot in the future. Well done Herron and Freeman, well done.

If you desire to really understand evolution, this is the book you want. Scholarly yet accessible to the interested lay reader. It's expensive because it's high quality in both content and workmanship.

This is a serious text; over 800 large pages. It covers what used to be called genetics, and mixes it with development and evolution. This is appropriate because the fields have merged and should be studied together. Of course the cover image is the fruit fly, which we are learning is just a little human with wings. What used to be separate fields of study are merging, As we gather a deeper understanding of the genomic structures of species, we are seeing their relationship to ancient common ancestors. I have found the narrative of the text very understandable; not at all dry or staid. There are very many images, graphs, and illustrations. It is a rare combination of a text and a reference volume.

This textbook was required for my Evolutionary Biology course and I found the readings to be very helpful. The material is taught using plenty of real-world examples so the relevance of the material is always apparent. The author does a good job of making the material accessible as well. I did find some of the explanations for the mathematical aspects (e.g. population genetics) to be a bit daunting, however. Otherwise, a clearly written, easy to understand book.

This textbook is far college student use, and arrived in a timely fashion.

The most complete book on evolutionary analysis, writing in a very captive and clear way. Very detailed book including a very comprehensive computational perspective.

Bought a new book and it was delivered with crinkled edges and corners, frustrating when it's over 80 dollars for this book

I think this is a good book to help teach Organic Evolution to Biology students. The theoretical explanations are well supported by well-described examples. The content is well structured and the chapters are easy and pleasant to read.

It's an excellent evolutionary biology book for almost every level of knowledge. Freeman & Herron had the capacity to turn some of most complicated topics in evolutionary biology in the most comprehensive chapters in this book. Highly recommended if you're into learning evolution.

Solid book, printed on good paper, has some visuals. Heavily based on analysing research papers. It's more focusing on research process itself and not evolution of life in chronological order.

The authors take very interesting and much-needed example-based learning approach to unravel the beauty of evolutionary analysis. The book has the right combination of theory, its algebraic treatment, and informative figures that aid in the understanding of concepts of evolution. Highly recommended.

I'm currently taking the second part of first year biology (first part being cell biology, second part being evolution and ecology). The textbook I'm currently using for the course (A Pearson Biological Sciences Library custom edition of Biological Sciences 2nd Canadian Edition by Scott Freeman et al.) is woefully sparse on the nitty gritty details of how the various forms of evolution actually occur. I mean there's broad explanations for each of the four big ones (natural selection and its sub-divisions like directional selection and sexual selection; genetic drift; gene flow; and mutation), and the overall importance of each mechanism is stated (i.e. whether allele frequencies, genotype frequencies, etc. are altered or not), but that's it. Mention is made to the specifics of drift (such as some of the various causes of this sampling error), but there's no quantitative explanation, exploring in detail how it comes about. That's where Evolutionary Analysis by Jon C. Herron differs. It goes into plenty of detail for all of the above mentioned topics, uses quantitative explanations when necessary, and is so loaded up on applications they're practically coming out the wah-zoo, Pretty much everything I wanted from the Freeman text that I wasn't getting. I find the topic of evolutionary biology extremely interesting (though I'm a chemistry major), and it's nice to find a text that does it justice, only giving as much detail as absolutely necessary with no more, reinforcing the opinion of many physics and chemistry students that evolutionary biology (and ecology) hardly deserve to be called sciences, and are on par with such disciplines as sociology. But that just isn't true. Evolutionary Biology is extremely complex, especially as you get further into the subject and begin learning about the biochemistry involved in mutations, and learning the higher mathematics required to construct models for the various effects of the evolutionary mechanisms (genetic drift for example requires the use of stochastics, a very high-level area of mathematics). Of course this is simply the next step up from an introductory text, and assumes a knowledge of first year cell biology only, but what I meant to say is that by giving detailed explanations of the topics it goes a long way in showing EB isn't a joke. In short, very high quality text, with detailed explanations, the use of quantitative methods in discussions, especially in the case of drift, explores the cell biology of mutations in detail, and also introduces a lot of other topics simply not mentioned in many other, less comprehensive introductory/first semester sophomore texts. Would recommend. Though well worth the $155 price tag, I realize that's a lot of money. Grab one of the used versions if necessary, otherwise support the writers of this amazing text.

Fast and with good quality.