Overview

A fascinating exploration of symbiosis at the microscopic level and its radical extension of Darwinism Microbes have long been considered dangerous and disgusting-in short, ""scum."" But by forming mutually beneficial relationships with nearly every creature, be it alga with animals or zooplankton with zebrafish, microbes have in fact been innovative players in the evolutionary process. Now biologist and award-winning science writer Tom Wakeford shows us this extraordinary process at work. He takes us to such far-flung locales as underwater volcanoes, African termite mounds, the belly of a cow and even the gaps between our teeth, and there introduces us to a microscopic world at turns bizarre, seductive, and frightening, but ever responsible for advancing life in our macroscopic world. In doing so he also justifies the courage and vision of a series of scientists-from a young Beatrix Potter to Lynn Margulis-who were persecuted for believing evolution is as much a matter of interdependence and cooperation as it is great too-little-told tales of evolutionary science.

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9780471441526

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Reviews

...there is much to learn from this book... (Times Higher Literary Supplement, 26 April 2002) ...this is a great read: entertaining and revelatory, the sort of popular science book that is pushing fact ahead of fiction in the best-seller lists. (BBC Wildlife, May 2002) ...a lucid and highly readable defence of symbiosis... (Focus, July 2002)

...there is much to learn from this book... (Times Higher Literary Supplement, 26 April 2002) ...this is a great read: entertaining and revelatory, the sort of popular science book that is pushing fact ahead of fiction in the best seller lists. (BBC Wildlife, May 2002) ...a lucid and highly readable defence of symbiosis... (Focus, July 2002)

Author Information

TOM WAKEFORD, Ph.D., is a biologist and writer based at the University of Sussex, U.K. He is also the author of Science for the Earth, published by Wiley.

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