Most Popular Books by Edward O Wilson

Edward O. Wilson, uno de los científicos más reputados del mundo y dos veces ganador del premio Pulitzer, nos lleva de viaje desde Mozambique a Nueva Guinea, pasando por los bosques de Alabama y el jardín cubierto de maleza de sus padres, para contarnos de manera emocionante sus nueve décadas de pasión científica por las más de 15.000 especies de hormigas existentes. Combinando observaciones científicas con esclarecedoras anécdotas personales, Wilson elige veinticinco especies de hormigas para enseñarnos cómo estas criaturas genéticamente superiores hablan, huelen y saborean y, sobre todo, luchan por la dominancia. Describe una estructura social basada en hembras en la que «los machos son poco más que misiles volantes de esperma» y explica las violentas batallas se dan entre las colonias cuyo objetivo principal es el exterminio del enemigo. Además, nos da algunas pinceladas sobre las hormigas de fuego, las guerreras y las cortadoras de hojas, así como también otras especies más exóticas como las matabele o las hormigas toro. Con ilustraciones y fotografías de las expediciones de Wilson por todo el mundo, Historias del mundo de las hormigas es un relato personal fascinante (y a veces escalofriante) de un gran científico que atrapará a cualquier amante del mundo natural. «El experto en hormigas de renombre mundial desempolva su escritorio, que, no es de extrañar, contiene muchas joyas ... El infatigable escritor y naturalista Wilson, ganador del Premio Pulitzer, con 90 años y ya retirado del trabajo de campo y la erudición, ha reunido fragmentos de autobiografías y anécdotas sobre su insecto favorito ... el contenido y la calidad de la escritura son consistentemente de primera categoría.» — Kirkus Reviews «[Wilson] ofrece una obra esclarecedora llena de conocimientos sobre su especialidad: las hormigas. La pasión de Wilson por su tema, por el método científico y por el mundo natural se manifiesta claramente en este agradable estudio.» — Publishers Weekly «Los lectores que busquen una historia natural accesible sobre un insecto a menudo incomprendido apreciarán el tono modesto y conversacional de Wilson en esta breve mirada a su vida de apreciación de las pequeñas maravillas de la naturaleza.» —Elissa Cooper, Library Journal

本书主要内容是用生物学的理论来研究社会学,即用社会学的观点去“拟人化”地研究自然界中的动物。本书主要材料来源是美国科学院院士威尔逊的《社会生物学》1980年缩节本.

From this historic collaboration between a beloved naturalist and a great American photographer emerges a South we’ve never encountered before. Entranced by Edward O. Wilson’s mesmerizing evocation of his Southern childhood in The Naturalist and Anthill, Alex Harris approached the scientist about collaborating on a book about Wilson’s native world of Mobile, Alabama. Perceiving that Mobile was a city small enough to be captured through a lens yet old enough to have experienced a full epic cycle of tragedy and rebirth, the photographer and the naturalist joined forces to capture the rhythms of this storied Alabama Gulf region through a swirling tango of lyrical words and breathtaking images. With Wilson tracing his family’s history from the Civil War through the Depression—when mule-driven wagons still clogged the roads—to Mobile’s racial and environmental struggles to its cultural triumphs today, and with Harris stunningly capturing the mood of a radically transformed city that has adapted to the twenty-first century, the book becomes a universal story, one that tells us where we all come from and why we are here.

Simplified Chinese edition of The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson, who was regarded as one of the world''s preeminent biologists and naturalists.

The imported fire ant, Solenopsis saevissima richteri Forel, is the southernmost race of a widespread and highly variable South American ant. It was introduced into the port of Mobile, Alabama, sometime around 1918 and by 1949 had spread to parts of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 2. A great deal of color variation from nest to nest has been noted in the Gulf States population. This includes an extreme blackish phase referable to the original description of richteri, an extreme reddish phase referable to no described form, and intermediates between the two. This color variation is correlated with differences in size of the ants and in appearance and proportion of their nests. 3. The variation has a genetic basis. It is suggested in this study that the variation can be explained most readily on the basis of multiple pleiotropic alleles. 4. The history of the variation has been determined as follows: The darkest forms, or richteri s. str., were the ones originally dominant from the time of the ant''s introduction until at least 1929 and probably sometime after 1932. The origin of the new form is not known, although it is believed that it originated either through mutation within the population or through a second introduction. IN 1949 it was by far the dominant form. It had apparently replaced the typical richteri partly by rapid expansion and subsequent genetic dilution and partly through natural selection by direct competition. Its predominance in the main population and in at least two smaller isolated populations has evidently been responsible for a much greater success of the species. In the main population in 1949 the typical richteri was mostly limited in distribution to portions of the periphery of the range, forming with the new form roughly the concentric pattern of Matthew''s modified Age-and-Area hypothesis. 5. The new form has been interpreted as functioning, regardless of its origin, as a favorable mutation introduced into the population. Its rise to dominance has constituted an extremely rapid, nearly vertical evolutionary change.