Edited by
Olivier Rieppel, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, U.S.A.
Description
This book explores ways in which systematic patterns are used to infer evolutionary processes. Among evolutionary biologists and systematists
there is a constant interchange between those that study the process of evolution (e.g., mutation, selection, speciation) and those that
study its patterns (e.g., variation, geographic distribution, ontogeny, phylogeny). Because patterns influence the development of theories,
and processes yield patterns, it is not always easy to distinguish one from another. This book is dialectic and helps crystallize a continuing
debate over the relationship of patterns to process theories.
