Most people who have taken a biology course in the past 50 years are familiar with the work of David Lack, but few remember his name. Almost all general biology texts produced during that period have a figure showing the beak size differences among the finches of the Galapagos Islands from Lack's 1947 classic, Darwin's Finches. Lack's pioneering conclusions in Darwin's Finches mark the beginning of a new scientific discipline, evolutionary ecology. Tim Birkhead, in his acclaimed book, The Wisdom of Birds, calls Lack the 'hero of modern ornithology.' Who was this influential, yet relatively unknown man? The Life of David Lack, Father of Evolutionary Ecology provides an answer to that question based on Ted Anderson's personal interviews with colleagues, family members and former students as well as material in the extensive Lack Archive at Oxford University.
Chapter I: The Birds of Cambridgeshire
Chapter II: The Life of Robin
Chapter III: Darwin's Finches
Chapter IV: Robin Redbreast
Chapter V: The Natural Regulation of Animal Numbers
Chapter VI: Swifts in a Tower
Chapter VII: Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief
Chapter VIII: Enjoying Ornithology
Chapter IX: Population Studies of Birds
Chapter X: Ecological Adaptations for Breeding in Birds
Chapter XI: Ecological Isolation in Birds
Chapter XII: Evolution Illustrated by Waterfowl
Chapter XIII: Island Biology
Notes
As Ted Anderson shows in his charming and very readable biography, Lack's argument, which developed slowly, was that differences in the way populations adapt to and compete for local resources (such as seeds, in the case of finches) is a key part of the process of speciation...Anderson gives us a vivid portrait of Lack and the personalities and careers of many people he interacted with. -- Ben C. Sheldon,
NatureOne of
Teaching Biology's Top 25 Popular History of Sl#º
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