Pollution Is Not Good for You

bill traits, which, when combined with the measures of natural selection made in the wild, roughly predicted the net change in bill morphology seen in their data. More recently, the Grants have been investigating the genetic and genomic basis of variation in bill morphology and, perhaps the icing on the cake, have begun documenting the first stages of the origins of a new lineage of Darwin’s finch. In Search of the Causes of Evolution brings together just a small fraction of the biologists who have felt the Grants’ influence in their own work. Composed of four related parts, the book covers a breadth of subdisciplines within evolutionary biology: life’s origins and macroevolution, the molecular mechanisms that underlie evolutionary change, patterns of behavioral and morphological evolution, and the action and adventure stories of evolutionary field ecology. The book necessarily leaves out large chunks of evolutionary thinking; the specific fields that fail to make the cut include population genetics (except for brief coverage in section four), the statistical measurement of selection, and adaptive landscape theory. But the book is not intended to provide a comprehensive survey of the discipline. Rather, each of the four sections gives the contributors an opportunity to explore the influence that the Grants have had on their research programs and to highlight some of the Grants’ own favorite fields of inquiry. In Search of the Causes of Evolution will inspire biologists in the field, at the laboratory bench, and in the classroom. Many of the individual chapters are gems of evolutionary thought. High points include an exploration of classical ideas from novel perspectives, touching on the authors’ work, but they often delve into the historical, the whimsical, or just thoughtful speculation. Like any edited volume, however, the book also suffers from a handful of weaker chapters that are comparatively lacking in novelty and insight. Fortunately, these sections are outnumbered by their more thoughtprovoking counterparts. to seek to explain biological diversity at multiple levels, both inside and outside the cell. The interdisciplinary approach advocated by these two masters of their craft is well represented by this celebration of their careers. I heartily recommend In Search of the Causes of Evolution as a worthwhile addition to every biologist’s bookshelf. Some may prefer to pick and choose the chapters of greatest relevance to their own careers, but all will appreciate the insights gleaned from the Grants’ perspective. The greats are often loath to retire. At the conclusion of the seminar, the Grants announced that they were off to the islands in just a few days. They were eager to see if the new finch lineage was still breeding. Therefore, although they have “formally” retired, their work continues, and thankfully we can look forward to more of their inspirational work in the future.