Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Define species and describe how species are identified as different
Describe genetic variables that lead to speciation
Identify prezygotic and postzygotic reproductive barriers
Explain allopatric and sympatric speciation
Describe adaptive radiation

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe pathways of species evolution in hybrid zones
Explain the two major theories on rates of speciation

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe how the present-day theory of evolution was developedDefine adaptationExplain convergent and divergent evolutionDescribe homologous and vestigial structuresDiscuss misconceptions about the theory of evolution

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Compare homologous and analogous traits
Discuss the purpose of cladistics
Describe maximum parsimony

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Discuss the need for a comprehensive classification system
List the different levels of the taxonomic classification system
Describe how systematics and taxonomy relate to phylogeny
Discuss the components and purpose of a phylogenetic tree

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the different ways natural selection can shape populations
Describe how these different forces can lead to different outcomes in terms of the population variation

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Define population genetics and describe how population genetics is used in the study of the evolution of populations
Define the Hardy-Weinberg principle and discuss its importance

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Describe the different types of variation in a populationExplain why only heritable variation can be acted upon by natural selectionDescribe genetic drift and the bottleneck effectExplain how each evolutionary force can influence the allele frequencies of a population

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain pharmacogenomics
Define polygenic

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe gel electrophoresis
Explain molecular and reproductive cloning
Describe uses of biotechnology in medicine and agriculture

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain systems biology
Describe a proteome
Define protein signature