Vertebrate Life distills the necessary information from vertebrate anatomy, physiology, ecology, and behavioral studies and then helps students see important connections across levels of biological scale. As a result, students come to understand how organisms function effectively in their environments and how lineages of organisms change through evolutionary time.
Processing complex detailed information about expansive phylogenies and diverse anatomies can be difficult for even the most motivated students, and
Vertebrate Life addresses this challenge by combining appropriately detailed, clearly written text with outstanding phylogenies and figures, making it a thorough and engaging reference for students and instructors alike. The text's impressive illustration program helps students visualize complex concepts, allowing them to parse difficult anatomical information. The eleventh edition features an upgraded illustration program with several new and revised figures, including layered figures presented in the new enhanced e-Book.
Harvey Pough, Professor Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, is a herpetologist, specializing in environmental and evolutionary physiology; a past president of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; and the senior author of textbooks on Herpetology and Vertebrate Zoology. He has taught courses in Animal Behavior, Ecology, Herpetology, Human Biology, Introductory Biology, Physiological Ecology, and Vertebrate Zoology.
William E. Bemis is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University and Faculty Curator of Ichthyology at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates. He has studied the anatomy, systematics, and evolution of extant and fossil vertebrates for fifty years with a focus on fishes. He currently teaches Vertebrate Biology, Ichthyology, and Herpetology.
Betty McGuire is a retired Senior Lecturer from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She has studied social behavior, reproduction, and ecology of small mammals and currently studies behavior of domestic dogs. She coauthored textbooks on Animal Behavior and Human Biology, and taught courses in Vertebrate Biology, Mammalogy, Human Biology, Animal Behavior, Evolution, and Introductory Biology.
Christine M. Janis is Professor Emerita at Brown University, USA, and currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Bristol, UK. She is a mammalian paleobiologist who has studied the feeding and locomotion of Cenozoic mammals, especially ungulates (hoofed mammals) and kangaroos, and their paleobiology in the context of climatic and environmental change. She has taught courses in Comparative Anatomy and Vertebrate Paleontology.
Contributors:
Sergi Lâopez-Torres is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. He is a mammalian paleontologist who studies the early stages of primate evolution and the functional morphology and paleoecology in fossil Euarchontoglires. He currently teaches Human Origins, Primate Evolution, Zoology, and Paleobiology.
Emanuel Tschopp is a Humboldt Fellow at University of Hamburg, Germany, and Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History, New York. He studies osteological variability in extant and extinct animals, and how it can be used to infer systematics and evolution of dinosaurs and lizards.
Art Development by William E. Bemis.
