Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution

by Jonathan B. Losos Narrated by Marc Cashman

Overview

A major new book overturning*our assumptions about how evolution works
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Earth's natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change-a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze-caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life on other planets?
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Jonathan Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be.*
*
Improbable Destinies*will change the way we think and talk about evolution. Losos's insights into natural selection and evolutionary change have far-reaching applications for protecting ecosystems, securing our food supply, and fighting off harmful viruses and bacteria. This compelling narrative offers a new understanding of ourselves and our role in the natural world and the cosmos.

Editorial Reviews

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Is evolution a series of random accidents, or an inevitable path that would turn out similarly if you rewound and replayed the tape of history? Narrator Marc Cashman’s pacing and friendly tone allow even general listeners to explore this challenging scientific question posed by Losos, an evolutionary biologist. His musing are written with clarity and humor, qualities that are enhanced by Cashman’s warmth. The narrative is personal: Losos weaves the story through anecdotes about his own adventurous work in the Caribbean, as well as that of many colleagues. It’s cutting-edge science, though the second half of the audiobook gets bogged down in the minutia of these studies, which are less compelling than the big-picture questions introduced in the opening chapters. D.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

The Barnes & Noble Review

As a child in the evangelical South during the 1970s, I was taught that "Darwin" was a bad word. My textbook for the creation of life was the opening chapters of Genesis, Yahweh's six days of exquisite labor and then an extra day to chill. One week. The notion of evolution and its timeline -- billions of years -- seemed a heresy cooked up by egghead scientists and Satanic secularists. Just four decades and forty miles away from the infamous Scopes trial, I sang "I'm No Kin to the Monkey" along with my peers in Sunday School: I don't know much about his ancestors /  But mine didn't swing from a tree. Anti-Darwinism remains as American as God, guns, and apple pie: a recent poll revealed that nearly half of adults believe in a divine creation of a universe only a few millennia old.

But since the mapping of the human genome in 2000, we've confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are primates, sharing over 99 percent of our coding DNA with chimpanzees, whose own sequence tracks more closely to ours than to gorillas or orangutans. The genomics revolution has proven that Darwin was a prophet, his legacy still debated by evolutionary biologists across the globe. In his new book, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution, Harvard biologist and zoologist Jonathan B. Losos infuses a sense of whimsy and playfulness into the staggeringly complex problems of evolution, explaining why the evidence must be tested and re-tested, new data introduced, with each generation of scientists.

A lizard specialist, Losos has pursued his fieldwork in mostly tropical archipelagos, where he's studied anoles and how their scattered populations morph into similar body shapes, with virtually identical nutrition and behavior, depending on the ecological niches they inhabit.

Tahiti, Bermuda, Madeira, Bali. Everyone loves islands but no one has nesiophilia -- the inordinate fondness and hungering for islands -- more than an evolutionary biologist. Darwin drew much of his inspiration from island stopovers on the fabled voyage of the Beagle . . . Each oceanic island or archipelago is a world unto itself, the evolutionary goings-on there independent of what happened elsewhere. That means that by comparing one island to another, we can get a sense of evolutionary potential and predictability.

The occasional hurricane would wipe out Losos's slithery subjects, but he gleaned enough data to build an argument: presented with wildly different environments, species usually fill open niches in predictable ways -- the concept of convergent evolution. In other words, if you could roll evolution's dice over and over, you'd get the same (or similar) results each time.

Improbable Destinies takes us on a whirlwind odyssey, from vibrant Caribbean jungles to English grasslands to innovative swimming-pool labs in Seattle, surveying a spectrum of species: guppies, moths, deer mice, bacteria. He recounts myriad experiments that show that Darwin was wrong about one pillar of his theory: evolution doesn't always move at a glacial pace but rather can be observed within a few generations (or over the course of a biologist's career): "The resistance of rats to developing cavities, the tendency of fruit flies to fly toward light, and fruit fly tolerance of alcohol fumes . . . pick any trait that varies in a population, impose artificial selection, and you will get an evolutionary response."

The literary scholar Harold Bloom once asserted that "the meaning of a poem is always another poem," but his maxim could apply to science writing as well. Behind Improbable Destinies lurk David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo and Jonathan Wiener's Pulitzer Prize–winning The Beak of the Finch, but Losos's major influence is Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 masterpiece, Wonderful Life, whose detailed analysis of the Burgess Shale's wealth of Cambrian fossils posits that life on earth could only have evolved the way it has once -- rewind the tape and you'll get different chemistry, different avenues of natural selection, different flora and fauna, and so on. (Gould's title is an homage to Frank Capra's 1946 film, which allows James Stewart a glimpse of a notional world in which he'd never been born.) Losos both explicitly and implicitly engages Gould's ideas; and in a twist that Darwin would have loved, he reaches no firm conclusion. "Start with identical circumstances and you'll usually -- but definitely not always -- get a pretty similar outcome."

Improbable Destinies is a crackling good read, threading rich anecdote into trenchant science. It belongs on the same shelf as I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong's gorgeously crafted account of microbes and their critical roles in our bodies; Nick Lane's dense, groundbreaking work on the origins of life, The Vital Question; and other recent books that grapple with Darwin's revolution, such as Richard O. Prum's The Evolution of Beauty and Robert M. Sapolsky's Behave. Ours is an era of paradigm shifts in science, with a bonanza of literature that captures our world's breathtaking diversity as well as its dire future. As Losos notes, "The elephant in the room, of course, is global warming . . . one seven-year-long experimental study on worms detected replicated genetic changes associated with warmer soils. I predict that this is just the tip of the melting iceberg and that soon we will detect many physiological, behavioral, and anatomical changes convergently evolved in vulnerable species."

Given that climate change may be our most daunting challenge -- and given that all kinds of species, from worms to fish to germs, will mutate rapidly to accommodate these shifts -- books such as Improbable Destinies offer a roadmap for our species, from the African savannahs to inundated coasts. Fortunately for readers, Losos and Yong and Sapolsky are also every inch the prose stylists as the majority of fiction writers promoted with more fanfare. It's high time to transform the hearts and minds of Americans hostile not only to evolution but the crisis that is already forcing the world's next cycle of rapid biological change. It's high time we act -- our evolutionary future may pivot on what we do next.

Hamilton Cain is the author of a memoir, This Boy's Faith, and a former finalist for a National Magazine Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviewer: Hamilton Cain

Publishers Weekly

05/22/2017
Losos (Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree), professor of biology at Harvard, explores whether evolution is deterministic or subject to various contingencies, along the way posing two even more basic questions: How do we know what we know, and can ecology be considered an experimental science? Describing both field and laboratory work, Losos demonstrates how the combination of experimentation and observation has led to great insight into nature. Whether he is discussing his own research on lizards in the Bahamas or the work of other researchers in the Galapagos, British Columbia, or a laboratory at Michigan State, Losos explains both the science and the underlying philosophy of the questions being asked in an accessible and engaging manner. Unsurprisingly, the answer to his original question remains inconclusive. He makes clear that evolution proceeds similarly in many situations, though small, random perturbations can apparently lead to divergent outcomes that make evolution less predictable than some scientists would have us believe. Losos’s conclusion is well summarized when he quotes biologist Rich Lenski: “Both sets of forces—the random and the predictable, as it were—together give rise to what we call history.” The book is as enjoyable as it is informative, and it demonstrates how scientists think critically and assess data carefully. Illus. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

With an ideal combination of clarity and comedy, scholarly caution and infectious enthusiasm, Losos shows us how evolutionary biology opens up for each of us the glorious workings of our world, with surprises around every corner.” —Washington Post

“This is a wonderfully serious book with a lighthearted voice. Is evolution predictable or contingent? Big question. Why do adaptations converge? Big question. Why is the platypus unique? Smaller question, but fun! Read, enjoy, think.” —David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover

“Packed with stories of capturing lizards in the field, Improbable Destinies explores how we think evolutionary changes happen in populations, from mice to microbes to sticklebacks. Get this for the backyard biologist in your life.” —Popular Science

“Deep, broad, brilliant and thought-provoking. . . . In staggeringly clear and engaging prose, Losos shows us remarkable vignettes of scientists working at personal and professional risk in all sorts of habitats — field, lab and museum — to elucidate stunning mechanisms of evolution. . . . He is one of the premier writers in biology today.” —Nature

“[A] compelling book.” —Science

“In a refreshingly accessible narrative, laced with piquant anecdotes, Losos underscores the human significance of science affecting not only how we interpret our own place on the planet but also how we envision life in distant galaxies. Wonderfully lucid; singularly engaging.” —Booklist (starred review)
 
“A thoroughly accessible analysis of whether evolution is one big crapshoot or rather mundanely predictable. No spoilers here, but the evidence presented on both sides makes for some thought-provoking reading.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“A cheerful, delightfully lucid primer on evolution and the predictive possibilities within the field.” —Kirkus (starred review) 

“Every now and then a brilliant book comes along that helps us rethink what we know about a subject. Jonathan B. Losos’ fascinating, compulsively readable Improbable Destinies is just such a book. . . . With vivacious writing and thoughtful, provocative insights, Losos’ captivating study of evolution deserves to be read alongside the books of E.O. Wilson (The Social Conquest of Earth) and Stephen Jay Gould (Wonderful Life).” —BookPage

“Improbable Destinies is one of the best books on evolutionary biology for a broad readership ever written. Its subjects—the unfolding of Earth’s biological history, the precarious nature of human existence, and the likelihood of life on exoplanets—are presented in a detailed, exciting style expected from an authentic scientist and naturalist.” —Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

“Losos explains both the science and the underlying philosophy of the questions being asked in an accessible and engaging manner . . . The book is as enjoyable as it is informative.” —Publishers Weekly

“Is evolution a story foretold? Or is it little more than the rolls of DNA's dice? In Improbable Destinies, Jonathan Losos tackles these fascinating questions not with empty philosophizing, but with juicy tales from the front lines of scientific research. Drunk flies, fast-evolving lizards, mutating microbes, and hypothetical humanoid dinosaurs all grace the pages of this wonderfully thought-provoking book.” —Carl Zimmer, author of A Planet of Viruses and The Tangled Bank

“Improbable Destinies is a crackling good read, threading rich anecdote into trenchant science. It belongs on the same shelf as I Contain Multitudes, Ed Yong’s gorgeously crafted account of microbes and their critical roles in our bodies; Nick Lane’s dense, groundbreaking work on the origins of life, The Vital Question; and other recent books that grapple with Darwin’s revolution, such as Richard O. Prum’s The Evolution of Beauty and Robert M. Sapolsky’s Behave.” —The Barnes & Noble Review

“A rich, provocative, and very accessible book, Improbable Destinies is an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the ecological theater and evolutionary play of life, expertly guided one of its most insightful observers. Jonathan Losos has shone a light on a largely unheralded cast of fascinating creatures and ingenious scientists who are reshaping our view of why life is the way it is.” —Sean B. Carroll, author of The Serengeti Rules and Brave Genius

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Is evolution a series of random accidents, or an inevitable path that would turn out similarly if you rewound and replayed the tape of history? Narrator Marc Cashman’s pacing and friendly tone allow even general listeners to explore this challenging scientific question posed by Losos, an evolutionary biologist. His musing are written with clarity and humor, qualities that are enhanced by Cashman’s warmth. The narrative is personal: Losos weaves the story through anecdotes about his own adventurous work in the Caribbean, as well as that of many colleagues. It’s cutting-edge science, though the second half of the audiobook gets bogged down in the minutia of these studies, which are less compelling than the big-picture questions introduced in the opening chapters. D.B. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2017-05-15
A fresh take on evolution and how "we can study [it] as it occurs, right before our eyes."Good books on evolution appear regularly. In this excellent book, Losos (Biology/Harvard Univ.; Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation of Anoles, 2009, etc.), the curator of herpetology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, asks a big question that readers may not have considered: is evolution predictable? The author delivers an often startling, convincing, and entirely satisfying answer. In Hollywood science fiction, intelligent beings from distant planets look like us with a few tweaks. Science buffs sneer, but Losos maintains that this is reasonable. Provided the far-off planet's environment resembles ours, life will evolve more or less in parallel. "There are limited ways to make a living in the natural world," writes the author, "so natural selection drives the evolution of the same features time and again." This is convergence, a process in which unrelated organisms develop similar traits as they evolve in similar environments. The iconic example: when a mammal and a reptile evolved to live in the ocean, the creatures (dolphin, ichthyosaur) looked alike and little different from a tuna. Even more startling, evolution itself has become an experimental science. A brilliant experimenter, Darwin never tested his greatest idea because he thought natural selection occurred at a glacial speed. In fact, when pressures are strong, species change visibly within generations. Losos devotes the second half of the book to juicy, hair-raising, if sometimes-tedious experiments in which scientists show evolution occurring before their eyes. Protected from grazing rabbits, plants run wild within years. Nearly 65,000 generations of bacteria, carefully observed over three decades, have undergone profound, permanent changes. Years of measuring lizard legs (the author's specialty) or decades devoted to finch beaks or guppy color also turn up solid genetic transformation. A cheerful, delightfully lucid primer on evolution and the predictive possibilities within the field.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169093087
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/08/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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