2nd Edition
Darwin's Reach 21st Century Applications of Evolutionary Biology
Chapter 1 – Paging Dr. Darwin
Chapter 2 – Going Viral: Evolution and Viral Diseases
Chapter 3 – The First Six Years of Covid: Its Origins and Its Continuing Evolution
Chapter 4 – Avian Flu
Chapter 5 – Vectors of Disease
Chapter 6 – Mismatch – Are We Stuck With our Past
Chapter 7 – From Genetic Mapping to Personalized Medicine
Chapter 8 – Darwin Meets the Emperor of all Maladies
Chapter 9 – Human Life History
Chapter 10 – Darwin at the Farm
Chapter 11 – Managing Agriculture
Chapter 12 – Buccaneers of Buzz : Bee and Pollination Services
Chapter 13 – Darwinian Meat
Chapter 14 – The Biodiversity Crisis
Chapter 15 – Challenges in the Oceans
Chapter 16 - Challenges in the City
Chapter 17 – Challenges from Invasive Species
Chapter 18 – The Sequence on the Stand
Chapter 19 – Darwinian Security
Chapter 20 – Human Genetic Diversity and the Non-Existence of Biological Races
Biography
Norman A. Johnson is an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He who received his doctoral degree from the University of Rochester and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago. Johnson has also taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Hampshire College. Most of his research has been on the genetics and evolution of why hybrids between species are often sterile or inviable. Other research interests include the evolution of sex chromosomes, the evolution of extremely large dietary niches in insects, conflict between different parts of the genome, and the interplay between the relaxation of selection and the loss of traits.
In addition to Darwin’s Reach, Johnson wrote Darwinian Detectives: Revealing the Natural History of Genes and Genomes (Oxford University Press, 2007). This book examines how biologists infer the action of natural selection and other evolutionary processes from DNA sequence information. He also co‑edited (with Jason Somarelli) Cancer Through the Lens of Evolution and Ecology (CRC Press, 2024). Dr. Johnson has been active in science communication and outreach; notably, he co‑led the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center working group on communicating the relevance of human evolution.
