Biology: How Life Works, Volume 2 by James Morris; Daniel Hartl; Andrew Knoll; Robert Lue; Melissa Michael; Andrew Berry; Andrew Biewener; Brian Farrell; N. Michele Holbrook; Jean Heitz; Mark Hens; John Merrill; Randall Phillis; Debra Pires; Elena Lozovsky - Third Edition, 2019 from Macmillan Student Store
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Biology: How Life Works, Volume 2

Third Edition ©2019 James Morris; Daniel Hartl; Andrew Knoll; Robert Lue; Melissa Michael; Andrew Berry; Andrew Biewener; Brian Farrell; N. Michele Holbrook; Jean Heitz; Mark Hens; John Merrill; Randall Phillis; Debra Pires; Elena Lozovsky

BIOLOGY: HOW LIFE WORKS has been a revolutionary force for both instructors and students in the majors biology course. It was the first truly comprehensive set of integrated tools for introductory biology, seamlessly incorporating powerful text, media, and assessment to create th...

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Biology: How Life Works, Volume 2 by James Morris; Daniel Hartl; Andrew Knoll; Robert Lue; Melissa Michael; Andrew Berry; Andrew Biewener; Brian Farrell; N. Michele Holbrook; Jean Heitz; Mark Hens; John Merrill; Randall Phillis; Debra Pires; Elena Lozovsky - Third Edition, 2019 from Macmillan Student Store

Connected resources to help students connect How Life Works

BIOLOGY: HOW LIFE WORKS has been a revolutionary force for both instructors and students in the majors biology course. It was the first truly comprehensive set of integrated tools for introductory biology, seamlessly incorporating powerful text, media, and assessment to create the best pedagogical experience for students.

THE VISUAL PROGRAM The already impressive visual program has been greatly improved and expanded. The powerful Visual Synthesis tools have been reimagined, allowing for more flexibility for both students and instructors. A new Tour Mode allows for learning objective-driven tours of the material and deep linking from the eText allow the student to jump straight from the text into a rich visual representation of the content. Instructors can also create customized tours to use for engaging in-class presentations. And finally, new animations have been added to the library, including a new 3D animation to support the animal physiology content.

A FOCUS ON SCIENTIFIC SKILLS The third edition does even more to teach students the skills they need to think like a scientist, along with the content they need to move beyond the introductory course. New Skills Primers are self-paced tutorials that guide students to learn, practice, and use skills like data visualization, experimental design, working with numbers, and more. New How Do We Know? activities accompany the feature in the text and teach students to understand scientific inquiry.

THE HUB The best teaching resources in the world aren’t of use if instructors can’t find them. The HUB provides a one-stop destination for valuable teaching and learning resources, including all of our well-vetted in-class activities.

IMPROVED ORGANIZATION OF TOPICS We implemented several organizational changes based on extensive user feedback with the goal of creating an improved narrative for students and a more flexible teaching framework for instructors.

A new chapter on Animal Form, Function, and Evolutionary History leads off the animal anatomy and physiology chapters to provide a whole-body view of structure and function and to provide better context for the more specific systems in following chapters.

  • The ecology coverage has been enriched and reorganized for a more seamless flow. A new chapter on Ecosystem Ecology combines ecosystem concepts formerly housed in separate chapters to present a more cohesive view of the flow of matter and energy in ecosystems.
  • All of these changes and improvements represent the next step in the life of Biology: How Life Works. We think we have created the best learning resource for introductory biology students, and we think instructors will find joy in the improvements they can make in their classes with these materials.

Features

The tools and pedagogy of How Life Works have been developed to form a seamless connection between text, media, and assessment to help students connect the themes and concepts of biology.

Thematic
The authors of How Life Works use six themes to guide decisions about which concepts to include and how to organize them. The themes provide a framework that helps students see biology as a set of connected concepts rather than disparate facts.

  • The scientific method is a deliberate way of asking and answering questions about the natural world.
  • Life works according to fundamental principles of chemistry and physics.
  • The fundamental unit of life is the cell.
  • Evolution explains the features that organisms share and those that set them apart. 
  • Organisms interact with one another and with their physical environment, shaping ecological systems that sustain life.
  • In the 21st century, humans have become major agents in ecology and evolution.


Selective
How Life Works is not a reference for all of biology, but rather a resource focused on foundational concepts, terms, and experiments. It explains fundamental topics carefully, with an appropriate amount of supporting detail, so that students leave an introductory biology class with a framework on which to build.

Integrated
How Life Works moves away from minimally related chapters to provide guidance on how concepts connect to one another and the bigger picture. Across the book, key concepts such as chemistry are presented in context and Cases and Visual Synthesis Figures throughout provide a framework for connecting and assimilating information.

New to This Edition

MAJOR CHANGES AND UPDATES TO THE BOOK
In developing the third edition of Biology: How Life Works, we focused particularly on the form and function and ecology chapters.

New introductions set the scene for the plant and animal form and function chapters and highlight key themes in structure/function relationships.
• A new chapter, “Animal Form, Function, and Evolutionary History” (Chapter 33), leads off the animal physiology chapters. This chapter provides a whole-body view of structure and function that provides context for the specific systems discussed in the chapters that follow. It focuses on animal body plans and tissue types and introduces homeostasis as the major regulatory theme of the animal physiology chapters.
• The first section of “Plant Form, Function, and Evolutionary History” (Chapter 27) is a completely reconceived introduction to the plant form and function chapters. This section highlights major structure/function differences distinguishing bryophytes and vascular plants. It focuses on how the two groups maintain hydration, specifically on how the reliance on diffusion by bryophytes and bulk flow by vascular plants is reflected in overall structure and
cell properties.

Structure/function relationships are placed in a broader evolutionary framework.
• The new “Animal Form, Function, and Evolutionary History” chapter (Chapter 33) concludes with an overview of the history of animal evolution, placing major anatomical and physiological innovations in an evolutionary context.
• “Plant Diversity” (Chapter 31) is now organized around four major structure/function transitions in the evolution of plant life, highlighted in a new Section 31.1.

The relationship between structure and function has been further strengthened in the plant chapters.
We have recrafted several discussions of vascular structure and root structure to further clarify these structures and their effect on the resilience and efficiency of plant systems. In particular, the third edition provides a more thorough and insightful understanding of the mechanism of xylem transport.

The animal physiology chapters begin with a new introductory case that highlights structure/function relationships.
A new and engaging case on Biology-Inspired Design explores how scientists have mimicked nature to solve all kinds of practical problems of real-life interest to students, from Velcro to dialysis machines. Most animal physiology chapters contain a section discussing an example of biology-inspired design.

Ecology coverage has been enriched and reorganized for a more seamless flow.
A new chapter on Ecosystem Ecology, Chapter 46, combines ecosystem concepts such as food webs and trophic pyramids with the material on biogeochemical cycles formerly in separate chapters to present a more cohesive view of the flow of matter and energy in ecosystems. This new arrangement allows us to move seamlessly from organisms
to populations to species interactions to interactions with the physical environment to global ecology, ending with a discussion of the impact of human activities on the biosphere.

We continue to expand our treatment of ecological systems, one of our six grand themes. Chapters 44 and 45 (“Population Ecology” and “Species Interactions and Communities”) have been enriched by the addition of new concepts and examples to deepen the discussions of life histories and tradeoffs, island biogeography, the niche, biodiversity, and succession, among other topics.

Digital Options

Table of Contents

James Morris

James R. Morris is Professor of Biology at Brandeis University. He teaches a wide variety of courses for majors and non-majors, including introductory biology, evolution, genetics and genomics, epigenetics, comparative vertebrate anatomy, and a first-year seminar on Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards from Brandeis and Harvard. His research focuses on the rapidly growing field of epigenetics, making use of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism. He currently pursues this research with undergraduates in order to give them the opportunity to do genuine, laboratory-based research early in their scientific careers. Dr. Morris received a PhD in genetics from Harvard University and  an MD from Harvard Medical School. He was a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, and a National Academies Education Fellow and Mentor in the Life Sciences. He also writes short essays on science, medicine, and teaching at his Science Whys blog (http://blogs.brandeis.edu/sciencewhys).

Jean Heitz

Mark Hens

John Merrill

Randall Phillis

Debra Pires

Daniel Hartl

Daniel L. Hartl is Higgins Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He has taught highly popular courses in genetics and evolution at both the introductory and advanced levels. His lab studies molecular evolutionary genetics and population genetics and genomics. Dr. Hartl is the recipient of the Samuel Weiner Outstanding Scholar Award as well as the Gold Medal of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Naples. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the Genetics Society of America and President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. Dr. Hartl’s PhD is from the University of Wisconsin, and he did postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Harvard faculty, he served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, Purdue University, and Washington University Medical School. In addition to publishing more than 400 scientific articles, Dr. Hartl has authored or coauthored 30 books.

Andrew Knoll

Andrew H. Knoll is Fisher Professor of Natural History in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Dr. Knoll teaches introductory courses in both departments. His research focuses on the early evolution of life, Precambrian environmental history, and the interconnections between the two. He has also worked extensively on the early evolution of animals, mass extinction, and plant evolution. He currently serves on the science team for NASA’s mission to Mars. Dr. Knoll received the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in Science for Life on a Young Planet. Other honors include the Paleontological Society Medal and Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society, London. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London. He received his PhD from Harvard University and then taught at Oberlin College before returning to Harvard.

Robert Lue

Robert Lue is a professor of molecular and cellular biology and UNESCO Chair on Life Sciences and Social Innovation at Harvard University. He is also the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, where he is responsible for fostering innovative teaching in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Lue earned his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard, and since 1988 has taught undergraduate courses acclaimed for their innovative, interdisciplinary approach. In 2012, Lue’s extensive work on using technology to enhance learning took a new direction when he became the founding faculty director of HarvardX, Harvard’s university-wide online education initiative that includes the edX partnership with MIT. Lue continues to shape Harvard’s engagement in learning and expand its reach and impact globally. In 2017, he was awarded a grant from the Amgen Foundation to build LabXchange, an online platform for science education that integrates digital instruction and interactivity while connecting students, teachers, and researchers for sharing and collaboration. He also serves as the faculty director of the Harvard Ed Portal, the primary community engagement center on Harvard's Allston campus.

Melissa Michael

Melissa Michael is Director for Core Curriculum and Assistant Director for Undergraduate Instruction for the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A cell biologist, she primarily focuses on the continuing development of the School’s undergraduate curricula. She is currently engaged in several projects aimed at improving instruction and assessment at the course and program levels. Her research focuses primarily on how creative assessment strategies affect student learning outcomes, and how outcomes in large-enrollment courses can be improved through the use of formative assessment in active classrooms.

Andrew Berry

Andrew Berry is Lecturer in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and an undergraduate advisor in the Life Sciences at Harvard University. With research interests in evolutionary biology and history of science, he teaches courses that either focus on one of the areas or combine the two. He has written two books: Infinite Tropics, a collection of the writings of Alfred Russel Wallace, and, with James D. Watson, DNA: The Secret of Life, which is part history, part exploration of the controversies surrounding DNA-based technologies.

Andrew Biewener

Andrew Biewener is Charles P. Lyman Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Director of the Concord Field Station. He teaches both introductory and advanced courses in anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics. His research focuses on the comparative biomechanics and neuromuscular control of mammalian and avian locomotion, with relevance to biorobotics. He is currently Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Experimental Biology. He also served as President of the American Society of Biomechanics.

Brian Farrell

Brian D. Farrell is Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator in Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is an authority on coevolution between insects and plants and a specialist on the biology of beetles. He is the author of many scientific papers and book chapters on the evolution of ecological interactions between plants, beetles, and other insects in the tropics and temperate zone. Professor Farrell also spearheads initiatives to repatriate digital information from scientific specimens of insects in museums to their tropical countries of origin. In 2011–2012, he was a Fulbright Scholar to the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Professor Farrell received a BA degree in Zoology and Botany from the University of Vermont and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland.

N. Michele Holbrook

N. Michele Holbrook is Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She teaches an introductory course on biodiversity as well as advanced courses in plant biology. She studies the physics and physiology of vascular transport in plants with the goal of understanding how constraints on the movement of water and solutes between soil and leaves influences ecological and evolutionary processes.

Elena Lozovsky