Cover: Evolution , 4th Edition by Douglas Emlen; Carl Zimmer

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Evolution

Making Sense of Life

Fourth Edition

Publication Date: October 24, 2025

Paperback ISBN: 9781319615703

How evolution shapes life, explained through real stories and science.

Evolution: Making Sense of Life is more than a textbook - it’s an invitation to explore the dynamic world of evolutionary science. Now in its Fourth Edition, this widely acclaimed resource continues to blend scientific rigor with compelling storytelling to engage today’s...

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1 The Whale and the Virus: How Scientists Study Evolution

2 From Natural Philosophy to Darwin: A Brief History of Evolutionary Ideas

3 What the Rocks Say: How Geology and Paleontology Reveal the History of Life

4 The Tree of Life: How Biologists Use Phylogeny to Reconstruct the Deep Past

5 Raw Material: Heritable Variation Among Individuals

6 The Ways of Change: Drift and Selection

7 Beyond Alleles: Quantitative Genetics and the Evolution of Phenotypes

8 The History in Our Genes

9 From Genes to Traits: The Evolution of Genetic Networks and Development

10 Natural Selection: Empirical Studies in the Wild

11 Sex: Causes and Consequences

12 After Conception: The Evolution of Life History and Parental Care

13 The Origin of Species

14 Macroevolution: The Long Run

15 Intimate Partnerships: How Species Adapt to Each Other

16 Brains and Behavior

17 Human Evolution: A New Kind of Ape

18 Evolutionary Medicine

The Fourth Edition of Evolution: Making Sense of Life reflects the latest scientific discoveries and pedagogical improvements across evolutionary biology. Updates include restructured content for improved clarity, revised illustrations, integration of recent research studies, and expanded discussions of key concepts. Significant changes span genomic analysis, fossil evidence, disease evolution, and behavioral ecology, ensuring students engage with the most current and relevant content in the field.
Throughout Evolution: Making Sense of Life, the authors present stories about evolutionary biologists and how they’ve advanced our understanding of the history of life, which offers a compelling narrative. The text recounts how these scientists set out to test hypotheses, how they developed experiments or went in search of fossils, and how they interpreted their results.
The strong pedagogy in this text has been designed to help students master the most difficult concepts in evolutionary biology. Fundamental concepts are presented step-by-step and revisited in later chapters to give students opportunities to deepen their understanding.
Mathematical coverage is integrated throughout the text in select boxes, allowing instructors to cover as much or as little detail as needed for their course.

Achieve is Macmillan Learning’s complete online learning system. It houses instructor resources to support teaching and a range of interactive resources and the full eBook to help students succeed in their course. Access to Achieve for instructors is available on this page. Student access to Achieve could be through their institution if the institution has signed a license or as a separate student purchase. The instructor must set up a course for students to benefit from this product.

Updates within our digital platform Achieve:

Updated Study and Assessment Tools:

Updated Adaptive Quizzes
All assessments are now tagged with learning objectives
Updated Homework and new quantitative questions
New Writing-to-Learn Activities utlize short-form writing and AI-enabled grading
Updated Videos and paired assessment
New functionality built-into the mult-take setting

New Instructor Resources:

New Active Lecture Slides
Updated Test Bank (10 new questions per chapter)

Chapter-by-Chapter Highlights:

Ch. 1 New SARS-CoV-2 case replaces influenza; expanded comparisons between whales and viruses; added content on cetacean evolution and thick skin adaptation in whales and hippos.
Ch. 2 New key concept added regarding Darwin’s voyages.
Ch. 3 Heavily revised; includes fossil dating techniques, pigment and soft tissue fossils, and new findings like 890-million-year-old sponges.
Ch. 4 New content on phylogenies, lobe-fin and tetrapod fossils (updated Fig 4.22), and mammalian ear evolution.
Ch. 5 Updated discussion of Joel Hirschhorn’s height genetics research.
Ch. 6 New example of natural selection drawn from Becca Love’s mosquito research.
Ch. 7 Added GWA study by Hopi Hoekstra on color change in mice.
Ch. 8 Updated Homo sapiens evolution; new genomic comparison techniques (dN/dS and sliding windows); new material on mobile genetic elements and supergenes.
Ch. 9 New section on limb patterning modules in vertebrates.
Ch. 10 New example of rapid evolution in elephants due to poaching; updates to finch research.
Ch. 11 Streamlined illustrations and added coverage of mating in sea lions.
Ch. 12 New opening section on orca longevity.
Ch. 13 New figure and example on “magic traits” using Timema stick insects.
Ch. 14 Revised opening on mass extinctions; new content on marsupial dispersal, stasis periods, and updated extinction statistics.
Ch. 15: New Box 15.1 on CRISPR-Cas system evolution in bacteria.
Ch. 16 Expanded discussion on animal cognition, supergenes, and vocal learning research by Erich Jarvis.
Ch. 17 Heavily rewritten for clarity and updated content.
Ch. 18 Major overhaul; new coverage of SARS-CoV-2 virus evolution, variants, infection mechanisms, vaccine development, and adaptive cancer therapies; multiple new figures added.

Douglas Emlen

Douglas J. Emlen is a professor at the University of Montana. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the U.S. Pres- idential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In 2014 he was awarded UM’s Distinguished Teaching Award and in 2015 the Carnegie/CASE Professor of the Year Award for the state of Montana. His 2014 book Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle won the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, and he recently starred in documenta- ries about his work on BBC (Nature’s Wildest Weapons) and NOVA (Extreme Animal Weapons).

Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer is one of the country’s leading science writers. A colum- nist for the New York Times, he is the author of 15 books, including She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Poten- tials of Heredity, which The Guardian named the best science book of 2018. Zimmer is professor adjunct at Yale University, where he teaches science writing. Among his many honors, Zimmer has won the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded by the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the National Association of Biology Teachers Distinguished Service Award.

Achieve for Evolution: Making Sense of Life is an online learning system backed by extensive development and research. Proven to increase student engagement and boost performance. Achieve offers:

Access to the ebook to download, read and virtually annotate for a completely flexible experience.
Course and book-specific resources including adaptive quizzing to personalize the experience for students.
A grade book, assignable assessments with targeted feedback, insights and reporting, instructor resources - all with seamless integration options.
Integrated with iClicker so that instructors and students can benefit in class and remotely from an industry leading student response system
Animated tutorial videos that further explain topics that students sometimes struggle with, including reading phylogenetic trees, natural selection and population size, mechanisms of speciation, and genetic drift, and White
Board Videos (mathematics tutorial videos) that help students with the quantitative skills they need for success in evolution.
Additional content and assessment to expand on the quantitative side of evolution.
Concept Tutorial Videos: Animations that walk students through the most conceptually difficult concepts. These include assignable associated assessments but also be used as a self-study resource.
The HUB for active learning which houses discussion activities, assignments for primary literature, in-class handouts, and other resources to make it even easier to engage your students.

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About Achieve

Achieve is our online learning system backed by extensive development and research. Proven to increase student engagement and boost performance. Achieve offers:

Access to the ebook to download, read and virtually annotate for a completely flexible experience
Course and book-specific resources including adaptive quizzing (Learning Curve) to personalise the experience for students
A grade book, assignable assessments with targeted feedback, insights and reporting, instructor resources - all with seamless integration options.

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