Includes lectures presented at the two international "summits on evolution" from 2005 and 2009

Gives an overview of developments that have taken place in our understanding of evolution since the papers of Darwin and Wallace

Demonstrates a path for future research which will further our understanding of life on earth and how it evolved

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Foreword.- Part I: Historical Perspectives.- Darwin-Wallace paradigm shift: The ten days that failed to shake the world.- From Copernicus to Darwin.- Part II: A Microbial World.- A Vestige of an RNA Apparatus with Ribozyme Capabilities Embedded and Functions within the Modern Ribosome.- Covering all the Bases: the Promise of Genome-Wide Sequence Data for Large Population Samples of Bacteria.- Role of Symbiosis in Evolution.- Part III: Early Eukaryotes.- The Evolutionary Origin of Animals and Fungi.- Written in stone: The fossil record of early eukaryotes.- Endosymbiosis in the origin
of eukaryotes.- Symbiogenetics: Proposal for a new science.- Part IV: A Planet of Animals and Plants.- Epochal change: sweltering climate at the Paleocene/Eocene boundary (55 million years ago).- Speciation and evolution of Darwin's finches.- Ecological Selection and the Evolution of Body Size and Sexual Size Dimorphism in the Galapagos Flightless Cormorant.- Index.