Before I launched into The Serengeti Rules, the new book by Sean B. Carroll, I anticipated that I would read about top-down versus bottom-up control of populations and the experiments that scientists have employed to test and explain these patterns. But I should have known that Carroll would also take the reader on a fantastic journey through the history of the scientific discovery of many of nature's most important regulatory mechanisms, from molecules to megafauna.
Still practicing as a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carroll is also vice president of science education for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In the spirit of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Carroll teaches us in The Serengeti Rules that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of regulation.” And he reveals this truth by way of a skill for which he is already well known: storytelling. Throughout the book, Carroll artfully...
University of California Press