Carl Zimmer

Parasite Rex (eBook, ePUB)

Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

For decades parasites were the pariahs of science, considered too aberrant and insignificant to study. Only recently have biologists begun to appreciate that these diverse and complex organisms are the most highly evolved life forms on earth. In this compelling, gracefully written work of popular science, Carl Zimmer takes us on a tour of the strange and bizarre world that parasites inhabit -- and delightfully recounts the fantastic voyages of these wonders of creation.

Parasites can: rewrite DNA; rewire the brain; genetically engineer viruses as weapons; and turn healthy hosts into the living dead. From a lab in California where the grisly secrets of parasitic wasps are coming to light, to remote Sudan, where the subtle horror of sleeping sickness is threatening millions of lives, Parasite Rex follows researchers in parasitology, one of the hottest fields in biology, as they attempt to penetrate the mysteries of these omnipresent creatures who control evolution, ecosystems, and perhaps the future of the human race. It is life science at its most thrilling -- by a writer who, according to John Horgan, "brings evolutionary biology to life more vividly than anyone in recent memory."

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Simon + Schuster LLC
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 21. September 2000
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780743213714
• Artikelnr.: 37831638

Autorenporträt

Carl Zimmer, author of At the Water's Edge, is a frequent contributor to Discover, National Geographic, Natural History, Nature, and Science. He is a winner of the Everett Clark Award for science journalism and the American Institute of Biological Sciences Media Award. A John S. Guggenheim Fellow, he has also received the Pan-American Health Organization Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting and the American Institute of Biological Sciences Media Award. His previous books include Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Parasite Rex, and At the Water's Edge. He lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents
Prologue: A Vein Is a River
First sightings of the inner world
1. Nature's Criminals
How parasites came to be hated by just about everyone
2. Terra Incognita
Swimming through the heart, fighting to the death
inside a caterpillar, and other parasitic adventures
3. The Thirty Years' War
How parasites provoke, manipulate, and get intimate
with our immune system
4. A Precise Horror
How parasites turn their hosts into castrated slaves,
drink blood, and manage to change the balance of nature
5. The Great Step Inward
Four billion years in the reign of Parasite Rex
6. Evolution from Within
The peacock's tail, the origin of species, and other battles
against the rules of evolution
7. The Two-Legged Host
How Homo sapiens grew up with creatures inside
8. How to Live in a Parasitic World
A sick planet, and how the most newly arrived parasite
can be part of a cure
Glossary
Notes
Further Reading and Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index