(Part 3) Top products from r/biology

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
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  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

You should certainly start at Foundations of Ecology to figure out what direction you want to go. From there, just start reading journal articles in the area, starting with the earliest. This probably means digging around in the compressed stacks of your university's library, but as a PhD, you should be doing this anyway. For non-article based literature, yeah Silent Spring and A Sand County Almanac are good. I have heard A Primer of Ecology is good but I have not read it. If you are interested in plants, I would look up David Tilman and read any of his books.

For books, I really appreciate:

1. Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin. http://www.amazon.com/Voyage-Beagle-Charles-Researches-Classics/dp/014043268X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374455951&sr=1-1&keywords=beagel%2C+darwin
   
   
2. Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Tatianas-Sex-Advice-Creation/dp/0805063323 A great and informative read for bedtime or bathroom
   
   
3. Big questions in Ecology and Evolution http://www.amazon.com/Questions-Ecology-Evolution-Oxford-Biology/dp/0199548617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374456046&sr=1-1&keywords=Big+questions+in+ecology+and+evolution
   
   
4. Experimental design and data analysis for biologists http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Design-Data-Analysis-Biologists/dp/0521009766/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374456103&sr=1-1&keywords=experimental+design+and+data+analysis+for+biologists
   OR a similar Biostatistics book. Note the above book is on one of the author's course webpages for free.
   

Mechanisms? You're talking about selection, mutation, genetic drift, gene expression/regulatory evolution, chromosomal inversions/deletions/translocations, TE activity, gene duplication, chromosomal duplication, codon bias, and more. The field is massively broad and encompasses everything from population genetics, to molecular biology, to genomics, to phylogenetics/molecular evolution.

I'm a evolutionary genetics PhD, and there's no review broad enough to cover it all. Maybe narrow it down a bit? Popular(ish) science books may be the thing you're looking for.

For example, this book by Michael Lynch would be a good start. He loves to look at the big picture stuff and tends towards comparative evolutionary genomics. For the soap-opera-like beginnings to population genetics (which really is the central theoretical core of evolutionary genetics), this book by William Provine is an entertaining and enlightening read.

Edit: Gene duplication is a favourite of mine: These authors are good for this review article. I haven't read it myself yet (I'm at home and cannot access it) but if it's published in Nature Reviews Genetics then it's probably very high quality.

Google Scholar is your friend. Search for "gene duplication review" and narrow by year to include more up-to-date. You can use the keywords at the start of my post to get searching.

A general idea of location would help greatly. For example, Peterson's 4th edition has the most up to date taxonomy for half the the US, and is fairly detailed, but Werler and Dixon's Texas Snakes has a ton of easy to read snake natural history information, but is limited to Texas.

If you can give us a location we can perhaps give better suggestions.

If you're serious about time management and productivity then I highly recommend you check out David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

Here is a summary video to get you started.

Here is David's website and the Amazon page for the book.

Best of luck.

I personally find Brock Biology of Microorganisms to be quite useful. It not only functions as a microbiology text book, but has a very in depth section to the identification of microorganisms.

http://www.amazon.com/Brock-Biology-Microorganisms-Michael-Madigan/dp/0130819220

I'm sure a free pdf copy of it exists somewhere.

Hello there!

You can pick up an older copy of the Raven/Johnson Biology book used from Amazon pretty cheaply: http://www.amazon.com/Biology-Peter-Raven/dp/0077350022/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404482342&sr=8-2&keywords=raven+johnson+biology

Same goes for the Campbell/Reece: http://www.amazon.com/Biology-8th-Edition-Neil-Campbell/dp/0805368442/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1404482401&sr=8-2&keywords=campbell+reece+biology

Hope this helps!

https://www.amazon.com/Microscope-Magnification-Soldering-Magnifying-Magnifier/dp/B07Y2RGRK6/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?keywords=usb+microscope&qid=1574527565&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFYNzFGOU5NUVgyRFomZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA1Mzc3NzkyVlpESThROUpSMUc4JmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAzMDUzNTQxM1lKWENSOE5IUk1NJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfcGhvbmVfc2VhcmNoX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

I’ve used this one to look at phytoplankton. I really liked it but I don’t think you much color depending on how you use it. I think you should be fine if your not looking at microscopic plants haha

The Song of the Dodo

Great book. Easy read.

I enjoyed One River [amazon] quite a bit. I would give it a shot if you're in any way interested in plants. Plus a little anthropology never hurt anyone.

For the basics, I still think this is one of the best.

https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713

I love this book.

The book mentioned in the video clip: Ghost of Evolution is well worth reading even if you don't choose this for your assignment.

Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif. Gives a nice background to a lot of the concepts that are still explored today.

I liked Brock Biology of Microorganisms a lot.

I highly recommend the book "Evolution in Four Dimensions" for this discussion. https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Four-Dimensions-Epigenetic-Philosophical/dp/0262600692

You may be interested in Deckle Edge's book "Mutants" which discusses some really bizarre human mutations, in the context of what the mutations tell us about development and genetics. But also with sympathy for the people involved. More here

Biological Statistics

Helps for understanding stats in relation to predation, competition, etc.

Courses:

Take population genetics and computational biology. Population genetics focuses on dynamics of allele frequencies in different populations. Computational biology is anything from simulating networks of biochemical reactions to identifying patterns in DNA using hidden markov models.


Books:

http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Systems-Biology-Mathematical-Computational/dp/1584886420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299531700&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Biological-Sequence-Analysis-Probabilistic-Proteins/dp/0521629713/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299531747&sr=1-1

I really like Making Sense of Evolution by Kaplan and another author whose name I cannot spell. I am not sure if this is a textbook. I found it in my university's library and used it as a reference during my undergrad.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Evolution-Foundations-Evolutionary/dp/0226668371/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324095225&sr=8-2

Botany of Desire
One River
Silent Spring
Basin and Range or most anything by John McPhee
Cadillac Desert

You might check these out (my university library had them):

http://www.amazon.com/Lab-Ref-Volume-Reference-Handbooks/dp/0879696303/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Lab-Ref-Volume-Handbook-Reference/dp/0879698152/ref=pd_cp_b_2

http://www.amazon.com/At-Bench-Laboratory-Navigator-Updated/dp/0879697083/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Statistics-Bench-Step-Step-Biologists/dp/0879698578/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Song of the Dodo a book about island biogeography. Once you can understand that... you know whats up.

Self contained ecosystem http://www.amazon.com/EcoSphere-Closed-Aquatic-Ecosystem-Sphere/dp/B005IZOB5M

http://www.amazon.com/EcoSphere-Closed-Aquatic-Ecosystem-Sphere/dp/B005IZOB5M