Why Ecosystems Matter

Books of the Year 2024, GeographicalWills’s pulsating book… draws on genetics to disentangle today’s entangled banks - the inextricable links between all living beings - and to expand on Darwin’s understanding of evolution. * Andrew Robinson, 2024’s Best Books in Brief, Nature *Wills…has a clear, jargon-free writing style that helps to make Why Ecosystems Matter accessible for the lay reader… Over his career, Wills has worked across six continents and he uses short but vivid first-hand accounts of his experiences to bring the science in this book to life… * Shafik Meghji, Geographical *[a] wide-ranging book. * Andrew Robinson, Nature *

Christopher Wills is Professor Emeritus at the University of California San Diego. Wills was the first to generate an enzyme with changed function through artificial selection, and to show the nature of the genetic change and the nature of the functional change. More recently, his research includes widespread negative density-dependent selection and how it maintains the diversity of tree species in tropical forests. His books include The Wisdom of the Genes (1990), The Darwinian Tourist (2010), and Green Equilibrium (2013).