Ecological Genetics is a 1964 book

Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of hot lava, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf or leaflet, and each side of a leaf is called a page...

 by the British biologist E.B. Ford

E.B. Ford

Edmund Brisco "Henry" Ford FRS Hon. FRCP was a British ecological geneticist. He was a leader among those British biologists who investigated the role of natural selection in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested in lepidoptera, the group of insects which includes butterflies and moths...

 on ecological genetics

Ecological genetics

Ecological genetics is the study of genetics in natural populations.This contrasts with classical genetics, which works mostly on crosses between laboratory strains, and DNA sequence analysis, which studies genes at the molecular level....

. Ford founded the field and it is considered his magnum opus

Masterpiece

Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

. The fourth and final edition

Edition (book)

The bibliographical definition of an edition includes all copies of a book printed “from substantially the same setting of type,” including all minor typographical variants.- First edition :...

 was published in 1975.

Ford's work was celebrated in 1971 by Ecological Genetics and Evolution, a series of essays edited by Robert Creed, publ. Blackwell, Oxford. This included contributions from Cyril Darlington, Miriam Rothschild

Miriam Rothschild

Dame Miriam Louisa Rothschild DBE, FRS was a British natural scientist and author with contributions to zoology, entomology, and botany.-Early life:...

, Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Dobzhansky

Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky ForMemRS was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis...

, Bryan Clarke

Bryan Clarke

Professor Bryan Campbell Clarke FRS, born in 1932, is a British geneticist. He is professor emeritus of genetics at the University of Nottingham. Clarke is particularly noted for his work on apostatic selection and other forms of frequency-dependent selection, and work on polymorphism in snails,...

, A.J. Cain, Sir Cyril Clarke

Cyril Clarke

Sir Cyril Astley Clarke KBE, FRCP, FRCOG, FRC Path, FRS was a British physician, geneticist and lepidopterist...

 and others.

Ford and Ronald Fisher

Ronald Fisher

Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS was an English statistician, evolutionary biologist, eugenicist and geneticist. Among other things, Fisher is well known for his contributions to statistics by creating Fisher's exact test and Fisher's equation...

 represented one side of a dispute with the American Sewall Wright

Sewall Wright

Sewall Green Wright was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. With R. A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane, he was a founder of theoretical population genetics. He is the discoverer of the inbreeding coefficient and of...

 over the relative roles of selection

Natural selection

Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

 and drift

Genetic drift

Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...

 in evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

.

See also

• Papilio dardanus
  Papilio dardanus
  Papilio dardanus , is a species of butterfly in the family Papilionidae . The species is broadly distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The British entomologist E. B...
  
  (the swallowtail butterfly that is the subject of chapter thirteen)