Pauly, D. 2004. Darwin’s fishes. An encyclopedia of ichthyology, ecology and evolution. – Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Abstract

Most people associate Charles Darwin with one major achievement only: the theory of evolution. Were Darwin to be associated with a particular group of animals most people would say finches. That Darwin was a versatile biologist with a broad interest in many aspects of biology and geology is not widely known. In fact, he started as a geologist. Before his publication of On the origin of species in 1859 Darwin already published several studies on the geology of South America, coral reefs and the systematics of fossil and recent barnacles. After The origin he published several papers on plants, amongst which several on movement (tropism) in plants. His last work (1881) was an ecological paper on the effect of earth worms on the formation of humus. In none of these studies finches were the sole subject of study. Darwin and fishes is not a combination one would obviously think of. But, after reading Daniel Paulys book, this might change, as Joseph Nelson puts it in the foreword of the book. Read more...