Download or read book Developmental Instability written by Michal Polak and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of developmental instability has generated a large amount of controversy recently, mostly because of fierce disagreement over the genetic basis of fluctuating asymmetry and its role in mate selection. This book is a timely and innovative critical evaluation of a burgeoning field. The book explores the premise that complex organismal, ecological and evolutionary processes can be understood as emergent properties of the "epigenetic machine," that is, the mechanisms fundamental to all organisms responsible for building and organizing phenotypes from information translated from DNA.