Green Equilibrium: The Vital Balance of Humans and Nature

In Green Equilibrium, award-winning field biologist Christopher Wills explains the rules by which ecosystems thrive, shining light on a set of ecological balancing acts that he calls "green equilibria," rules which keep our world vibrant, verdant, and ecologically intact. To explain the idea of "green equilibrium," Wills draws on a fascinating range of examples, including coral reefs off the densely populated Philippines, the isolated and thickly forested valleys of Papua New Guinea, the changing Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and a Californian ranch being allowed to return to a wild state. Wills travels to Guyana's rainforests and savannahs, for instance, to provide startling vignettes of ecological processes in action. Among other topics, he highlights the astonishing snake-head mimicry that swallowtail caterpillars use to scare off predators, the symbiotic relationship between the exceedingly rare Golden Poison-Dart Frog and the tank bromeliad plant, and the invisible world of pathogens and parasites that helps to drive diversity. All these mechanisms, and many more, maintain the "green equilibria" of Guyana's rainforest ecosystems. Wills also shows how "green equilibria" have shaped the evolution and history of our own species. We now know that a kind of genetic "green equilibrium" helped populations adapt to changing environmental conditions as they spread out of Africa. Striking new evidence indicates that some modern human populations still carry genes from past hominids (such as the Neanderthals) as well as genetic adaptations to local hazards such as malaria. Traveling to many different ecosystems, from coral reefs to the high Himalayas, and drawing on his own on-the-ground research, Wills illuminates ecological laws in action. Perhaps most important, he introduces us to people, in many countries around the world, who are now using this new knowledge to help heal the planet.

About the Author :
Christopher Wills is Emeritus Professor of Biological Sciences and a member of the Center for Molecular Genetics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of many books, including The Darwinian Tourist, The Runaway Brain, Plagues, Children of Prometheus, and The Spark of Life (with Jeffrey Bada). He received the Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which honors working scientists who make outstanding contributions to the popularization of science.

Review :
"In his latest popular science book, an encompassing work of fresh and realigning perspectives and discoveries enlivened by his wildlife photographs, Wills explores how ecosystems are shaped by evolution and how we are shaped by evolution and the ecosystems we inhabit." --Booklist "The author argues that human beings not only shape ecosystems, but are shaped by them. Thus, he writes, while we have pushed the green equilibrium out of balance in many places, making them unsustainable and threatening our own existence, the evolution of our species has given us 'pretty good brains, ' with the ability to understand the problems we have created and the power to solve them. Wills is both a skilled storyteller and a talented photographer and he provides an eye-opening account of the long history of human migrations out of Africa and into Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas." --Kirkus Reviews "[Wills'] book is an engaging mixture of ecologist's travelogue and science exposition, which manages to convey a wide range of important ideas in evolution and ecology in the context of ecosystems around the world, including California, Sri lanka, Thailand, Africa, New Guinea, and more." -- Biological Conservation