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6 Works 673 Members 33 Reviews

About the Author

Marlene Zuk is a professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota. The author of Sex on Six Legs, she lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Includes the names: M. Zuk, Marlene Zuk

Works by Marlene Zuk

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Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1956-05-20
Gender
female
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Places of residence
Michigan, USA
New Mexico, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Education
University of Michigan (PhD ∙ Biology)
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of New Mexico
Occupations
evolutionary biologist
Professor of Biology
behavioural ecologist
Organizations
University of California, Riverside
University of Minnesota
Short biography
Marlene Zuk (born 20 May 1956) is an American evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist. She worked as professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) until she transferred to the University of Minnesota in 2012. Her studies involve sexual selection and parasites.

Zuk was born in Philadelphia. She is a native to Los Angeles. She became interested in insects at a young age from living in the city. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Zuk started majoring in English, but decided to switch to Biology. After earning her Bachelor's degree, she wrote and taught for three years. In 1982, she and W. D. Hamilton proposed a hypothesis on sexual selection known as the good genes hypothesis. Zuk went to the University of Michigan in 1986 to earn her Ph.D. She completed her postdoctoral research at the University of New Mexico. She joined the UCR faculty in 1989. In April 2012, Zuk and her husband John Rotenberry transferred to the University of Minnesota, both working in the College of Biological Sciences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_...

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nothing is as bizzare & intrigguing as the insect world and pleanty of examples are given here. very enjoyable
 
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cspiwak | 6 other reviews | Mar 6, 2024 |
Dr. Zuk sets out to explore all of the ways that our preconceptions of the Paleo era may differ from how people really lived. I found the book as a whole pretty shallow -- some theories of paleolithic parenting, diet, etc. were introduced, but mostly it wasn't a very scholarly approach. Yes, it's a pop!sci book, but Dr. Zuk's popular works on entomology were much better.
 
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settingshadow | 14 other reviews | Aug 19, 2023 |
Dr. Zuk is first and foremost a terrific parasitologist. The portions of the book that Zuk spends discussing her own Ph.D. thesis and her own research, especially regarding sexual selection. The central portion of the book from about page 80 to page 180 is fascinating & probably should have been released as a stand-alone book -- it is focused, it flows and the topic is fascinating (these are the chapters on sexual selection, infection differences between the sexes and sexually transmitted diseases.)

The first 80 pages drag, and are covered both more interestingly and in more detail in hundreds of other popular science books. Also, the topics in these chapters (heterozygote advantage, hygeine hypothesis) have little to do with Zuk's central themes. Theis portion of the book also is infested with what Zuk seems to think are wry little asides, which grate terribly. The concluding paragraphs are interesting, but lack the compulsive readable of the earlier chapters.
… (more)
 
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settingshadow | 8 other reviews | Aug 19, 2023 |
nonfiction/science - behavior, biology
starts off with a couple of really fascinating chapters but drags a bit through the middle; the science isn't hard to understand but it's a lot of information piled on top of more information, with the conclusion of each chapter mostly adding up to each aspect/topic being difficult to pin down one way or another because it's all more complicated than we like to think (it's easiest for our brains to pigeonhole but that's generally not an accurate way to characterize the world).… (more)
 
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reader1009 | Oct 30, 2022 |

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Works
6
Members
673
Popularity
#37,521
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
33
ISBNs
24
Languages
1

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