★適合喜愛《遺棄之島》的書迷

Discover the triumphant species that have defied the rules of natural selection in the world’s most unlikely places

Consider the tree lobster, the Haleakala silversword or the Kakapo bird. The Irimote cat, the Amami rabbit or the Wollemi pine. Each of these unassuming species has a superpower, an ace up their sleeve, which has helped then break the rules of evolution as we know them.

We expect successful, long lived species to be like us humans – dominant, numerous and shaping large habitats to our will. But hiding in far flung corners of the world are Darwin’s swindlers – species that ought to have lost out in the game of natural selection but survive by subverting the usual tactics. Against all odds, they endure, even flourish, in splendid isolation.

Tracing Darwin’s footsteps from New Zealand to South America and beyond, ecologist Martinho-Truswell seeks out the places where animals and plants, like evolutionary tricksters, have evolve cultures, strategies and populations that are defying extinction, shedding fresh light on the universal struggle for life.

Antone Martinho-Truswell is a behavioural ecologist and Dean of Graduate House at St Paul’s College, University of Sydney. He studied at Harvard University and at University College, Oxford. His work focuses on animal minds and learning and on human behavior and interaction with the natural world, and has been covered in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Times and New Scientist. He writes about biology and animal behavior for Aeon and the BBC and is the author of The Parrot in the Mirror. He lives with his wife and daughter in Sydney.