Wagner, Andreas – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Sat, 08 Jul 2023 14:29:09 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Wagner, Andreas – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 Sleeping beauties https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/sleeping-beauties/ Thu, 06 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=31810 Why do some of nature's marvels have to wait millions of years for their time in the sun?

]]> Life innovates constantly, producing  perfectly adapted species – but there’s  a catch.  

Many animals and plants eke out  seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive,  constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in  a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish  spectacularly. Once we start to look, these  ‘sleeping beauties’ crop up everywhere.  But why?

Looking at the book of life, from apex  predators to keystone crops, and informed  by his own cutting-edge experiments,  renowned scientist Andreas Wagner  demonstrates that innovations can come  frequently and cheaply to nature, well  before they are needed. We have found  prehistoric bacteria that harbour the  remarkable ability to fight off 21st-century  antibiotics. And human history fits the  pattern too, as life-changing technologies  are invented only to be forgotten,  languishing in the shadows before they finally take off.

In probing the mysteries of these  sleeping beauties, Wagner reveals a crucial  part of nature’s rich and strange tapestry.

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