Sleeping Beauties: The Mystery of Dormant Innovations in Nature and Culture

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 demonstrate...