Cover -- Contents -- Series Foreword -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I A Big Picture of Big Pictures of Life's History -- 1 The Miscellaneous Transitions in Evolution -- 2 Alternative Patterns of Explanation for Major Transitions -- 3 Biological Ontology and Hierarchical Organization -- 4 Darwinian Populations and Transitions in Individuality -- 5 Evolvability Reconsidered -- II The Prokaryote's Tale -- 6 To Be or Not To Be -- 7 The Evolution of Restraint in Structured Populations -- 8 Conflicts among Levels of Selection as Fuel for the Evolution of Individuality -- III Complexity and the Developmental Cycle -- 9 Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality -- 10 How Many Levels Are There? -- 11 Plant Individuality and Multilevel Selection Theory -- 12 Phylogenetic, Functional, and Geological Perspectives on Complex Multicellularity -- 13 The Small Picture Approach to the Big Picture -- IV Concluding Remarks -- 14 Concluding Remarks -- Contributors -- Index.