Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo and Aurora Nedelcu have recently edited a new book on the evolution of multicellularity, Evolutionary Transitions to Multicellular Life.  The 22 chapters are divided into five sections: “Multicellularity in the Tree of Life,” “Model-Systems,” “Theoretical Approaches,” “Genomics Insights,” and “Molecular Mechanisms,” and the forward is written by Nicole King. Volvox  shows up in the chapters by Susan C. Sharpe, Laura Eme, Matthew W. Brown and Andrew Roger (“Timing the origins of multicellular eukaryotes through phylogenomics and relaxed molecular clock analyses”); by myself and Aurora Nedelcu (“Volvocine algae: from simple to complex multicellularity”); by Cristian A. Solari, Vanina J. Galzenati and John O. Kessler (“The evolutionary ecology of multicellularity: the volvocine green algae as a case study”); by John O. Kessler, Aurora M. Nedelcu, Cristian A. Solari and Deborah E. Shelton (“Cells acting as lenses: a possible role for light in the evolution of morphological asymmetry in the volvocine algae”); and by Daniel Lang and Stefan A. Rensing (“The evolution of transcriptional regulation in the Viridiplantae and its correlation with morphological complexity”).

I haven’t had a chance to read most of it yet, but I will comment on individual chapters as I get to them. Unfortunately, the book is behind a paywall and is quite expensive ($179 hardcover / $139 ebook). The terms of the publishing agreement specifically forbid posting on author homepages and publicly accessible repositories, but authors are allowed to share their chapters “…with research colleagues for their professional non-commercial research and classroom use, or to use it for presentations or handouts for students.” So if you’d like a pdf of the chapter by Aurora and me, send me an email.