Evolution

Eyes Are Windows Into The Evolution Of...Facial Expressions?

If you become saucer-eyed when afraid or you squint from disgust, it may not be cultural- it may be biology. Near-opposite facial expressions like squinting and being wide-eyes are rooted in emotional responses that exploit how our eyes gather and focus l ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 20 2014 - 1:41pm

Mitochondrial DNA Yields Genghis Khan Of Brown Bears

Genghis Khan is famous in evolution because a giant chunk of the world carries is DNA. A recent story of brown bears shows that males roam much greater distances than females, and mating is part of the agenda.   ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 25 2014 - 8:59pm

How And Why Zebras Earned Their Stripes

Why zebras have black and white stripes is a long-standind puzzle of evolution. To find out, the researchers behind a Nature Communications paper mapped the geographic distributions of the seven different species of zebras, horses and asses, and of their ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 1 2014 - 2:33pm

The Neanderthal In Modern Europeans

Although Neanderthals are extinct but fragments of their genomes persist in modern humans.  These shared regions are unevenly distributed across the genome and some regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants. An international team of rese ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2014 - 12:27am

Lactase Persistence: A Khoe Evolutionary Tale

In a new paper, researchers writing in Current Biology show how lactase persistence variants tell the story about the ancestry of the Khoe people in southern Africa and that their pastoralist practices were probably brought to southern Africa by a small g ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 4 2014 - 9:03am

Breastfeeding, Infant Sleep And How Babies Are Defying An Evolutionary Mandate

Harvard evolutionary biologist Professor David Haig believes that infants that wake frequently at night to breastfeed are delaying the resumption of the mother's ovulation and therefore preventing the birth of a sibling with whom they would have to c ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 10 2014 - 9:23am

Fruit Flies Have Latent Bioluminescence

Fruit flies are secretly harboring the biochemistry needed to glow in the dark —otherwise known as bioluminescence- according to a paper in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 10 2014 - 10:03am

Does Germ Plasm Accelerate Evolution Faster Than Epigenesis?

A new paper suggests that genes evolve more rapidly in species containing germ plasm, which challenges a long held belief about the way certain species of vertebrates evolved.  The results came about as the researchers put to the test a novel theory that ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 14 2014 - 10:03am

Rock Paper Scissors- How Biological Mutation Wins

Without knowing it, organisms search for the next “winning” strategy in evolution. Mutation plays a key role in the evolution of new, and sometimes successful, traits. It's a lot like rock-paper-scissors- roshambo.(1) ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 15 2014 - 4:24pm

Cuckoo Mafia: Birds Raise The Young Of Others To Avoid Retaliation

We are all familiar with the Mafia. In China, it is the Triads, in Italy it is La Cosa Nostra. You pay for protection or disaster is sure to befall you. It happens in the bird world too, according to a new report. A bird will lay an egg in your home and yo ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 21 2014 - 10:29pm