Evolution

Interbreeding with Neanderthals

The past months there's been some talk about modern humans interbreeding with Neaderthals (see, for example, this post). Today, I came across a nice video that succinctly summarizes the main findings. The video was made by Lynn Fellman, a designer, mu ...

Blog Post - Gunnar De Winter - Sep 23 2011 - 5:50am

Squids And Slugs Take Different Paths To Smarts

A hot new study in Nature has rearranged the molluscan family tree--with some surprising results! No one can deny that cephalopods (squids, octos, and cuttles) are the brains of the family, with their cousins the gastropods (slugs and snails) coming in a c ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Sep 23 2011 - 11:48am

Improving Understanding Of Mammal Evolution

New research that includes representatives of 99% of mammalian families, has provided a ‘big picture’ for mammalian phylogeny. By assembling a large and robust DNA matrix, based on sequences of many different genes, a research team led by biologists from ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Sep 24 2011 - 11:37pm

Evolutionary Transitions And Codon Bias

In a protein coding sequence of DNA, three subsequent nucleotides form codons (see figure 1), which, in turn, form amino acids that will eventually give rise to a protein. Some of these codons, however, are synonymous, meaning that one amino acid can be e ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Sep 25 2011 - 9:03am

Parasites Made The Evolution Of The Womb Possible

A new study in Nature shows that genetic parasites invaded the mammalian genome more than 100 million years ago and dramatically changed the way mammals reproduce. The molecular changes allowed mammals to carry their developing young within the womb rathe ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 25 2011 - 8:13pm

Pumice As Cradle Of Life?

In which context did life arise? A problem yet unsolved. Several plausible ideas and hypotheses have been put forward: shallow seas, meteorites (see DNA, Made In Space?), and even much more extreme habitats, such as hydrothermal vents. Perhaps pumice shou ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Oct 6 2011 - 9:19am

The Gentleman Cricket, Or Chivalry Is Not Dead

Males of many species guard the females they have mated with, a behavior generally interpreted as a tactic to reduce the likelihood that rival males will mate with the female. This, of course, can lead to a conflict between the sexes: where females might ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Oct 7 2011 - 3:52pm

Looking for Life

This TED video of Christoph Adami is about life, and how to look for it. He begins by talking about the apparent difficulty in defining life (click here for a post about inorganic life) (funny that he mentions the creature that can age backwards, more abou ...

Blog Post - Gunnar De Winter - Oct 7 2011 - 6:31am

A Nautilus Bedtime Story

Today's post in honor of the 2011  Cephalopod Awareness Days. October 9th is Nautilus Night. 500 million years ago, at the time of the Cambrian Explosion, there was no life on land. The ocean held plenty of trilobites and other animals, but  they all ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Oct 9 2011 - 11:32pm

Baby Altruism And Fairness

Cooperation has been/still is a major factor in the success of the human species, and in many others as well. Altruism and fairness are thought to play an important role in the development of cooperation. But when in a human life do these traits develop? ...

Article - Gunnar De Winter - Oct 10 2011 - 1:41pm