Evolution

Sean Carroll And Thomas Williams Tackle The 'How' Of Secondary Sexual Characteristics

For Charles Darwin, the problem of the peacock's tail, in light of his theory of natural selection, was vexing in the extreme. Indeed, in 1860, writing to Asa Gray, his most ardent American champion, Darwin confessed: "The sight of a feather in a ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 21 2008 - 2:19pm

thoughts on evolution

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Blog Post - Anonymous - Jan 3 2009 - 7:15am

Male Copulatory Organ Sizes Plus Natural Selection Equals Evolution Of Some Secondary Sexual Characteristics

The ostentatious, sometimes bizarre qualities that improve a creature's chances of finding a mate may also drive the reproductive separation of populations and the evolution of new species, say two Indiana University at Bloomington biologists. In the ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2008 - 1:08pm

What Grapevine Transposons Can Teach Us About Genome Evolution

The grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is a widely cultivated crop that has been subjected to intensive breeding since the Neolithic period (from ~10,500 to ~6,000 years ago). The domestication of grapevine has undergone a selection for traits important for its cu ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 2 2008 - 9:52pm

Is The Trichoplax Genome A 'Rosetta Stone' For Understanding Evolution?

Yale molecular and evolutionary biologists in collaboration with Department of Energy scientists produced the full genome sequence of Trichoplax, one of nature's most primitive multicellular organisms, providing a new insight into the evolution of all ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 3 2008 - 4:38pm

Mice With Human Fingers Means Junk DNA May Have Led To Human Dexterity

Subtle genetic changes that confer an evolutionary advantage upon a species, such as the dexterity characteristic of the human hand, while difficult to detect and even harder to reproduce in a model system, have nevertheless generated keen interest amongst ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 4 2008 - 5:45pm

Bat Echolocation May Have Evolved Multiple Times

Bats' ability to echolocate may have evolved more than once, according to research published this week by Queen Mary, University of London scientists. Species of bat with the ability to echolocate do not all group together in the evolutionary tree of ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 5 2008 - 11:51pm

The Richard Dawkins Dilemma- Illusions of Natural Selection

In 1970 the anthropologist Robert Ardrey published “The Social Contract, A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder”. The theme of the book was that the modern concept of human equality is a myth, and impossible in any sexually ...

Blog Post - Steve Davis - Jun 18 2013 - 1:19am

A Nematode Teaches Us Something About The Evolution Of Parasites

Scientists have decoded the genome of the Pristionchus pacificus nematode and gained valuable insight into the evolution of parasitism. In their work, the scientists have shown that the genome of the nematode consists of a surprisingly large number of gene ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 21 2008 - 10:05am

HoxA-11 And The Evolution Of Pregnancy In Mammals

Pregnancy is a biologically unusual situation where one organism lives and develops inside another that is genetically different. Ordinarily, the immune system identifies and destroys the dissimilar tissue as if it were a parasite but in some early mammals ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 18 2008 - 4:22pm