A genetic theory of homosexuality: The gene for male homosexuality persists because it promotes—and is passed down through—high rates of procreation among gay men’s mothers, sisters, and aunts. [Slate]
Evidence Suggests Genes Are Indeed Selfish: A study of worker bees offers proof of Richard Dawkins’ famous theory. [Popsci]
Birds of a feather revealed in evolutionary tree: The world of birds is aflutter because a gene study shows that iridescent daytime hummingbirds evolved from drab nocturnal nightjars, parrots and songbirds share a closer kinship than thought, and falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles, among other things. [Telegraph]
June 27th, 2008 at 10:19 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
CULTURAL EVOLUTION: Does human culture evolve via natural selection, as our genes do? [Seed]
Cutting the competition: However Christopher Wilson, a neurobiologist at Cornell University, has a different idea. In a recent paper in Evolution and Human Behavior he suggests that male-genital mutilations are actually intended to prevent younger men from fathering children with older men’s wives. [Economist]
Philadelphia Set to Honor Darwin and Evolution: In the long-running culture war between evolution and creationism, Philadelphia is firing the latest shot. Nine academic, scientific and cultural institutions around the city are holding a Year of Evolution, a series of exhibitions, seminars and lectures to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin next February, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, “The Origin of Species.” [NYT]
June 24th, 2008 at 11:16 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Genetic Material Found on Meteorite: A meteorite in Australia has been found to contain component molecules of DNA. [Popsci]
Darwinmania!: Natural selection is what we normally think of as Darwin’s big idea. Yet he wasn’t the first to discover that, either. At least two others — a doctor called William Wells, and a writer called Patrick Matthew — discovered it years before Darwin did. Wells described it (admittedly briefly) in 1818, when Darwin was just 9; Matthew did so in 1831, the year that Darwin set off on board HMS Beagle for what became a five-year voyage around the world. [NYT]
Body-shapes are ‘down to limbless, headless fish-like creature’: Supermodels, rats and every other creature with a backbone owe their body shapes to a limbless, headless fish-like creature likened to an “animated anchovy fillet.” [Telegraph]
June 19th, 2008 at 10:31 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Was ADHD an evolutionary asset?: Increased impulsivity, ADHD-like traits, novelty-seeking like traits, aggression, violence and/or activity levels may help nomads obtain food resources, or exhibit a degree of behavioral unpredictability that is protective against interpersonal violence or robberies. [Slate]
All-fours study links gene to upright gait: Scientists claim to have discovered a gene that helps humans walk upright, after studying families with a rare condition that causes some of their members to walk on all fours. [Guardian]
Study traces the evolution of the human brain: Instead, he found that, during evolution, increasingly sophisticated molecular processing of nerve impulses - notably by providing more connections in the brain - allowed development of animals with more complex behaviours. “We are one step closer to understanding the logic behind the complexity of human brains,” he said. [Telegraph]
June 13th, 2008 at 9:52 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Collectivist Genes: Are bullying, haranguing, collectivists just expressing adaptive evolutionary behavior? A new paper in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B suggests that when societies are hostile to individualism, sexual selection may be to blame. [Reason]
Evolution Goes Wild in Once-Polluted Lake: The cleanup of a polluted Washington lake appears to have driven evolution backwards for the threespined stickleback fish living there. Marine-dwelling versions of these fish are covered in bony plates, but as sticklebacks migrated into freshwater, a strong selection pressure caused them to lose their armor. [Discovery]
Missing link fossil settles frog evolution debate: Now a Texan fossil, Gerobatrachus hottoni (”Hotton’s elder frog”) from around 300 million years ago, proves the previously disputed fact that some modern amphibians, frogs and salamanders evolved from one group of ancient primitive amphibians called temnospondyls, some of which were up to 1.5 metres long. [Telegraph]
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
The Pregnant Male: The seahorse is a strange fish. Many of the traits it possesses have evolved in a direction unlike any other family of animals underwater—its bent S-shape; its head at a 90-degree angle to its body; its prehensile tail; and, most curiously, the male’s brood pouch. A lab at Texas A&M University led by Adam Jones is currently studying these structures in the hope of understanding how it was that male pregnancy evolved in seahorses and how it affects the traditional sex roles in the fish. [Popsci]
Whales Evolved Separate Ways to Avoid the Bends: One of the largest studies ever of modern and fossil whales has determined that virtually all modern whales appear to have evolved safeguards against the bends, a sometimes fatal condition in which nitrogen bubbles form in blood and tissues after too rapid decompression. [Discovery]
Lots of Animals Learn, but Smarter Isn’t Better: Dr. Kawecki and like-minded scientists are trying to figure out why animals learn and why some have evolved to be better at learning than others. One reason for the difference, their research finds, is that being smart can be bad for an animal’s health. [NYT]
May 13th, 2008 at 10:17 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Pieces in our evolutionary puzzle: New finds from Africa are fleshing out the possible beginnings of the human evolutionary line, with several candidate species vying for the title of our earliest ancestor. Genetic data suggests we shared a last common ancestor with our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, between about 5m and 7m years ago, and there are now three important fossil finds in that formerly empty window of time. [Guardian]
Neanderthals were a separate species: A SIMPLIFIED family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears. Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published by the journal Nature declares. [Australian]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:30 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds: In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds. [NYT]
Lizards Rapidly Evolve After Introduction to Island: Italian wall lizards introduced to a tiny island off the coast of Croatia are evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out, new research shows. In just a few decades the 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) lizards have developed a completely new gut structure, larger heads, and a harder bite, researchers say. [National Geographic]
What Darwin Saw Out Back: While all the flowers had both male and female parts — anthers and pistils — in some the anthers were prominent and in others the pistils were longer. So he experimented in his home laboratory and greenhouses, cross-pollinating some plants with their anatomical opposites. The results were striking. “He determined that if they cross-pollinate, they produce more seed and more vigorous seedlings,” said Margaret Falk, a horticulturalist and associate vice president at the New York Botanical Garden. The variation is evolution’s way of increasing cross-pollination, she said. Now the Botanical Garden is replicating this work, and more of Darwin’s Down House experiments, in a stunning, multipart exhibition called “Darwin’s Garden: An Evolutionary Adventure.” [NYT]
April 25th, 2008 at 9:08 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
SUSPENDING LIFE: If almost every species on Earth was killed some 250 million years ago, how did our ancient ancestors survive and evolve into us? [Seed]
Gods and earthlings: Intelligent design “theorists” (a misnomer, for they have no theory) often use the alien scenario to distance themselves from old-style creationists: “For all we know, the designer might be an alien from outer space.” This attempt to fend off accusations of unconstitutionally importing religion into science classes is lame and disingenuous. All the leading intelligent design spokesmen are devout, and, when talking to the faithful, they drop the science-fiction fig leaf and expose themselves as the fundamentalist creationists they truly are. [LA Times]
Elephant ancestors were semi-aquatic: A primitive ancestor of today’s elephants grazed in swamps 40 million years ago, according to a study of fossil teeth. [Telegraph]
April 18th, 2008 at 9:52 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
Ben Stein’s Expelled - No Integrity Displayed:: In the new science-bashing movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein and the rest of the filmmakers sincerely and seriously argue that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution paved the way for the Holocaust. By “seriously,” I mean that Ben Stein acts grief-stricken and the director juxtaposes quotes from evolutionary biologists with archival newsreel clips from Hitler’s Reich. Prepare for an intellectual night at the cinema. [Scientific American]
Menopause stops female competition: The British team that sets out the new theory of how evolution shaped the fertility of women also believes it could yield clues to the genetic basis of premature menopause and other diseases of low fertility. [Telegraph]
April 10th, 2008 at 9:41 am
This article is filed under Blog, Evolution.
