Evolution
Nature recently provided a list of "15 evolutionary gems".
...the document summarizes 15 lines of evidence from papers published in Nature over the past 10 years. The evidence is drawn from the fossil record, from studies of natural and artificial habitats, and from research on molecular biological processes.
In a year in which Darwin is being celebrated amid uncertainty and hostility about his ideas among citizens, being aware of the cumulatively incontrovertible evidence for those ideas is all the more important. We trust that this document will help.
I won't get into this in detail, in part because I wrote about it in my paper The evolution of complex organs in the special issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach about eyes.
It seems the most recent analogy drawn by anti-evolutionists to support the idea of irreducible complexity is a bicycle -- yeah, a unicycle works but a bicycle missing a wheel doesn't, therefore it's irreducibly complex. You can find out more at The Loom, where Carl shows people riding single-wheel bikes.
I am only weighing in because the discussion seems to be overlooking an important point about exaptation/co-…
The peppered moth, Biston betularia, has been used as a classic example of natural selection in action. This moth (like many others) includes both light and dark forms that change in frequency under conditions of higher or lower pollution. Anti-evolutionists have challenged this, and unfortunately they gained ammunition in this regard from a book review by Jerry Coyne.
As part of their Top 10 evolution articles, New Scientist provides a story entitled Reclaiming the peppered moth for science.
Bad news, the New Scientist story is subscription only.
Good news, Evolution: Education and…
The Formidable Persuasion promotes upside down evolutionary trees by their lack of adherence to traditional Hennigian methodology for phylogenetic reconstruction. This is a conscientious deviation promulgated by affirmative action appointments of minorities, as well as Christians espousing Creationism or Intelligent Design. The major shortcoming of the FP is their incomplete samples, also known as exemplar sampling. The problem with exemplars is that they are not most closely related in nature; therefore, hypothesizing their common ancestry is an adventure in science fiction…
From The Evolution&Medicine Review, a notification about the special issue of the Lancet on evolution. (And don't forget the special issue of E:EO!).
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Foreword
Steve Jones
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Charles Darwin did not know much about medicine (and neither did any of his contemporaries) but he took plenty of it. Soon after his return from the voyage on HMS Beagle he was struck down by a mysterious illness. Much energy has been expended on deciding what it might have been—a supposed conflict between Christian belief and rationalism, a parasite picked up in Brazil,…
In 3.5 billion years, life on earth went from single microscopic cells to giant sequoias and blue whales. Scientists have now documented quantitatively that the increase in maximum size of organisms was not gradual, but happened in two distinct bursts "tied to the geological evolution of the planet," said Michal Kowalewski, professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech.
Jonathan L. Payne, assistant professor of geological and environmental sciences at Stanford University; Jennifer A. Stempien, a recent Virginia Tech Ph.D. graduate now a research associate and science teaching fellow in geological…
An evolutionary geneticist from the Université de Montréal, together with researchers from the French cities of Lyon and Montpellier, say a new study presented in the recent issue of Nature characterizes the common ancestor of all life on earth, and it isn't called Adam or Eve, but rather LUCA, for Last Universal Common Ancestor.
The 3.8-billion-year-old organism was not the creature usually imagined.
"It is generally believed that LUCA was a heat-loving or hyperthermophilic organism. A bit like one of those weird organisms living in the hot vents along the continental ridges deep in the…
Throughout history, human beings have used the whistle for everything from hailing a cab to carrying a tune. Now, an orangutan's spontaneous whistling is providing scientists at Great Ape Trust of Iowa new insights into the evolution of speech and learning.
In a paper published this month in Primates, an international journal of primatology that provides a forum on all aspects of primates in relation to humans and other animals, Great Ape Trust scientist Dr. Serge Wich and his colleagues provide the first-ever documentation of a primate mimicking a sound from another species without…
Calling fellow bio bloggers -- help get the word out for the special issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach
all about eye evolution. The content is free to access online and the
authors include many of the world's top eye evolution researchers. A
handy table of contents with links is provided below for easy copy and
paste maneuvers.
Evolution: Education and OutreachVolume 1 Issue 4
Editorial
351. Editorial by Gregory Eldredge and Niles Eldredge (PDF)
352-354. Introduction by T. Ryan Gregory (PDF)
355-357. Casting an Eye on Complexity by Niles Eldredge (PDF)
Original science / evolution…
With the aid of a straightforward experiment, researchers have provided some clues to one of biology's most complex questions: how ancient organic molecules came together to form the basis of life.
Specifically, this study, appearing online this week in JBC, demonstrated how ancient RNA joined together to reach a biologically relevant length.
RNA, the single-stranded precursor to DNA, normally expands one nucleic base at a time, growing sequentially like a linked chain. The problem is that in the primordial world RNA molecules didn't have enzymes to catalyze this reaction, and while RNA…