Evolution

Some microorganisms lose the ability to perform a function that appears to be necessary for their survival, and yet they still somehow manage to endure and multiply. How can that be?  One hypothesis says microbes that shed necessary functions are getting others to 'do that work' for them, an adaptation that can encourage microorganisms to live in cooperative communities. Yes, genetic inter-organism cooperation and adaptive gene loss. Richard Lenski and J. Jeffrey Morris of Michigan State University, and Erik Zinser of the University of Tennessee call it The Black Queen Hypothesis -…

Lucy, Australopithecus afarensis, was not walking around Africa alone three million years ago.   Biologists knew that, of course, the neatly linear line from critter to modern man does not exist, it happened in fits and starts and sometimes different ways numerous times. But as the study of evolution becomes more multi-discplinary our chances of finding new fossils increases, and ideas of what ancestors looked like go from theoretical to real. A team of researchers has announced the discovery of a partial foot skeleton with characteristics - such as an opposable big toe bone - that don't…

Are you ugly?  Maybe that's something else to blame your mother about. Female cognitive ability can impact how handsome males become over evolutionary time, say biologists from The University of Texas at Austin, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Males across the animal world have evolved elaborate traits to attract females, from huge peacock tails to complex bird songs and frog calls. But there is a price - predators are attracted to increased elaboration, placing an enormous cost to males with these sexy traits. In a new…

ANARCHY AND EVOLUTIONCompetition of life forms (bio-human, android, nanobots, robot) is critical for them to evolve into robust species capable of dealing with all the diversity in the universe. Early earth life had millions of years for this competition. Science has demonstrated that co-evolutionary interactions with other species are the primary cause for rapid evolution. During the singularity, we humans will be diverging into competing life forms.   From subatomic particles to intergalactic space, the universe is in constant competition for resources. A tree shades its neighbor…

Researchers have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla, the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. The results confirm that our closest relative is the chimpanzee but much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome. For the first time, scientists can compare the genomes of all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This provides a unique perspective on our own origins and is an important resource for research into human evolution and biology, as well as for gorilla biology and…

Nobel Prize winner Jack Szostak recently wrote an opinion piece titled "Attempts to Define Life Do Not Help to Understand the Origin of Life" which was published in the Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics.  The view he expressed was given respectful coverage by Carl Zimmer in his widely publicised article "Can Science Define Life in Three Words", the only blemish from the usually perceptive Zimmer in an otherwise interesting and balanced article. Not only is Szostak’s view wrong, but he compounded the error with the opening sentence; “Attempts to define life are irrelevant…

The path leading to today's technological society has gone through several phases of evolution. Carl Sagan distinguished three main phases of evolution: biological evolution, development of the human mind, and human civilization. In each phase, the mechanism for storing and transmitting information radically changed. In biological evolution, DNA maintains the data and is expressed through proteins. In brain evolution, memory stores the data and cultural training passes the information. In human civilization, various means of abstract recording, e.g., writing is used and passed through…

Jerry Coyne is a goose.There, I've said it.I mean it in the nicest possible way of course, but it had to be said.And the reason for this unseemly outburst?Well, if you want to see something really unseemly, check out Jerry's column of 8th February 2011 titled "Vernon + Midgley + evolution=Fail", where he referred to the British philosopher Mary Midgley thus; Mary Midgley, famous for completely misunderstanding modern evolutionary biology and for attacking Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene on completely ludicrous grounds. (See Dawkins' response here) In a prime case of the bland leading…

How do new species arise? This question is still being vigorously researched in evolutionary biology. New technologies, such as genomics, provide intriguing new opportunities to investigate the matter, but they also show that some of the previous ideas were not as satisfactory as once thought. So, where does the research go from here? The members of the Marie Curie SPECIATION Network have recently published a list of what they perceive to be key questions on the topic of speciation, as a guide for future studies. These questions were divided into three main research areas: (i) elucidating…

 “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”  The Red Queen, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll.     How did sexual reproduction evolve? How do parasites and their hosts survive together? Why do predators manage to catch their prey only some of the time? To answer  these questions, we journey into the Kingdom of the Red Queen. A realm in the universe of biology that has an answer for all these questions and many more. In its entirety,  the Red Queen Hypothesis states that in any co-evolving environment…