Evolution

Female fruit flies can be too attractive to the opposite sex –– too attractive for their own good –– say biologists at UC Santa Barbara. In a new PLoS Biology study, they report that too much male attention directed toward attractive females can lead to smaller families and, ultimately, a reduced rate of population-wide adaptive evolution. The authors explain that the term "good looking," among fruit flies, refers to something, like a large body. From the perspective of a male fly, a desirable mate is a female that is larger and can therefore produce more offspring. "These larger females are…

While feeding birds may seem like an ordinary and innocuous activity, scientists are reporting this week that it can have a profound effect on the evolutionary future of a certain species of bird, and those changes can be seen in the very near term.  A report published online in the December 3rd issue of Current Biology shows that what was once a single population of birds known as blackcaps has been split into two reproductively isolated groups in fewer than 30 generations, despite the fact that they continue to breed side by side in the very same forests. The reproductive isolation…

“Come on into the hot tub,” I told my three year old boy. But he wouldn’t budge. No way was he joining his older sister in there. “It’s warm, and it feels nice!” I urged, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” But it was only when I turned off the jets that I could eventually coax him in. “Why would my boy be so afraid of a hot tub?” I wondered. But as I reflected upon my panty-waist boy, I decided that perhaps I wasn’t being fair to him. In fact, in hindsight, I think he was behaving rationally. Hot tubs are frightening. They violently churn and bubble, as if they are actually boiling. I have…

A key riddle surrounding the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors but a study appearing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry says researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet; generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.  Many researchers believe that RNA was one of the first biological molecules present, before DNA and proteins, but there has been little success in recreating the formation on RNA from simple "prebiotic"…

If you haven't watched NOVA's 3-part special on human evolution, you're missing out. It's all online, so you have no excuse for missing it. It's visually amazing and the science is explained clearly. The series gives an outstanding overview of where the field of human evolution is now - what the evidence is, what the outstanding questions are, and what are the most promising answers to those questions at present. After 3 hours, you'll have a great basic grasp of human evolution. Read the feed:

This is cool. AKA know as "Chaos Theory"....Just an underlying manifestation of nature. All is connected in weird ways in which we do not understand. This video being one of them. Mathematics and Nature don't seem to be an intuitive thought. But mathematics has only been around a couple thousand years for we humans. We had nothing but nature for 300,000 plus years as homo sapiens not to mentions the millions of years it took for us to evolve to that point. It is deeply in our genes, We saw it but described it in metaphysical, strange, wrong ant sometimes enlightened ways. But these so called…

Drug resistant infectious organisms pose a very serious threat to society, and are perhaps one of the biggest challenges that medical researchers face in their fight to keep people healthy. Despite the trouble that antibiotic resistance has caused for modern medicine over the years, researchers at the University of Gothenburg are taking on an innovative project that may help put this evolutionary phenomenon in check. Since evolution creates random variations in the characteristics of organisms, which results in some of them developing resistance to drugs to which they are exposed,  one…

Sunday Science Book Club The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin You might think that John Krakauer should be the least likely author that comes to mind as one reads a mid-19th century, 533-page tome on natural history by a forbidding, full-bearded Victorian gentleman. And yet, while reading The Voyage of the Beagle (which sits on my shelf flanked by the other ostensibly impenetrable books of the Harvard Classics series) I frequently was reminded of the extreme wilderness adventure stories of Krakauer's books and essays. Darwin describes, in deceptively easy prose, his experiences…

As scientific research steps forward, the reasons for our choices, our decisions, our feelings are studied from all sides, to the point where there isn’t much left of our free-will. Why should it be so? So why do our feelings fool us around? Are we actors of our lives or do we only act the way our genetic inheritance has decided for us? Evolution science can help us understand. Every second of our life, each one of us has the conviction that we can decide for ourselves and that our choices are ours and only ours. We as humans take free-will for granted. It is what gives the word “human” all…

Biology consists of much detailed information regarding genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and a variety of other components.  This has provided a great deal of insight into how life functions, evolves, and reproduces.  However, there are other realms of biology that attempt to find order where perhaps none exists.  In discussions of topics like "selfish genes", or "kin selection", or Hamilton's rule, we are getting into areas where causation is being sought where none may specifically exist or at least, not of a general type. Obviously there is an explanation for why…