Evolutionary Biology
Category archives for Evolutionary Biology
Allen’s Rule, Phenotypic Plasticity, and The Nature of Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on December 5, 2008 Allen’s Rule. One of those things you learn in graduate school along with Bergmann’s Rule and Cope’s Rule. It is all about body size. Cope’s Rule … which is a rule of thumb and not an absolute … says that over time the species in a given lineage tend to be larger and larger. Bergmann’s…
Unbelievable Species
Posted by Greg Laden on December 3, 2008 New species, thousands of them, have been discovered on a tiny island in the Pacific. Click on the picture of the blog to read all about it at Zooillogix: Then, when you are done looking at that blog post, get yourself to a magazine stand and pick up the November-December issue of American Scientist, where…
The Scientific, Political, Social, and Pedagogical Context for the claim that “Race does not exist.”
Posted by Greg Laden on November 29, 2008 These days, many people say that race is largely a social construct; while it may have a place in describing the population genetics of some species, is not particularly applicable to humans. I’m one of those people. The race concept is generally inapplicable or at best misleading when used as it often is with our…
For The Lorax
Posted by Greg Laden on November 18, 2008 You do know that it works like this: Fungus and animals are sister taxa to the exclusion of plants. This might make the following less scary. Or more scary. Hat tip: The Lorax. The Lorax is here: http://angrybychoice.blogspot.com/ (Warning, that site will make noise when you open it.)
Can Evolution “Learn” From Past Environments?
Posted by Greg Laden on November 14, 2008 The paper I’m about to discuss is a minefield of potential misconceptions that arise from the way we often use language do describe natural phenomena. This is a situation where it would be easier to start with a disclaimer … a big giant obvious quotation mark … and then use the usual misleading, often anthropomorphic…
The Emergence of Treatment-Resistant Fungus
Posted by Greg Laden on November 12, 2008 It is hard to kill fungus. Well, not really. They can’t handle being burned and chlorine does them in and lots of other chemicals are bad for hem. But when a fungus infects a person … like with Aspergillos, an infection with Aspergillus in the lungs, fungi are tricky. To kill an infectious agent, one…
The Evolutionary Dynamics of the Lion Panthera leo Revealed by Host and Viral Population Genomics
Posted by Greg Laden on November 10, 2008 Cute baby lions. When they grow up, they will want to eat you. I’ll never forget the first wild lion I ever saw. It was a pitch black night, on the savanna in the Western Rift Valley. I had climbed on top of the hood of the Land Rover, engine off, but headlights on. My…
Topi or not Topi …
Posted by Greg Laden on October 27, 2008 Go to any bar and you’ll see a lot of males standing and sitting around not mating. I’ll bet you would have guessed that the reason they are not mating is that no females will mate with them for one reason or another. But there is the distinct possibility that they are very inconspicuously resisting…
Prestigious Evolution Award Awarded
Posted by Greg Laden on October 14, 2008 Consider the following words: The evidence supporting evolution is overwhelming and comes from diverse disciplines, such as molecular biology, paleontology, comparative anatomy, ethology, and biochemistry. There is no controversy among biologists about whether evolution occurs, nor are there science-based alternative theories. Evolution is a unifying theme in biology; teaching it as such is the best…
Cultural Evolution from Mosquitos to Worm Grunting
Posted by Greg Laden on October 13, 2008 A very good day of grunting worms. Credit: Ken Catania So-called Gene-Culture Co-Evolution can be very obvious and direct or it can be very subtle and complex. In almost all cases, the details defy the usual presumptions people make about the utility of culture, the nature of human-managed knowledge, race, and technology. I would like…
The Carnival of Evolution #3
Posted by Greg Laden on October 1, 2008 Welcome to the Third Edition of the Carnival of Evolution. The previous edition of this web log ‘carnival of the vanities’ was at Jason Rosenhouse’s Evolution Blog. The next edition will be written by Mike (TUIBG) and hosted here, at Clashing Cultures. Please submit your web posts on Evolution for the next carnival, which is…
Effective Polygyny in Humans: Turns out it is for real
Posted by Greg Laden on September 29, 2008 Human societies tend to be at least a little polygynous. This finding, recently reported in PLoS genetics, does not surprise us but is nonetheless important. This important in two ways: 1) This study uncovers numerical details of human genetic variation that are necessary to understand change across populations and over time; and 2) the variation…
Minnesota Science Standards: Comment now or forever hold your peace!
Posted by Greg Laden on September 22, 2008 Members of the Public: Now is your only chance to comment on Minnesota’s new Science Standards. My suggestions: Take out the woo, dampen down the special interests, and please, consider NOT removing biology from the High School standrds!!!!!
Precarious Pettiness of Sexual Politics In the Blogosphere: An uppity response to the perspicacious Dr. Isis and an appeal to get serious about sexual aggression and exploitation
Posted by Greg Laden on September 11, 2008 Dr. Isis the Scientist at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess, has written an open letter to our sister, Zuska, regarding (in part) the exchanges between my Sbling and myself. Dr. Isis points out that she has had a long term academic interests in breasts, which is primarily political and pragmatic as it turns…
Back To School Special: What to do with Bible thumping students
Posted by Greg Laden on August 25, 2008 David Campbell is a life science teacher in Florida who was recently profiled in the New York Times because of his involvement in the debate between Creationism and Evolution. This discussion is being picked up in the Blogosphere, and this is very timely, as this is the time when teachers in most US school districts…
Charles Darwin by Michael Ruse
Posted by Greg Laden on August 25, 2008 I am currently reading Charles Darwin (Blackwell Great Minds), and so far I mainly like it. Ruse, as you may know, is a philosopher, something of a science historian, and a science writer who has criticized what he calls “strident” atheism for being too fundamentalist. So that is as annoying as hell. The volume at…
The Magpie in the Mirror
Posted by Greg Laden on August 20, 2008 A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little. When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in the mirror, it sees another monkey. Typical adult male macaques…
A Portrait of The Brain by Adam Zeman
Posted by Greg Laden on August 15, 2008 Published by Yale University Press A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman is a new book describing how the brain works (and does not work) in something of an Oliver Sack’s experiential manner, but with a twist. Zeman is a Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Nerology at the Pininsula Medical School. A Portrait of…
Size and Scaling in Hominid Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on August 14, 2008 Stephen Jay Gould and David Pilbeam wrote a paper in 1974 that was shown ten years later to be so totally wrong in its conclusions that it has fallen into an obscurity not usually linked to either Gould or Pilbeam. However, they were actually right in ways that they could not have anticipated. And even…
Yet Another PLoS Success Story, and some interesting stuff about sex and genes.
Posted by Greg Laden on August 13, 2008 From Sex, Genes and Evolution, a story of publishing in PLoS Open Access Journal: My lab has taken its initial journey on the PLoS ONE train. Yesterday, our paper entitled “An Expanded Inventory of Conserved Meiotic Genes Provides Evidence for Sex in Trichomonas vaginalis” was published in PLoS ONE. It’s a updated and detailed report…
Re-examining the cause of speciation and species diversity in the tropics
Posted by Greg Laden on July 29, 2008 Did Past Climate Changes Promote Speciation in the Amazon? Any time you’ve got a whopping big river like the Amazon (or a mountain chain like the Andes, or an ocean, or whatever), you’ve gotta figure that it will be a biogeographical barrier. Depending on the kind of organisms, big rivers, high mountains, oceans, forests, deserts,…
Spread of Disease from Domestic to Wild Bees
Posted by Greg Laden on July 28, 2008 A recent article in PLoS examines the possibility that disease is spreading from domestic to wild bees. Osmia ribifloris
Live blogging PZ Myers on Atheist Talk Radio
Posted by Greg Laden on July 27, 2008 PZ Myers‘ appearance on Atheist Talk Radio was positively Orwellian. Host Mike the Madman Haubrich actually asked PZ about developmental biology (evodevo). Fish embryos? What about crackers!!!! I wanted crackers!!!! And I get Zebrafish! The interview was actually very interesting, in which PZ discussed homologous structures in the mouse and the bat, in reference to…
Sunday Atheist Talk Radio: PZ Myers and CL Hanson
Posted by Greg Laden on July 26, 2008 Minnesota Atheists’ “Atheists Talk” radio show Sunday, July 27, 2008, 9-10 a.m. Central Time P.Z. Myers discusses “Evo-Devo: What do a mouse’s leg and a bat’s wing have in common?” Also, atheist blogger C.L. Hanson discusses her book “Ex-Mormon.” “Atheists Talk” airs live on AM 950 KTNF in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. To stream live,…
Zombie organisms in the deep dark sea
Posted by Greg Laden on July 24, 2008 Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth’s surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth’s living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale. This is from a press release covering research coming out momentarily on the PNAS.…
The Evolution of Imprinting
Posted by Greg Laden on July 23, 2008 The phrase “genomic imprinting” has come to refer the turning off of a gene (a particular instance of a gene on a particular chromosome duplicated across the cells in a body) so that the gene is not expressed at all, with the turning off of the gene not caused in the body in question, but…
The Poison in the Leaf: Macro Evolutionary Patterns in Plant-Herbivore Co-Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on July 22, 2008 Plants and their herbivores have an interesting and complex relationship. It has been true for quite some time (many tens of millions of years) that terrestrial plants do not move around while animal herbivores do (though I’ve got friends from Texas who claim that there is a Texan tree that will move from one side…
Delay of childbirth and cesarean section: There may be a link.
Posted by Greg Laden on June 30, 2008 A study just out in PLoS Medicine suggests that an increasing trend of delaying childbirth is associated wiht a rising rate of the use of cesarean delivery. The explanation appears to be impared uterine function. From the editor’s summary: Though it was not studied here, the researchers hypothesize that impaired uterine contractility may be a…
Morning Sickness is an Adaptation, not a … Sickness
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2008 There is new information from an older idea (from about 2000) by Paul Sherman and colleagues. The idea underlying this research is simple: Symptoms of illnesses may be adaptive. Indeed, this may be true to the extent that we should not call certain things illnesses. Like “morning sickness.” Broadly speaking, there are two different kinds…
The Perfect Bird Family Tree…
Posted by Greg Laden on June 26, 2008 … is certainly still in the future. But we have seen a step in that direction in a new paper, coming out this week in Science. This research applies intensive and extensive genomic analysis to the avian phylogenetic tree. The results are interesting. This paper is summarized in a number of locations, most notably here…
, which is now available for the 
