Evolution
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Category archives for Evolution
Carnival of Evolution 47
Posted by PZ Myers on May 1, 2012 The latest Carnival of Evolution is at Evolving Thoughts, hosted by that guy Wilkins who usually covers the philosophical beat…but we’ll let him out of that cage this one time. The Carnival of Evolution 48 will be held right here, on Pharyngula. You can submit entries via the carnival widget; get them in before 1…
Modular gene networks as agents of evolutionary novelty
Posted by PZ Myers on April 25, 2012 A while back, I told you all about this small piece of the biochemistry of the fly eye — the pathways that make the brown and red pigments that color the eye. I left it with a question: if even my abbreviated summary revealed considerable complexity, how could this pathway evolve? Changing anything produces a…
A tiny bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing
Posted by PZ Myers on March 11, 2012 Good news! The gorilla genome sequence was published in Nature last week, and adds to our body of knowledge about primate evolution. Here’s the abstract: Gorillas are humans’ closest living relatives after chimpanzees, and are of comparable importance for the study of human origins and evolution. Here we present the assembly and analysis of a…
Oh, no, not group selection again!
Posted by PZ Myers on March 8, 2012 I am abrupt in my dismissal: I see no evidence nor plausible mechanism for group selection, and I don’t even understand why some scientists continue to insist it had to have happened, other than a fondness for some kind of vague deus ex machina to reach down and smooth over the indirect and inefficient mechanisms…
Carnival of Evolution #45
Posted by PZ Myers on March 6, 2012 The latest Carnival of Evolution is buggy in more ways than one: I couldn’t get it to load in Mac Firefox with all my adblockers in place (but it worked fine on Google Chrome), and also every link is full of bugs. Literal bugs, not the software kind. All I can say is that it…
Epistasis and pathways in fly eye pigmentation
Posted by PZ Myers on February 23, 2012 I was going to talk about a cool recent paper that described the evolution of novelties by way of modifying modular gene networks, but I started scribbling it up and realized that I was constantly backtracking to explain some fundamental concepts, so I stopped. I was concerned because one of the most common sources of…
The problem with evo devo
Posted by PZ Myers on February 21, 2012 Last week, I gave a talk at UNLV titled “A counter-revolutionary history of evo devo”, and I’m afraid I was a little bit heretical. I criticized my favorite discipline. I felt guilty the whole time, but I think it’s a good idea to occasionally step back and think about where we’re going and where we…
The Midwest Science of Origins Conference!
Posted by PZ Myers on February 14, 2012 It’s on! Students here at UMM got together and have organized their very own Midwest Science of Origins Conference, to be held in Morris on 30 March-1 April. As the big name speaker, they’ve got Neil Shubin to tell us all about Tiktaalik, and some other regional folk to talk about physics, biology, anthropology, and…
There Will Be Blood?
Posted by PZ Myers on February 6, 2012 I was on Skeptically Speaking this week, weirdly and uncomfortably talking about the evolution of menstruation. I barrelled ahead anyway, even though I’ve got a Y chromosome and am not a member of the club. Fortunately, they also had Kate Clancy on to be a little more authoritative. (Also on FtB)
One Carnival of Evolution, coming right up
Posted by PZ Myers on February 2, 2012 I’ve been naughty and neglecting to announce these things, so let’s start correcting that: here’s the 44th Carnival of Evolution. (Also on FtB)