Over at Gene Expression Classic there has been discussion of a new paper elucidating exactly how blind cavefish become depigmented. Please read the comments, as there's a lot of good discussion on evolutionary genetic parameters....
- Log in to post comments
More like this
It's another Dawkins question!
Why do cave-dwellers lose their eyes? They’re useless, but are they harmful? Costly to make? Or eroded by rain of uncorrected mutations?
I thought I'd already addressed this in a blog post long ago, but I searched, and I didn't -- it was my inaugural column in sadly…
AAAAAAAAAARGH! Someone is wrong on the internet, and I don't know whether to scream or to facepalm! (I tried doing both at once, but then it just comes out as a muffled gargle.)
Please go look at this creationist comic called "How Darwin Got It Wrong". It's typical creationist garbage, and…
The loss of sight in cave dwelling species is widely known. We presume that since sight in utter darkness has no fitness value, the mutation of a gene critical to the development of the sense of sight is not selected against. Over time, any population living in darkness will eventually experience…
tags: researchblogging.org, blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus, evolution, fish, genetics
Blind cave fish, Astyanax mexicanus.
Image: Orphaned. Please contact me for proper credit and linkage.
Do you keep tropical freshwater fishes? I have kept tropical fishes for most of my life and was…