As a woman’s fertility begins to wane, the brain ramps up the libido in what researchers call “reproduction expediting,” an adaptive response that makes women more willing to engage in one-night stands and adventurous sexual behavior in an effort capitalize on their remaining childbearing years. The researchers, from The University of Texas at Austin, based […]
The Turkana Basin in Kenya, where the average daily temperature has been around 100 degrees for the past 4 million years, may have been the place where humans first began to walk upright. Johns Hopkins University earth scientist Benjamin Passey says that the need to stay cool may explain why pre-humans learned to walk upright, […]
Male homosexuality doesn’t make complete sense from an evolutionary point of view but a new study suggests that it may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. The study hypothesizes that homosexual men enhance their own genetic prospects by acting altruistically toward their nieces and nephews, thereby perpetuating some of […]
The subtle but relentless pressures of human evolution could explain the rise of disorders such as autism, autoimmune diseases, and reproductive cancers, say scientists who believe that evolutionary perspectives should be part of medical school curricula. The researchers, from Yale University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University and the Boston University School of Medicine, speculate […]
Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have discovered that proteinaceous infectious particles (prions) are capable of Darwinian evolution. The breakthrough study, published in Science, shows that prions can develop large numbers of mutations at the protein level and, through natural selection, these mutations can eventually bring about such evolutionary adaptations as drug resistance, a phenomenon […]
Emory University researchers have identified the first fish known to have switched from ultraviolet vision to violet vision (the ability to see blue light). The discovery links molecular evolution to functional changes in the organism and the environmental factors that drive those changes. Evolutionary geneticist and study leader Shozo Yokoyama says the findings, reported in […]
A new hypothesis regarding evolutionary adaption in pygmies contends that their small body size is a side effect of early sexual maturation, where the body’s resources are allocated to reproduction rather than growth. The study, by University of Cambridge anthropologists Jay Stock and Andrea Migliano, appears in the journal Current Anthropology. There are several existing […]
It was believed that the X and Y chromosomes – that define the sexes – did not communicate at all, but UK researchers from the University of Leicester’s Department of Genetics have shown that exchanges of DNA do occur between the X and Y in the regions previously thought to be completely isolated. Recently, it […]
Crying is known to be a symptom of pain or stress, but an evolutionary biologist from Tel Aviv University (TAU) suggests that tears are also an evolution-based mechanism to bring people closer together and make interpersonal relationships stronger. “Crying is a highly evolved behavior,” explains Dr. Oren Hasson of TAU’s Department of Zoology. “Tears give […]
Earth’s living creatures and inanimate phenomena may have more in common than previously thought. At least that is the view of Duke University engineer Adrian Bejan (pictured) and Penn State biologist James Marden. The team’s findings have just been published in the journal Physics of Life Reviews. What they contend connects the two worlds is […]
