Male crickets on the Hawaiian island of Kauai have undergone a sudden heritable change that has rendered most of them incapable of using song, their sexual signal, to attract female crickets. However, according to a new study by University of California – Riverside evolutionary biologists, the crickets have devised an ingenious behavioral change to allow […]
We modern-day humans think that we’re pretty damn good looking compared to our brow-ridged, potato nosed Neanderthal relatives, but new research indicates that perhaps it is we who are the evolutionary sideshow freaks. Based on comparative fossil studies, the new research, appearing in the August edition of Current Anthropology, claims that it’s humans and not […]
Observations from NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite indicate that far more deuterium (“heavy” hydrogen) remains in our Milky Way galaxy than expected, a finding that could radically alter existing theories about star and galaxy formation. Scientists believe deuterium was created a few instants after the Big Bang, and has been slowly destroyed over […]
Given that more than half of all American adults aren’t aware that the Earth goes around the Sun once a year, it’s hardly surprising that the concept of evolution doesn’t sit well with Americans. What is surprising, however, is the large number – around one-third – that believe evolution is wrong. “One in three American […]
Scientists at MIT and Harvard say the evolutionary split between humans and chimpanzees is much more recent – and more complicated – than previously thought. Their study, appearing in Nature, indicates that the two species could have split as recently as 5.4 million years ago. They also suggest that the speciation process was unusual, possibly […]
The beginning of life on Earth is a hotly contested area of science (not to mention religion); with current theories focusing on how RNA (ribonucleic acid)-like molecules developed into a more complex form of RNA-based life, which then transformed into cellular life based on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and proteins. Now, an acceleratedin vitro experiment shows […]
The fishing mantra of harvesting the largest individuals from a fish population introduces genetic changes that harm the overall fish population, a new University of California study has found. The researchers say that removing the large fish over several generations causes the remaining fish in the population to become progressively smaller, have fewer and smaller […]
Asexual reproduction leads to a faster accumulation of bad mutations, says a report in this week’s issue of Science. Indiana University evolutionary biologists used the water flea (Daphnia pulex) to establish their findings, which support the hypothesis that sex is an evolutionary housekeeper that efficiently reorders genes and removes deleterious gene mutations. Interestingly, the study […]
The theory that humans and chimpanzees may be more closely related to each other than chimps are to the other two species of great apes – gorillas and orangutans – has just become even more compelling. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found genetic evidence that supports the controversial hypothesis, suggesting that there […]
The New York Academy of Sciences Readers & Writers lecture series will play host to biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart on January 25, where they will reveal what they consider to be the answer to one of evolutionary theory’s most puzzling questions. If their theory – that explains seemingly random genetic change – passes […]
