A classic study from more than 60 years ago that suggested males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates has informed and influenced evolutionary biology for decades, but a modern day repeat of the experiment indicates the original work may have been fatally flawed. The new work calls into question many of […]
Software that uses Darwinian natural selection and the musical tastes of 7,000 people is well on the way to creating the perfect pop tune, according to evolutionary scientists from Imperial College London. A report on the project appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists set out to test a […]
Anxiety and excessive worry, traits that are usually viewed as maladaptive, appear to have co-evolved with the attribute that is viewed as most adaptive – human intelligence. Details of this intriguing research, led by Jeremy Coplan, professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, appear in the journalFrontiers in Evolutionary […]
A new theory based on the same premise as the card game Hearts (also known as Hunt the Lady or Black Lady) turns traditional evolutionary thinking on its head by showing that some living organisms evolve and survive by discarding genes rather than adding them. Erik Zinser, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, details […]
For the first time, scientists have measured how quickly large-scale evolutionary changes in body size occur. Intriguingly, while it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant, shrinkage is a much more rapid process. The findings, which focus on increases and decreases in mammal size following the […]
Carried by a surprisingly large 4 percent of the population, scientists David Brang and VS Ramachandran have been pondering why the synesthesia gene is preserved in the human race and what evolutionary advantage it might provide. In a discussion paper, published inPLoS Biology, the researchers suggest that the gene may deliver an advantage through enhanced […]
The uniquely human part of the brain that allows us to recognize faces in microseconds is even more sensitive at recognizing another aspect of human bodies – whether they are clothed or naked. Researchers in Finland say that the part of the brain known as the occipitotemporal N170 component is primed to recognize nude bodies […]
Addressing the long-running debate about short-term vs. long-term evolutionary change, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the changes that stick tend to take a long time, and one million years appears to be the magic number. Oregon State University zoologist Josef Uyeda, the lead author of the […]
Comparing the evolutionary success of blindly copying your parents’ lifestyle choices with that of innovative, informed lifestyle adaptations, researchers found that mindlessly copying what your parents did was usually the best strategy for the long-term success of your genes. The researchers, from the University of Exeter and University of Bristol, published their findings inEcology Letters. […]
