Coral reef fish species have proven invaluable for experimental testing of key concepts in social evolution and already have yielded insights about the ultimate reasons for female reproductive suppression, group living, and bidirectional sex change.
A University of Iowa researcher and his colleague have conducted a study that reveals important and useful insights into how and why developmental genes often take inputs from two independent “morphogen concentration gradients.”
Vanderbilt phylogeneticists examined the reasons why large-scale tree-of-life studies are producing contradictory results and have proposed a suite of novel techniques to resolve the conflicts.
The tiniest bones in the human body – the bones of the middle ear – could provide huge clues about our evolution and the development of modern-day humans, according to a study by a team of researchers that include a Texas A&M University anthropologist.
According to some experts, despite billions of dollars and everyone’s best intentions, education isn’t working well in America. Recently, scientists brought together by The Evolution Institute, explored new solutions from an unusual source: Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it’s hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait—the ability to understand numbers—also is shared by man and his primate cousins.
For the first time fossil jaw measurements confirm that land animals developed legs millions of years before their feeding systems changed enough to let them eat a land-based diet. The pattern had been hypothesized previously, but not really tested.
Researchers propose a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. It should help to close a major gap in understanding what drives evolutionary change.
Ancient DNA recovered from a series of skeletons in central Germany up to 7500 years old has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe.
International researchers led by Chris Amemiya, PhD, Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, has published “The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution” as the cover article in the April 18 issue of Nature.
Students and scholars are taking a renewed interest in an "underdog" method of philosophy that is also uniquely American.
Close examination of the lower jawbone, teeth and skeleton of the hominid species Australopithecus sediba proves conclusively that it is uniquely different from a closely related species, Australopithecus africanus.
According to a new study, our Australopithecus ancestors may have used different approaches to getting around on two feet. The new findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Science and represent the culmination of more than four years of research into the anatomy of Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba). The two-million-year-old fossils, discovered in Malapa cave in South Africa in 2008, are some of the most complete early human ancestral remains ever found.
A structural biologist at the Florida State University College of Medicine has made discoveries that could lead scientists a step closer to understanding how life first emerged on Earth billions of years ago.
A team of scientists has added markedly to the job description of prions as agents of change, identifying a prion capable of triggering a transition in yeast from its conventional single-celled form to a cooperative, multicellular structure. This change, which appears to improve yeast’s chances for survival in the face of hostile environmental conditions, is an epigenetic phenomenon—a heritable alteration brought about without any change to the organism’s underlying genome.
A new University of Florida study of nearly 5,000 Haiti bird fossils shows contrary to a commonly held theory, human arrival 6,000 years ago didn’t cause the island’s birds to die simultaneously.
The stomach and intestines of certain trout double to quadruple in size during month-long eating binges in Alaska each August. The rest of the year, the fish live off their reserves and their digestive tracks shrink. It's the first time researchers have documented fish gut flexibility in the wild.
An international team of scientists led by Dr Kate Sanders from the University of Adelaide, and including Dr Mike Lee from the South Australian Museum, has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed ‘shrunken heads’ – or smaller physical features than their related species.
New research from an international team of scientists suggests evolution, or basic survival techniques adapted by early humans, influences the decisions gamblers make when placing bets. The findings may help to explain why some treatment options for problem gamblers often don’t work, the researchers say.
A University of Florida researcher has described a new genus and species of extinct saber-toothed cat from Polk County, Fla., based on additional fossil acquisitions of the animal over the last 25 years.
Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal’s Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery - a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada’s Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old.
Butterflies are among the most vibrant insects, with colorations sometimes designed to deflect predators. New University of Florida research shows some of these defenses may be driven by enemies one-tenth their size.
Cryptic comments seem to have an ambiguous, obscure or hidden meaning. In biology, cryptic species are outwardly indistinguishable groups whose differences are hidden inside their genes.
Scientists have delved deeper into the evolutionary history of the fruit fly than ever before to reveal the genetic activity that led to the development of wings – a key to the insect’s ability to survive.
When people or animals are thrust into threatening situations such as combat or attack by a predator, stress hormones are released to help prepare the organism to defend itself or to rapidly escape from danger—the so-called fight-or-flight response.
University of Florida paleontologists have discovered remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama Canal excavations that began in 2009.
University of Adelaide researchers have found the answer to one of natural history’s most intriguing puzzles – the origins of the now extinct Falkland Islands wolf and how it came to be the only land-based mammal on the isolated islands – 460km from the nearest land, Argentina.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are exploring an alternate theory for the origin of RNA: they think the RNA bases may have evolved from a pair of molecules distinct from the bases we have today. This theory looks increasingly attractive, as the Georgia Tech group was able to achieve efficient, highly ordered self-assembly in water with small molecules that are similar to the bases of RNA.
Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. University of Washington scientists consider the genetic underpinnings of such "evolutionary rescue."
As we humans evolved over the millennia to walk on two legs, grow larger brains and shorter jaws, bear big babies and live longer, we’ve also experienced some negative consequences. But keeping our evolutionary history in mind can help us better deal with issues from obesity to difficult childbirth in a much more productive way, according to UD anthropologist Karen Rosenberg.
A search for long-lived balancing selection has found at least six regions of the genome where humans and chimpanzees share a combination of genetic variants. These human genetic variation dates back to a common ancestor with chimpanzees millions of years ago, before the species split.
You may want to ramp up your romance this year by sharing a candlelight dinner, a walk on the beach, or even the scent of a perfume, but will that help you find your perfect mate? For one wasp species, it only takes a whiff of his special love potion to know whether he’s “Mr. Right.”
Scientists build new tree of life for placentals using ‘phylophenomics,’ visualize common ancestor.
An international team of scientists including University of Florida researchers has generated the most comprehensive tree of life to date on placental mammals, which are those bearing live young, including bats, rodents, whales and humans.
Dogs and wolves are genetically so similar, it’s hard for biologists to understand why wolves remain fiercely wild, while dogs can gladly become man’s best friend. New research suggests the different behaviors are related to earliest sensory experiences and the critical period of socialization.
Men whacked punching bags for a University of Utah study that suggests human hands evolved not only for the manual dexterity needed to use tools, play a violin or paint a work of art, but so men could make fists and fight.
Two Santa Fe Institute researchers offer a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. Their paper offers new insights into the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of it arising elsewhere in the universe.
Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator's buffet of flowers – in spite of being among the insect world's picky eaters – because of two distinct "channels" in their brains, scientists have discovered. One olfactory channel governs innate preferences while the other allows them to learn about alternate sources of nectar.
The Archibald Lab at Dalhousie led a team of researchers from across the globe that decoded the genetic blueprints of two tiny organisms, shedding light on a major feat of evolution.
Research by Indiana University paleobotanist David L. Dilcher and colleagues in Europe sheds new light on what Charles Darwin famously called "an abominable mystery": the apparently sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record.
Researchers have started looking at why dinosaurs that abandoned meat in favor of vegetarian diets got so big, and their results may call conventional wisdom about plant-eaters and body size into question.
Portions of Albert Einstein’s brain have been found to be unlike those of most people and could be related to his extraordinary cognitive abilities, according to a new study led by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk.
Two years ago, a 71-year-old Indiana man impaled his hand on a branch after cutting down a dead crab apple tree, causing an infection that led University of Utah scientists to discover a new bacterium and solve a mystery about how bacteria came to live inside insects.
A new study, published online today in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, reviewed 136 case studies to determine the underlying causes of why many populations have gone extinct due to changing climate.
In some human societies, men transfer their wealth to their sister's sons, a practice that puzzles evolutionary biologists. A new study by SFI's Laura Fortunato has produced insights into "matrilineal inheritance."
Researchers have discovered that a form of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for making humans fall in love—has a similar effect on fish, suggesting it is a key regulator of social behaviour that has evolved and endured since ancient times.
A new five-year study of plant populations demonstrated the importance of ecology in shaping a species’ evolution. When insect pests were removed from experimental fields of evening primrose, the plants evolved – in just three to four generations – to relax their defenses against pests.
Research comparing brain development in humans and our closest nonhuman primate relatives, chimpanzees, reveals how quickly myelin in the cerebral cortex grows, shedding light on the evolution of human cognitive development and the vulnerability of humans to psychiatric disorders, a GW professor finds. Myelin is the fatty insulation surrounding axon connections of the brain.
New University of Washington research suggests that early microbes might have been widespread on land, producing oxygen and weathering pyrite, an iron sulfide mineral, which released sulfur and molybdenum into the oceans.
Crows and humans share the ability to recognize faces and associate them with negative and positive feelings. The way the brain activates during that process is something the two species also appear to share, according to new research.
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