evolution
oracknows | October 20, 2007I must lead a sheltered life, at least when it comes to the creationism-evolution wars.
Sure, I'm more than aware about how much creationists and their more common (these days, at least) bastard offspring "intelligent design" creationists like to cherry pick, twist, and mangle data to make it seem to support their case, or, when all else fails, just lie outright about it. That's no surprise to me. Neither is the mendacious manner in which creationists try to blame Darwin and evolutionary theory for Hitler and the Nazis, as well as the horrors of Stalin and Mao, and just about every other evil…
pharyngula | October 19, 2007I was just turned on to this recent issue of the McGill Journal of Education which has the theme of teaching evolution. It's a must-read for science educators, with articles by UM's own Randy Moore, Robert Pennock, Branch of the NCSE, and Eugenie Scott, and it's all good. I have to call particular attention the article by Massimo Pigliucci, "The evolution-creation wars: why teaching more science just is not enough", mainly because, as I was reading it, I was finding it a little freaky, like he's been reading my mind, or maybe I've been subconsciously catching Pigliucci's psychic emanations.…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007So that's what Carl Buell has been up to…Donald Prothero and Carl have been working on a new book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), containing descriptions of important transitional fossils, and as you can tell from the title, directly countering some of the silly claims of the creationists. This is going to be one of those books everyone must have.
To whet your appetite, Carl sent along one of the many color plates that will be in the book—this is Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial.
You're already drooling, aren't you? You want this book…
razib | October 18, 2007Alu Recombination-Mediated Structural Deletions in the Chimpanzee Genome:
Here, by scanning the chimpanzee genome for such deletions, we determined the role of the Alu recombination-mediated deletion process in creating structural differences between the chimpanzee and human genomes. Using a combination of computational and experimental techniques, we identified 663 deletions, involving the removal of â¼771 kb of genomic sequence. Interestingly, about half of these deletions were located within known or predicted genes, and in several cases, the deletions removed coding exons from chimpanzee…
jrosenhouse | October 18, 2007Slate has an interesting piece on som erecent dinosaur finds in Argentina:
Paleontologists announced on Monday that they had discovered the remains of a 105-foot-long dinosaur on the banks of a lake in the Argentine portion of Patagonia. The Futalognkosaurus dukei ranks among the largest known dinosaurs, along with two other species whose remains were discovered in Patagonia, the Argentinosaurus and Puertasaurus reuili. Why are all the biggest dinosaurs found in Patagonia?
They died at the right time in the right place. Patagonia happens to be an excellent place to find fossils from the…
razib | October 18, 2007The Derived FOXP2 Variant of Modern Humans Was Shared with Neandertals:
...Here, we find that our closest extinct relatives, the Neandertals, share with modern humans two evolutionary changes in FOXP2, a gene that has been implicated in the development of speech and language. We furthermore find that in Neandertals, these changes lie on the common modern human haplotype, which previously was shown to have been subject to a selective sweep. These results suggest that these genetic changes and the selective sweep predate the common ancestor (which existed about 300,000-400,000 years ago) of…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007My latest column for Seed is now available online. It's an abbreviated summary of how vertebrates make segments (so it's illustrated with a fly…), with special emphasis on the global and clocklike mechanism we use.
mikethemadbiologist | October 18, 2007Over at Karmatics, Rob Brown thinks the counter-intuitiveness of natural selection is a big reason why people find evolution difficult to comprehend. In that way, natural selection is similar to prediction markets, where people bet on the chances of future events, such as the outcomes of sports events or political elections:
Prediction markets turn out to be remarkably accurate, typically more accurate than any individual expert can predict, as non-intuitive as it may seem. Like Wikipedia, prediction markets also tap into the power of selection, but the most dramatic similarity they share…
jrosenhouse | October 17, 2007In my blog entry of a few days ago regarding Jerry Fodor's poorly argued essay in The London Review of Books, I remarked that Fodor divided his criticisms of natural selection into both an empricial and a conceptual criticism. I focused entirely on the empricial side of his essay. Happily, Bob O'Hara has taken care of business on the conceptual side of things:
The latest “fun” on the evolutionary (pro and anti) parts of the web has been discussion of an article in the London Review of Books by Jerry Fodor. In it he proclaims that natural selection is on its way out. Alas for him, his…
razib | October 17, 2007In case you didn't notice, the latest Nature is heavy on human evolutionary genetics. Go here and control-f "Human genetics: Genes tell our evolutionary tale."
laelaps | October 17, 2007"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
"Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...."
[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 9]
It seems that creationists/ID advocates aren't the only folks discontented with Darwin's theory of natural selection, as I have been hearing murmurings that some scientists are considering genetic changes to be far more important to evolution. It's been difficult to find details about this "phantom menace…
razib | October 17, 2007Researchers find earliest evidence for modern human behavior in South Africa:
"Our findings show that at 164,000 years ago in coastal South Africa humans expanded their diet to include shellfish and other marine resources, perhaps as a response to harsh environmental conditions," notes Marean, a professor in ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change. "This is the earliest dated observation of this behavior."
Further, the researchers report that co-occurring with this diet expansion is a very early use of pigment, likely for symbolic behavior, as well as the use of bladelet stone tool…
razib | October 16, 2007Antagonistic pleiotropic effects reduce the potential adaptive value of the FRIGIDA locus:
....Here we investigate the importance of pleiotropy and epistasis in determining the adaptive value of a candidate gene using the gene FRI (FRIGIDA), which is thought to be the major gene controlling flowering time variation in Arabidopsis thaliana. The effect of FRI on flowering time was analyzed in an outbred population created by randomly mating 19 natural accessions of A. thaliana. This unique population allows the estimation of FRI effects independent of any linkage association with other loci due…
mikethemadbiologist | October 16, 2007Once again, the science framing wars have flared up. While I'm not allergic to the concept of framing as some are, one of the major reasons why I'm not a big fan of dwelling on the topic is that obsessing over language reminds me of the late 80s and 90s when the Left won the battle of words, and the fundamentalist Uruk-hai took over the damn country.
I've been doing some thinking about the 'progressive' concern with media communication (including my own)--and it is important, no doubt about it. But, as the 2006 elections have shown, if words aren't turned into the exercise of power, there…
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2007Philosopher Jerry Fodor offers up the latest example of a familiar genre: essays declaring the forthcoming demise of natural selection, coupled with very little in the way of supporting argument. He is writing in the London Review of Books. There's quite a bit I find wrong with Fodor's essay. In this post, however, I will focus solely on what I take his main argument to be, and explain why I find it inadequate.
Fodor writes:
In fact, an appreciable number of perfectly reasonable biologists are coming to think that the theory of natural selection can no longer be taken for granted. This is…
sheril | October 14, 2007
I get 'tagged' with these blog memes fairly often and for this one, I'm finally game - but ONLY because it began with my great-great-grandfather PZ to demonstrate something Darwinian. So you know, I'm indulging in 'The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme' for the children. Watch kids, today's lesson is Evolution in Cyberland:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
* You can leave them…
grrlscientist | October 13, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, conservation, captive breeding, endangered species, reproductive success
I bred parrots and other birds for zoos and for the pet trade for years before I moved to NYC. I often thought about applying my avicultural and ornithological skills and talents to propagate birds for release into the wild, to supplement wild populations that are decreasing. But in addition to the practical challenges of captive breeding birds, I often wondered about the evolutionary implications of doing this: because every individual is precious in a captive breeding program, they are…
pharyngula | October 11, 2007I was sitting down this evening to write up this nifty new paper from the Carroll lab, when I noticed that Carl Zimmer beat me to it. Dang. There are all these other bloggers around here, and it's hard to keep on top of all of them, all at once.
Go read it anyway. It's good stuff, all about the importance of regulatory changes in evolution.
grrlscientist | October 11, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, linguistics, evolution, irregular verbs, languages
When I was an undergrad, I almost took a degree in linguistics because I was so fascinated by languages, especially by the rate and patterns of change that languages undergo. So of course, I was excited to read two fascinating papers that were published in this week's issue of Nature. These papers find that individual words evolve in a predictable manner and this rate of evolution depends upon their frequency of use. Further, this predictability can be defined mathematically.
To test this hypothesis, one group…