Latest Adaptation Stories

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One adage has held true throughout the whole of global history for every living organism on earth; When faced with a challenging situation, a species must either adapt or die. Researchers from the University of Exeter (UofE) and the University of Lincoln (UofL) believe they have discovered a dire situation for one specific species where its earlier adaptation will likely lead to its eventual death and ultimate extinction. In...

University of Washington Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. Populations of disease-causing bacteria evolve, for example, as doctors flood their “environment,” the human body, with antibiotics. Insects, animals and plants can make evolutionary adaptations in response to pesticides, heavy metals and overfishing. Previous studies have shown that the more gradual the change, the better the chances...

University of California - Davis Chris Martin has bred more than 3,000 hybrid fish in his time as a graduate student in evolution and ecology at UC Davis, a pursuit that has helped him create one of the most comprehensive snapshots of natural selection in the wild and demonstrated a key prediction in evolutionary biology. "We can see a surprisingly complex snapshot of natural selection driving the evolution of new specialized species," said Martin, who with Professor Peter Wainwright...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Before noted paleontologist and ichthyologist Edward Cope passed away in 1897, he had devised a theory that has, to this day, its proponents and detractors. His theory, known today as Cope’s Rule, stated that animals will, in their own voyage through the process of evolution, grow ever larger. This evolutionary trend has been noted across the animal kingdom. Researchers from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) want to...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is a condition that generally occurs in people over the age of 50, but also occurs in higher numbers of people who smoke, who are white, and people who have a family history of the often debilitating condition. And for those who had gone through AMD testing, they had generally had to sit in a darkened room for 20 minutes before testing had begun. But now, researchers from Australia’s Vision...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Basic logic would suggest that the longer a species is around—the more time it has to adapt and evolve, eventually sprouting another whole branch on the tree of life. However, that may not necessarily be the case according to a team of American biologists who just completed an evolutionary survey that accounted for around 1.2 million species. "When we look across the tree of life, the age of the group tells us almost nothing about...

In the face of a changing climate many species must adapt or perish. Ecologists studying evolutionary responses to climate change forecast that cold-blooded tropical species are not as vulnerable to extinction as previously thought. The study, published in the British Ecological Society's Functional Ecology, considers how fast species can evolve and adapt to compensate for a rise in temperature. The research, carried out at the University of Zurich, was led by Dr Richard Walters, now at...

Darwin made adaptation to the environment the key property of evolved living creatures. That's all natural selection can do. But suppose the key property of living creatures is how independent of their environment they are. This is number 1 in a series of website articles casting doubt on the Modern Synthesis. Rosendale, NY (PRWEB) May 29, 2012 In Darwin's theory of natural selection the key concept is "adaptation to the environment." All natural selection could do was identify which...

Mimicry in the animal kingdom is a useful tool that many insects employ to make themselves appear more fierce in order to escape from becoming a meal. However, researchers have been puzzled as to how some of the worst mimickers still seem to escape certain demise. Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada set out to find the nature of mimicry in one of these imperfect impersonators: the hoverfly. Some hoverflies have evolved to be nearly indistinguishable from bees and wasps,...

A new study by University of Notre Dame biologist Michael Pfrender and a team of researchers from the University of Nevada-Reno, Utah State University and the University of Virginia suggests that snakes from different regions of the world have evolved a similar, remarkable resistance to a deadly neurotoxin. The finding, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, greatly increases scientists' understanding of the genetic basis of adaptation and is a model for...