Latest Evolution Stories
Where’s the white hot furnace that powers evolution? For Darwin it lay in natural selection. The “Modern Synthesis” relocated it to genetic mutation. In the third of a series of articles published at http://www.takeondarwin.com, Contrarian Evolutionist author Shaun Johnston relocates it once again, to wherever variations in living creatures are created. (PRWEB) July 16, 2012 Modern evolutionary theory is the opposite of what people assumed when they first wondered what made living...
BPA in rivers leads to breakdown of fish species barriers Hormone-mimicking chemicals released into rivers have been found to impact the mating choices of fish, a new study has revealed. The controversial chemical BPA, which emits oestrogen-like properties, was found to alter an individual's appearance and behavior, leading to inter-species breeding. The study, published in Evolutionary Applications, reveals the threat to biodiversity when the boundaries between species are blurred. The...
Plant overcomes infertility to give rise to a new species in Scotland A new species of monkey flower, created by the union of two foreign plant species, has been discovered on the bank of a stream in Scotland. Genetic changes in this attractive yellow-flowered hybrid have allowed it to overcome infertility and made it a rare example of a brand new species that has originated in the wild in the last 150 years. Thousands of wild species and some crops are thought to have originated in this...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Research has revealed just what is behind a birds' song, shedding more light on nature's melody. Canadian researchers found that closely related birds that share the same habitat are not necessarily birds of the same feather that flock together in music, but instead tend to look and sound different. The team studied 250 bird species throughout the world and were able to compile a database of where the birds lived, and what they...
A fungal species native to Iran which attacks grasses is the result of natural hybridisation that occurred just a few hundred years ago Zymoseptoria tritici is often a headache for European farmers. This ascomycete originating from the Middle East attacks the leaves of wheat plants triggering "speckled leaf blotch", which can cut crop yields by up to 50 percent. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg and Aarhus University in Denmark have now taken...
Frequency-dependent selection fosters the diversity of populations but does not always increase the average fitness of the population. Genetic diversity arises through the interplay of mutation, selection and genetic drift. In most scientific models, mutants have a fitness value which remains constant throughout. Based on this value, they compete with other types in the population and either die out or become established. However, evolutionary game theory considers constant fitness values...
A classic study from more than 60 years ago suggesting that males are more promiscuous and females more choosy in selecting mates may, in fact, be wrong, say life scientists who are the first to repeat the historic experiment using the same methods as the original. In 1948, English geneticist Angus John Bateman published a study showing that male fruit flies gain an evolutionary advantage from having multiple mates, while their female counterparts do not. Bateman's conclusions have...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Sadly, the sudden death of the giant tortoise Lonesome George on the Galapagos Islands this Sunday marks the loss of another subspecies from the face of the Earth. When scientists first met Lonesome George on Pinta Island in 1972, they had thought his species, Geochelone nigra abingdoni, was already extinct. He was immediately placed into the park service’s tortoise breeding program on Santa Cruz Island and while he did mate with a female tortoise — the...
However, principles of natural selection may also hold key to thwarting emergence of drug resistance According to researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, cancer is subject to the evolutionary processes laid out by Charles Darwin in his concept of natural selection. Natural selection was the process identified by Darwin by which nature selects certain physical attributes, or phenotypes, to pass on to offspring to better "fit" the organism to the environment. As applied to cancer, natural...
Natural selection was never a good idea, according to Contrarian Evolutionist author Shaun Johnston in the second of a series of articles published at http://www.takeondarwin.com. Natural selection couldn't account for where species or variation came from; no wonder Darwin hesitated to publish it. Even now when it's combined with genetic mutation natural selection is still not a good idea, Johnston claims. Rosendale, NY (PRWEB) June 16, 2012 There isn't much for Darwin to be very...
