Latest Evolutionary biology Stories

Jedidiah Becker for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Take a glance at the arc of human civilization. As just a few notable achievements, you might start with the discovery of agriculture before moving on to survey the architectural marvels of the ancient world, the revolution of Gutenberg’s printing press and finally landing on the modern ubiquity of rapidly evolving computer technology. This view tends to give a sense that the human intellect may have a nearly limitless potential...

Researchers found significant regional variation and trends in antibiotic use between 1999-2010 SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Research revealed during "Get Smart Week" shows that California joined Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington as the five states with the lowest antibiotic use in the nation in 2010. "Get Smart Week" is a national partnership launched by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote the appropriate use of...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online New research is showing that a certain type of bacteria is becoming more resistant to antibiotic treatments. Extending the Cure (ETC) reported the second most common infection in the US, urinary tract infection (UTI), is becoming harder to treat with antibiotics. ETC, a project of the Centers for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, found the available arsenal of drugs used to treat UTIs are losing their effectiveness, with...

Consumer Group Highlights The Overuse of Drugs In Food Animals During CDC's "Get Smart About Antibiotics Week" YONKERS, N.Y., Nov. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, today called for a major reduction in the use of antibiotics in food animal production because their overuse promotes the spread of drug-resistant superbugs and makes antibiotics less effective for people. Consumers Union is calling attention to the...

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...

Researchers find that gene related to germ cell formation is far older than first thought Harvard scientists have solved the long-standing mystery of how some insects form the germ cells – the cellular precursors to the eggs and sperm necessary for sexual reproduction – and the answer is shedding new light on the evolutionary origins of a gene that had long been thought to be critical to the process. As described in a November 1 paper published in Current Biology, a team of...

Evolution, often perceived as a series of random changes, might in fact be driven by a simple and repeated genetic solution to an environmental pressure that a broad range of species happen to share, according to new research. Princeton University research published in the journal Science suggests that knowledge of a species' genes — and how certain external conditions affect the proteins encoded by those genes — could be used to determine a predictable evolutionary pattern driven by...

An evolutionary engine of genital evolution When a female mates with several males, these will compete over the fertilization her eggs. This is an important evolutionary force that has led to the evolution of a diversity of male sexual organ morphologies. This is revealed in a study of seed beetles published today in the leading scientific journal Current Biology. In higher plants, the influential classification system developed by Carl von Linnaeus relied on the fact that the...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Conservationists have warned for years that rare species have the highest risk of becoming endangered or extinct, but the word “rare” could have several different meanings with respect to the distribution of particular species. An international team of researchers from Stanford University in California and Humboldt University in Berlin decided to parse the definition of “rare” with respect to conservation and found some animals...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have increased the potency of a compound that reactivates antibiotics against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), an antibiotic-resistant form of Staphylococcus that is notoriously difficult to treat. Their improved compound removes the bacteria’s antibiotic resistance and allows the antibiotic to once again become effective at normal dosage levels. NC State chemist Christian Melander had previously proven the effectiveness...