Evolution

From Biologic Institute’s Ann Gauger, on J. Scott Turner’s forthcoming Purpose and Desire: at Evolution News & Views: Claude Bernard (1813-1878) was a French physiologist, one of the most famous scientists of his age, so famous that he appeared in poems, novels, and memoirs of the period both in France and abroad. Think Albert Einstein. Now, however, he is most famous for his idea that the miliéu interieur, or internal environment of living things, must remain constant to sustain and maintain life. This idea is given the name homeostasis, defined as a “self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to conditions that are optimal for survival. If homeostasis is successful, life continues; if unsuccessful, disaster Read More ›

From Robert F. Service at Science: For the last 20 years, Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, has amassed a wealth of evidence that she’s isolated protein fragments from dinosaurs as much as 80 million years old. That bucks the conventional wisdom among paleontologists who argue that proteins, which are made of chains of amino acids, can’t survive more than 1 million years or so. So far, no group other than Schweitzer and her collaborators has managed to replicate the findings. She contends that’s because others don’t follow her methods. If Schweitzer is right and outside researchers eventually do confirm her findings, it could transform dinosaur paleontology into a molecular science. That, in turn, could Read More ›

Laszlo Bencze writes to note this letter he wrote to American Scholar in 2004 in response to an article therein, one that does not seem to be online: Evolution, that good mother, has seen fit to guide us to the apple instead of the poison berry by our attraction to the happy sweetness of the apple, its fresh crispness, and, in just the right balance, enough tartness to make it complicated in the mouth. There are good and rational reasons why natural selection has made us into creatures with fine taste discernment—we can learn what’s good for us and what’s not. But this very sensible survival imperative, like the need to have sex to reproduce, works itself out through the Read More ›

From Sara Reardon at Nature: Wallabies are kicking over scientific conventions surrounding mammalian placentas, the organ responsible for protecting and nourishing a developing fetus. A study finds that contrary to what scientists thought previously, mother tammar wallabies (Macropus eugenii) have both a functioning internal placenta and milk that performs some of the organ’s usual roles. Taxonomists usually separate marsupials — including kangaroos, wallabies and wombats — from placental mammals, also known as eutherians, such as mice and people. The separation is based partly on a supposed lack of a placenta in marsupials. But many researchers think that this distinction is incorrect, noting that marsupials develop simple, placenta-like structures during the end of pregnancy, just before the underdeveloped baby crawls from Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The fossils were discovered in sediment in the Corumbá region of western Brazil, near the border with Bolivia. The burrows measure from under 50 to 600 micrometres or microns (?m) in diameter, meaning the creatures that made them were similar in size to a human hair which can range from 40 to 300 microns in width. One micrometre is just one thousandth of a millimeter. Dr Russell Garwood, from Manchester’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said: ‘This is an especially exciting find due to the age of the rocks — these fossils are found in rock layers which actually pre-date the oldest fossils of complex animals — at least that is what all current fossil records would Read More ›

A friend writes: “When I discuss evolution in social media, some complain about the word Darwinism. They say, ‘Darwinism is a term I never hear outside of Christian circles.’ Is that so?” No, of course not. Another friend offers many citations, but just this, from 2005: Here: Even prominent Darwinist scientists use the term in their popular writings. Richard Dawkins writes that “There are people in this world who desperately want to not have to believe in Darwinism.” (The Blind Watchmaker, W.W. Norton, 1996 ed, pg. 250) The term “Darwinism” has over 20 entries in the index to Stephen Jay Gould’s magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. If Wilson is correct that “Scientists don’t call it Darwinism,” then apparently Read More ›

Here. As we know, random changes and undirected natural processes routinely succeed in assembling functional equipment for a range of uses. Wait…it doesn’t work that way? The Revolutionary Behe website, at http://revolutionarybehe.com/, features more information about Dr. Behe’s research, other molecular machines, and evidence for intelligent design, and the stories of revolutionary scientists changing the evolutionary paradigm. See the documentary now and pass it along! Behe is the author of Darwin’s Black Box and Edge of Evolution Note: News posting light till later today due to other alternate night job. See also: How ID theorist Michael Behe forced Darwin’s faithful to start talking nonsense and Eric Metaxas on Michael Behe, Revolutionary

From Creation-Evolution Headlines: Will Brown bring Darwin’s Down House down? Look at the title of a paper in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics by Christopher J. Graves and Daniel M. Weinreich of Brown University: “Variability in Fitness Effects Can Preclude Selection of the Fittest.” The very title suggests that core concepts underlying neo-Darwinism (fitness and selection) are in trouble. Although the paper is behind a paywall, we get an idea of the trouble from the Abstract: Evolutionary biologists often predict the outcome of natural selection on an allele by measuring its effects on lifetime survival and reproduction of individual carriers. However, alleles affecting traits like sex, evolvability, and cooperation can cause fitness effects that depend heavily on Read More ›

Paper published in June in PLOS Biology: Environmental change drives accelerated adaptation through stimulated copy number variation From author summary: Stimulated copy number variation (CNV) operates at sites of preexisting copy number variation, which are common in eukaryotic genomes, and provides cells with a remarkable and unexpected ability to alter their own genome in response to the environment. pdf (public access) Abstract: Copy number variation (CNV) is rife in eukaryotic genomes and has been implicated in many human disorders, particularly cancer, in which CNV promotes both tumorigenesis and chemotherapy resistance. CNVs are considered random mutations but often arise through replication defects; transcription can interfere with replication fork progression and stability, leading to increased mutation rates at highly transcribed loci. Here Read More ›

Here: The conventional NeoDarwinian appraisal of evolution is based on corresponding pillars of random genetic variation and selection via differential fitness. In the 21st century, a salient question arises. Is this a sufficient evolutionary narrative? This Special Issue will offer several differing perspectives on evolutionary development and phylogeny that extend beyond Darwinian selection. The role of cellular cooperativity, cellular cognition, self-reference, niche construction, stigmergy, self-organization, epigenetic modifications, genetic transfer and mobility, endosymbiosis, hologenomics, and non-stochastic genetic mechanisms will be addressed. In particular, cell–cell communication and aspects of cellular/genetic self-engineering will be considered. Over many years, movement towards a substantial revision of the NeoDarwinian synthesis has gained slow momentum through many diverging approaches. This Special Issue will explore a variety of Read More ›

What pre-extinguished boffin said that? From Fern Elsdon-Baker at Guardian: We clearly need to be careful not to assume that when people say they are rejecting “evolutionary science”, they are rejecting all scientific research or indeed all of what we might think of as evolutionary science. ‘Evolution’ as a term has gained a mishmash of cultural baggage over the years, not least a strong association with ‘New Atheist’ movements. Some may just reject it out of hand because they assume you have to be an atheist to accept evolutionary science. Our data suggests that ‘genetics’ doesn’t appear to have this baggage. Furthermore, doubts about evolutionary science frequently appear to be related to the perceived limitations of evolutionary science-based explanations for Read More ›

From Salvo online: Zombie Killer: The “Icons of Evolution” Have Joined the Ranks of the Undead: You cannot kill all zombies simply by destroying their brains. Only intelligence will kill the really nasty ones. About fifteen years ago, I read Jonathan Wells’s Icons of Evolution (2000). The sheer brazenness of the outdated information that continued to be paraded in decades of textbooks dealing with evolution was striking—even to a longtime textbook editor (now retired) like me. For example, Ernst Haeckel’s doctored vertebrate embryo illustrations from more than a century ago (intended to cement the idea of common descent) were the best modern evolutionary science could offer.1 Which says something about modern evolutionary science. The textbook publishing industry depends on a Read More ›

From an article in Biology Direct, Breath-giving cooperation: critical review of origin of mitochondria hypotheses: Major unanswered questions point to the importance of early ecology: Abstract: The origin of mitochondria is a unique and hard evolutionary problem, embedded within the origin of eukaryotes. The puzzle is challenging due to the egalitarian nature of the transition where lower-level units took over energy metabolism. Contending theories widely disagree on ancestral partners, initial conditions and unfolding of events. There are many open questions but there is no comparative examination of hypotheses. We have specified twelve questions about the observable facts and hidden processes leading to the establishment of the endosymbiont that a valid hypothesis must address. We have objectively compared contending hypotheses under Read More ›

From Colin Barras at New Scientist: The evolutionary story we have written to explain our ancestors’ move from sea to land may need a rethink. A fossil fish from this era has been discovered with several of the features of land animals – yet it was only distantly related to them. Roughly 360 million years ago, one group of lobe-finned fish began evolving into four-legged, land-living animals that resulted in reptiles, amphibians and mammals like us. … However, a fossil discovered in a quarry in Ningxia, north China, now threatens that stability.More. Yeah. Real history is a bitch. Just a bitch. See also: Our favorite: The leaping blenny

From ScienceDaily: For several decades, scientists have placed polypterids down near the base of the family tree of ray-finned fish, a large group believed to have originated around 385 million years ago. But a new study that used CT scans to probe three-dimensionally preserved fossil fish skulls shakes up the fish family tree by concluding that the emergence of polypterids occurred much later than researchers had thought. The findings also suggest that the origin of all modern ray-finned fish may have occurred tens of millions of years later than is generally believed. … Ray-finned fish represent about half of all backboned animals on Earth. For every species of mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian on land, there is a species of Read More ›