Evolution

From New Scientist: First warm-blooded lizards switch on mystery heat source at will The first known warm-blooded lizard, the tegu, can heat itself to as much as 10 ̊C above its surroundings – making it unique among reptiles. But bizarrely, it only switches on its heating system at certain times of the year. … Even when the scientists removed access to sunshine or food for a few days, the lizards still warmed up before dawn. But how do they do it? Last year another group reported the first known warm-blooded fish – the opah – which generates heat by the muscular flapping of its fins. What became of all those theories about how warm-bloodedness evolved in mammals and birds, but Read More ›

And gosh, weren’t we hoping it was a pile, but never mind… 😉 From Science: Male mice bequeath an unexpected legacy to their progeny. Two studies published online this week in Science reveal that sperm from the rodents carry pieces of RNAs that alter the metabolism of their offspring. The RNAs spotlighted by the studies normally help synthesize proteins, so the findings point to an unconventional form of inheritance. The results are “exciting and surprising, but not impossible,” says geneticist Joseph Nadeau of the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute in Seattle, Washington. “Impossible” is exactly how biologists once described so-called epigenetic inheritance, in which something other than a DNA sequence passes a trait between generations. In recent years, however, researchers Read More ›

Here. January 23, 2016, 7:30 pm EST: Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,015 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store) #13 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Evolution #16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Science > Biological Sciences > Biology #174 in Books > Science & Math > Evolution Book to be released January 26. More than thirty years after his landmark book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), biologist Michael Denton revisits his earlier thesis about the inability of Darwinian evolution to explain the history of life. He argues that there remains “an irresistible consilience of evidence for rejecting Darwinian cumulative selection as the major driving force Read More ›

  Denis Noble is one of the figures behind the upcoming “rethink evolution” meet in November. Here’s one of his lectures: Physiologist Noble doubts Darwinism, and does a good job of identifying problems with the Central Dogma and other stuff* that just hangs around forever. Darwinists say they are phasing it out. But they don’t need to if they can phase out the careers of people who know it is bunk instead. So lots of people want a meeting. *Note: For that matter, there’s Dollo’s Law: That said, patterns we assume to exist may not hold up. A classic evolutionary doctrine, “Dollo’s law,” claims that traits once lost can never be regained. But bone worms, for one example, seem to break this Read More ›

A friend draws attention to this paywalled paper, noting that—however it tries to wallpaper issues—at least confronts a problem: The conventional claims about how natural selection can simply “gather” information are inadequate. It’s nice wallpaper; there’s probably no wall under it. But there doesn’t need to be. One can say anything one wants about evolution these days and attribute anything at all to it. From Trends and Ecology and Evolution: The theory of evolution links random variation and selection to incremental adaptation. In a different intellectual domain, learning theory links incremental adaptation (e.g., from positive and/or negative reinforcement) to intelligent behaviour. Specifically, learning theory explains how incremental adaptation can acquire knowledge from past experience and use it to direct future Read More ›

From Nature: Opaekaa Falls, like much of Kauai, is teeming with feral chickens — free-ranging fowl related both to the domestic breeds that lay eggs or produce meat for supermarket shelves and to a more ancestral lineage imported to Hawaii hundreds of years ago. … The process of domestication has moulded animals and their genomes to thrive in human environments. Traits that ensure survival in the wild often give way to qualities that benefit humans, such as docility and fast growth. Feralization looks, on its surface, like domestication in reverse. But closer inspection suggests that the chickens of Kauai are evolving into something quite different from their wild predecessors, gaining some traits that reflect that past, but maintaining others that Read More ›

Generally, coal is assumed to have originated in the lignin of Carboniferous forests, but now a new theory has been introduced: From The Economist: The trees of the Carboniferous were not like those of today. Moreover, which types of tree predominated varied over the vast span of time that it covered. One pertinent observation Dr Boyce and his team make is that the peak of coal formation coincided with the dominance of a group called the lycopsids. Yet lycopsid trunks were composed mostly of tissue called periderm, which corresponds to modern bark and contains little lignin. Forests that existed both before and after these lycopsid woods (but before the supposed evolution of lignin-digesting fungi) had many more lignin-rich species in Read More ›

From his blog, Sandwalk: I’m looking forward to learning about all the paradigm-shifting work on evolutionary theory from the likes of Denis Noble and the Third Way crowd [Physiologists fall for the Third Way]. There may even be some famous members of the Altenberg 16 [More calls to extend the defunct Modern Synthesis]. More. His is likely to be an eclectic perspective, and we will listen with interest. See also: So who’s in and who’s out at Royal Society 2016 “rethink evolution” meet? and PZ Myers on Royal Society “rethink evolution” meet: “But that’s not how science works.” Follow UD News at Twitter!

“But that’s not how science works.” From his blog Pharyngula, Larry Moran is attending — not as a representative of the crackpot contingent, but, I suspect, to cast a cynical eye on the shenanigans. The Third Way of Evolution gang seems to be excited about the meeting, which is not a good sign — these are people who have taken some useful ideas in evolutionary theory, like epigenetics and niche construction, and turned the dial up to 11 to argue that these concepts are so revolutionary that they demand a complete upheaval of neo-Darwinian thinking. Many evidence-based concepts do demand it, actually. What’s changed is this: Darwinism (natural selection acting on random mutation) was once a default explanation of change Read More ›

Suzan Mazur, author of The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing “the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin,” draws attention to a notice of the Royal Society’s upcoming “rethink evolution” meet in the online Progressive Review: Moving beyond Darwin One of the problems with the stubbornly ignorant approach towards evolution by the reactionary right is that the media has reduced the matter to a simplistic debate largely determined by the dumb. But Darwin clearly didn’t have all the answers, and science has moved many miles since his time. One of the few journalists following this story has been Suzan Mazur, whose reports we have published from time to time. Now she’s writing about a conference next November that will undoubtedly give post-Darwinian science Read More ›

Let the door hit both of you on the way out? Well, how else to understand this, from a review of new book, The Society of Genes (Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher, Harvard U Press)? From New Scientist: FORTY years ago, Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene popularised the notion that the gene, rather than the individual, was the true unit of evolution. That view has dominated evolutionary genetics ever since. But in The Society of Genes, biologists Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher say that it’s time to replace the selfish-gene metaphor with a new one that focuses on relationships. “We are not the simple sum of our genes,” they write. “The members of the society of genes do not Read More ›

From Lee Spetner at Evolution News & Views: Reviewing The Evolution Revolution, the NCSE Offers Uninformed Criticism that Misses the Point No surprise, the Darwin-in-the-schools lobby (NCSE) did a hit job on physicist Spetner’s book, and did not acknowledge his request for an opportunity to reply in their publication (last we heard). No matter, here’s his response: Unfortunately, the points Levin raises are the results of his misunderstandings or distortions of what I wrote, or his failure to read the relevant portion of the text he was commenting on. Indeed, he missed the most important point of the book. I show that current evolutionary theory, and any derivative of it that relies on random mutations, is invalid. A scientific theory Read More ›

Commenting on a recent PLOS paper, Ann Gauger writes at Evolution News & Views, A recent paper in PLOS Genetics considers the origins of new “genes” in humans and chimps. By comparing RNA sequences, researchers identified over 600 transcriptionally active “genes” that appear to be present only in humans and not in chimps or the other mammal species tested. They claimed that these “genes” were the product of evolution from previously non-coding, untranscribed DNA. They argued that some of the “genes” are made into proteins and perhaps may be subject to selection, meaning that they are evolving. I put genes in quote because this is not what the term gene typically means. It used to be that a gene was Read More ›

A new book, The Origin of Higher Taxa by T. S. Kemp, asks, Does Darwinian evolution acting over a sufficiently long period of time really offer a complete explanation, or are unusual genetic events and particular environmental and ecological circumstances also involved? With The Origin of Higher Taxa, Tom Kemp sifts through the layers of paleobiological, genetic, and ecological evidence on a quest to answer this essential, game-changing question of biology. More. A legitimate response would be: Do you still need your job, Kemp? If so, you know that the answer is Yes. (Turns out he doesn’t still need his job, so … ) We are told, Kemp here offers a timely and original reinterpretation of how higher taxa such Read More ›

From PR Newswire: Major scientists from a dozen countries present evidence that a paradigm shift is underway or has already taken place, replacing neo-Darwinism (the standard model of evolution based on natural selection following the accumulation of random genetic mutations) with a vastly richer evolutionary synthesis than previously thought possible. The Royal Society seems to cautiously agree: “Royal Society meet on paradigm shift in evolution? Many of the 50 or so scientists associated with The Third Way of Evolution will attend.” Here is a developing discussion of possible interest at O’Leary for News’s Facebook page: Gem from Joel Fletcher: Joel Fletcher the “silent” revolution is taking place while TMZ monitors hollywood’s opinions on Darwinism. Well, we all have our priorities, Read More ›