Link: The Long-Term Evolution Experiment turns 27
I am back in Johannesburg this week and next, working with the fossil collection at the University of the Witwatersrand.
All posts tagged with evolutionary theory
Notable: Coevolution drives biological complexity
Notable paper: Zaman L, Meyer JR, Devangam S, Bryson DM, Lenski RE, et al. (2014) Coevolution Drives the Emergence of Complex Traits and Promotes Evolvabilit...
Seven things about evolution
What is evolution?
Link: Peter and Rosemary Grant in New York Times
Jonathan Weiner wrote a well-known book about the long-term field studies of Galapagos finches by Peter and Rosemary Grant, titled The Beak of the Finch: A S...
Seven things about evolution
What is evolution?
Vestigial traits under the microscope
Australian paleoanthropologist Darren Curnoe has been blogging at The Conversation, with some interesting posts. This week, he has written on the topic of ve...
Kin selection strikes back
Last year I noted the publication of a paper in Nature by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and Edward O. Wilson, which claimed that kin selection is not a suffic...
Quote: Dobzhansky on the tropics
Theodosius Dobzhansky, concluding a paper titled, “Evolution in the Tropics”, which considered the role of physical environment versus other factors as evolu...
Inclusive fitness works
I can’t believe the amount of attention the paper by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and Edward O. Wilson Nowak:eusociality:2010 has gotten. It was in last week...
We control the horizontal
New Scientist has an article by Mark Buchanan discussing horizontal transfer as a mechanism for the evolution of early life: “Horizontal and vertical: The ev...
R. A. Fisher's model of adaptation
Chapter 2 of R. A. Fisher’s Genetical Theory of Natural Selection is remarkable for many reasons. In it, he presents a model of selection in an age-structure...
Sweet irreversible you
I was going to comment last week on the “molecular evolution doesn’t reverse itself” paper – it’s a very clever use of informatics and the comparative method...
Molecular systematics and species trees
I’d like to point readers to a recent essay in Evolution, by Scott V. Edwards, titled, “Is a new and general theory of molecular systematics emerging?”
Quote: Elliott Sober on the force of selection
Elliott Sober’s book, The Nature of Selection, discusses the philosophical underpinnings of evolutionary explanation in relation to other sciences. I turn to...
Why biologists should care about math
I’d like to point readers to James Crow’s article in the open access Journal of Biology. Titled, “Mayr, mathematics and the study of evolution,” it’s a brief...
Early concepts of cultural diffusion: the Boasians
I went looking for Lowie, because I was curious about the introduction of the diffusion concept into cultural anthropology. The mathematical description of d...
Billiard-ball genetics
I picked up a copy of Julian Huxley’s Evolution: The Modern Synthesis this week at a book sale. It’s funny – the book was a review copy and bears the followi...
Lateral gene transfer in evolutionary history
Carl Zimmer describes a recent paper documenting lateral gene transfer across a broad phylogeny of organisms. It’s one of the topics covered in his book, Mic...
Notes from Altenberg
Massimo Pigliucci has posted his notes from the Altenberg conference.
Epistasis and Fisher
A long explication of R. A. Fisher’s views on epistasis by Gene Expression writer DavidB. Worth reading for its outside-the-textbook presentation of the Fish...
Pigliucci on agenda for Altenberg meeting
Massimo Pigliucci describes the agenda for the upcoming Altenberg meeting, attempting to hash out the place of some recent developments in evolutionary theor...