adaptation
Natural selection adapts populations to their environments. Evolutionary biologists examine evidence for adaptation in genes, morphology, and behavior.
Did two pulses of evolution supercharge human cognition?
An intriguing new study tries to tabulate the ages of genetic variants associated with human phenotypes, but its claims about recent brain evolution may not pan out.
What color were Neandertals?
Even with whole genomes, scientists can't say very precisely what pattern of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation was in ancient populations like the Neandertals.
Should we be surprised if Neandertals, Denisovans, and modern humans didn’t form stable hybrid zones?
A geneticist asks why we don't see more persisting hybrid populations, and I find an answer in the theory of population source-sink dynamics.
New findings from the Denisova 3 genome at high coverage
Sequencing work by Matthias Meyer and coworkers highlights the demography of ancient Denisovans and genes that may make today's people different from them.
Did human language evolve as a spandrel?
A critical look at the point of view that human language did not originate from its adaptive role in communication, but from other cognitive functions.
How much of human evolution was due to polygenic adaptation?
This has been an eventful week for those of us who study the dynamics of recent selection in humans. The most significant event was the publication of a paper describing genetic analysis of a long selection experiment in Drosophila. Although the experiment differs from most natural instances of selection in
Did Neandertals evolve in a population sink?
The dynamics of adaptation in shrinking populations may help understand how many ancient populations evolved.
Notes on Ashley Montagu, recent human evolution, and human equality
The anthropologist argued that humans have stopped evolving, but that isn't the way we understand human evolution today.
How much was migration a creative force for culture change?
An essay by Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd explores the way that cultures evolved by contact.
Our new paper on why human evolution accelerated
I run through our 2007 work on evidence for recent natural selection across the human genome.
