Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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Findings support idea that dogs helping pack members is ancestral tendency, and not due to domestication

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Reconstruction of the most complete fossil lizard found in Australia, a 15 million year old relative of our modern bluetongues and social skinks named Egernia gillespieae, reveals the creature was equipped with a robust crushing jaw and was remarkably similar to modern lizards.

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A new study published April 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified three factors critical in the rise of mammal communities: the rise of flowering plants; the evolution of tribosphenic molars in mammals; and the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs.

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African apes adapted to living on the ground, a finding that indicates human evolved from an ancestor not limited to tree or other elevated habitats. The analysis adds a new chapter to evolution, shedding additional light on what preceded human bipedalism.

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An associate director of Mississippi State’s Northern Gulf Institute is receiving international attention for his eye-opening study on the impact exotic species have on native marine communities.

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A hybrid bird species on the Galapagos Islands could help scientists find a way to stop an invasive fly which is killing off the hatchlings of famous Darwin’s finches at an alarming rate, according to new research. 10 related species of the iconic Darwin’s finches are being threatened by the invasive fly Philornis downsi from South America, which lays its eggs into birds’ nests where the predators then hatch and devour defenceless chicks before the parents can react.

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You may think human sex is bizarre enough. But elsewhere in the animal kingdom, features like competition between sperm and semen that influences behavior conspire to make it even weirder. A special issue of the journal Molecular & Cellular Proteomics highlights recent discoveries in the reproductive biology of species from insects to crocodiles. Here are some highlights.

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A new study reveals the surprising way that family quarrels in seeds drive rapid evolution. Researchers in Arts & Sciences discovered that conflict over the amount of resources an offspring receives from its parent seems to play a special role in the development of certain seed tissues. The study is published the week of April 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Paleontologists at Ohio University have discovered a new species of meat-eating mammal larger than any big cat stalking the world today. Larger than a polar bear,

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A new study into one of the world’s oldest types of fish, Coelacanth, provides fresh insights into the development of the skull and brain of vertebrates and the evolution of lobe-finned fishes and land animals, as published in Nature.

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As you bite into a chocolate bunny or egg this weekend, consider this: rabbits often eat their own young, and hens their own eggs.

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The scientific community has long held an understanding about the effect of temperature on sperm production in mammals, but this new study sheds light on how spermatogenesis in insects is hampered at extreme temperatures.

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University of Maryland researchers analyzed an evolutionary tree reconstructed from the DNA of a majority of known bat species and found four bat lineages that exhibit extreme longevity. They also identified, for the first time, two life history features that predict extended life spans in bats.

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The evolution of aquatic creatures to start living on land made them into more attentive parents, says new research on frogs led by the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.

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Stony Brook University's Liliana Dávalos, PhD, is studying the phenomenal capabilities of the shrew, which shrinks up to 20 percent during winter months without hibernating. The research may shed light on the processes of neurological degeneration and regeneration in mammals.

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Biodiversity hotspot Madagascar is one of the world's biggest islands, and home to some of its biggest insects. Now German scientists have discovered two new species of giant stick insect, living only in the dry forests of Madagascar's northernmost tip.

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Birds-of-paradise are a group of songbird species, and are known for their magnificent male plumage and bewildering sexual display. Now, an international collaborative work involving Dept. of Molecular Evolution and Development of University of Vienna, Zhejiang University of China, and Swedish Museum of Natural History analyzed all together 11 songbird species genomes, including those of five bird-of-paradise species, and reconstructed the evolutionary history of their sex chromosomes.

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Paleontologists from Hokkaido University in Japan, in cooperation with paleontologists from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas

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Some diseases which are fatal in one species can cause only mild discomfort in another--but it's hard for scientists to predict how lethal a disease will be if it leaps across species.

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The neurobiology of turtle ants differs significantly according to their specialized role within the colony, according to a study published March 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Darcy Greer Gordon from Boston University, USA, and colleagues.

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A Costa-Rican lizard species may have evolved scuba-diving qualities allowing it to stay underwater for 16 minutes, according to faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Evolutionary biologists at McMaster University who study the social lives and behaviour of colony spiders—some of which are docile, others aggressive— have found that the success of their cooperative societies depend on their neighbours.

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The ~125 million-year-old Early Cretaceous fossil beds of Los Hoyas, Spain have long been known for producing thousands of petrified fish and reptiles (Fig. 1). However, one special fossil stands unique and is one of the rarest of fossils -- a nearly complete skeleton of a hatchling bird.

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The study of evolution is revealing new complexities, showing how the traits most beneficial to the fitness of individual plants and animals are not always the ones we see in nature. Instead, new research by McMaster behavioural scientists shows that in certain cases evolution works in the opposite direction, reversing individual improvements to benefit related members of the same group.

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New research investigates hot spots of genetic variation in the human genome, examining the sections of our DNA that are most likely to differ significantly from one person to another.

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The teeth of a new fossil monkey, unearthed in the badlands of northwest Kenya, help fill a 6-million-year void in Old World monkey evolution, according to a study by U.S. and Kenyan scientists published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Scientists are rethinking a major milestone in animal evolution, after gaining fresh insights into how life on Earth diversified millions of years ago.

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An expedition to an isolated hill range located in Southern India along one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world led to the discovery of a new, ancient lineage of frog endemic to the area, according to a study published today in the journal PeerJ.

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When coyote parents are habituated to humans, their offspring are more habituated, too — potentially leading to negative interactions between coyotes and humans.

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Shorter intervals between primate births are associated with higher mortality rates in offspring, finds a new study of macaque monkeys. The results are consistent with previous research on human birth intervals, suggesting that this is a pattern of evolutionary origin.

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A new study published in Nature Ecology and Evolution led by scientists from the University of Chicago challenges one of the classic assumptions about how new proteins evolve.

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A new, wallaby-sized herbivorous dinosaur has been identified from five fossilized upper jaws in 125 million year old rocks from the Cretaceous period of Victoria, southeastern Australia.

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By analyzing troves of genetic data and considering a vast number of possible ways to examine it, University of Wisconsin–Madison scientists now have a high degree of confidence that horseshoe crabs do indeed belong within the arachnids.

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It's widely accepted within agriculture that maintaining genetic diversity is important. In areas where crop plants are more diverse, pathogens might kill some plants but are less likely to wipe out an entire crop.

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A sweeping new study published in the journal Science says that chimpanzee’s complex cultures – including the use of tools and other behaviors – are being lost as human disturbance expands into previously wild areas.

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An international group of researchers including biologists from the University of Maryland found that at least four species of marine ribbon worms independently evolved the ability to regrow a head after amputation.

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Over four years, descendants of the lice evolved heritable color differences that spanned the full color range of the lice genus. This is the first study to show that the evolutionary changes occurring within a single species (microevolution) echoed changes among different species that diverged millions of years ago (macroevolution).

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Research developed using an $832,000 National Science Foundation grant in a Mississippi State University biologist’s lab is gaining international attention this week in Current Biology, a premier bi-monthly scientific journal.

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The oldest distinguishing feature between humans and our ape cousins is our ability to walk on two legs – a trait known as bipedalism. Among mammals, only humans and our ancestors perform this atypical balancing act. New research led by a Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine professor of anatomy provides evidence for greater reliance on terrestrial bipedalism by a human ancestor than previously suggested in the ancient fossil record.

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A team of paleontologists led by Virginia Tech’s Michelle Stocker and Sterling Nesbitt of the Department of Geosciences have identified fossil fragments of what are thought to be the oldest known frogs in North America.

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Chimpanzees have a more elaborate and diversified material culture than any other nonhuman primate.

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Scientists have revealed the African origins of New Zealand’s most mysterious giant flightless bird – the now extinct adzebill – showing that some of its closest living relatives are the pint-sized flufftails from Madagascar and Africa.

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The rich levels of biodiversity on land seen across the globe today are not a recent phenomenon: diversity on land has been similar for at least the last 60 million years, since soon after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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New research has revealed the fascinating adaptation of some Australian sea snakes that helps protect their vulnerable paddle-shaped tails from predators.

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By providing an over-abundance of energy to cells, diseases like obesity and diabetes might super-charge growth and cause cells to become cancerous.

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Male butterflies have genes which give them a sexual preference for a partner with a similar appearance to themselves, according to new research. In a study publishing February 7th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology

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In a surprising evolutionary twist, a new study suggests that while one rattlesnake may routinely feast on lizard meat, its seemingly identical neighbor snake might strike and strike and never kill its would-be reptilian prey. The first-of-its-kind research reveals significant venom variation within populations of Florida pygmy rattlesnakes, showing that effectiveness against one type of prey differs widely among individuals and opening up questions about why this variation exists.

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An international team of collaborators found that the CD4 surface protein, which is used by HIV and SIV as the receptor to enter immune cells, is highly variable among wild chimpanzees.

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Genetic analysis of sticklebacks shows that isolated populations in similar environments develop in comparable ways. The basis for this is already present in the genome of their genetic ancestors. Evolutionary biologists from the University of Basel and the University of Nottingham report these insights in the journal Evolution Letters.

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Over the past 40 years, there has been a dramatic decline in fishery landings of an iconic Baltic Sea fish: the flounder. In the 1980s, the landings of the flounder fishery in the Gulf of Finland dropped by 90 per cent, a trend that was later confirmed by fishery-independent surveys.