Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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Fish, flies & bears, oh my! Research breakthrough gives genetic proof of how differences in (very different) animals develop.

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Today, February 12, is Darwin Day—an occasion to recognize the scientific contributions of 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin. In this video, our own evolutionary geneticist, Dan Janes, answers questions about Darwin and the role of evolution in health and biomedicine.

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First genetic evidence of modern human DNA in a Neanderthal individual.

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Missouri-based scientists unlock clues to predatory behavior, a significant factor in evolution.

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Researchers at the RIKEN Evolutionary Morphology laboratory and other institutions in Japan have shown that complex divisions in the vertebrate brain first appeared before the evolution of jaws, more than 500 million years ago.

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A study reported Feb. 12 in the journal PLOS Biology employs genome-wide sequencing to reveal highly specific details about the evolutionary mechanisms that drove genetic divergence in 13 species of wild tomatoes that share a recent common ancestor.

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Ancient immigrants to Rome included young children, men.

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On November 11, 1954, Syuiti Mori turned out the lights on a small group of fruit flies. More than sixty years later, the descendents of those flies have adapted to life without light. These flies—a variety now known as “Dark-fly”—outcompete their light-loving cousins when they live together in constant darkness, according to research reported in the February issue of G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics. This competitive difference allowed the researchers to re-play the evolution of Dark-fly and identify the genomic regions that contribute to its success in the dark.

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A provocative study by evolutionary biologists at McMaster University takes on one of Charles Darwin’s central ideas: that males adapt and compete for the attention of females because it is the females who ultimately choose their mates and the time of mating.

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When scientists from McGill University learned that some fish were proliferating in water polluted by oil extraction in Southern Trinidad, they thought they had found a rare example of a species able to adapt to crude oil pollution. But when they tested them, these guppies were actually less adapted to pollution than similar fish from non-polluted areas.

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Having the wrong coat color during shorter winters is deadly for snowshoe hares and could lead to a steep population decline by mid-century. However, wide variance in molting times could enable natural selection to work.

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When sick, we assume that our aches, fever, etc., are from a virus or bacteria, but now a team of scientists have a novel hypothesis: evolution. The genes that trigger symptoms which encourage us to stay home are actually focused on their own survival – in the group as a whole, if not in us.

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A single chance mutation caused an ancient protein to evolve a new function essential for multicellularity in animals, about a billion years ago, according to research co-led by UChicago scientists.

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7th graders conducted classroom experiments using live Trinidadian guppies to test questions related to evolution, increasing both knowledge about and acceptance of evolutionary concepts.

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The specialized human ability to perceive the sound quality known as “pitch” can no longer be listed as unique to humans.

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A thigh bone found in China suggests an ancient species of human thought to be long extinct may have survived until as recently as the end of the last Ice Age.

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Evolution may be more intelligent than we thought, according to a University of Southampton professor.

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Evolutionary biologists at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, University of Washington and the University of Utah may have solved a century-old evolutionary riddle: How did two related fruit fly species arise from one?

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A study published today finds a surprising and very recent shift away from the steady relationship among species that prevailed for more than 300 million years. The study, published in the journal Nature, offers the first long-term view of how species associated with each other for half of the existence of multicellular life on Earth.

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Insomniacs take heart: Humans get by on significantly less sleep than our closest animal relatives. The secret, according to a new study, is that our sleep is more efficient.

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A new study led by the American Museum of Natural History links modern birds to a "feathered father" that lived in South America some 90 million years ago.

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Tests carried out by a University of Southampton archaeologist have confirmed a former chalk quarry holds vital clues about prehistoric climate and the early human occupation of the UK.

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A new study by a team of scientists from Argentina, Brazil, California and the Natural History Museum of Utah at the University of Utah has determined that the time elapsed between the emergence of early dinosaur relatives and the origin of the first dinosaurs is much shorter than previously believed.

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Young men’s interest in babies is specifically associated with their physiological reactivity to sexually explicit material, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

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An international research team, led by Rodrigo Lacruz, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology at New York University’s College of Dentistry (NYUCD), has just published a study describing for the first time the developmental processes that differentiate Neanderthal facial skeletons from those of modern humans.

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By examining rocks at the bottom of ancient oceans, an international group of researchers have revealed that arsenic concentrations in the oceans have varied greatly over time. But also that in the very early oceans, arsenic co-varied with the rise of atmospheric oxygen and coincided with the coming and going of global glaciations. The study was recently published in the Nature Group Journal, Scientific Reports.

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Findings, recently published in the journal Science Advances, show that snakes did not lose their limbs in order to live in the sea, as has been previously suggested. The research led by scientists at the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences involves the analysis of a 90-year old reptilian fossil of Dinilysia patagonica, a 2-meter long reptile. Computed tomography (CT) scans of the bony inner ear of Dinilysia patagonica reveals how this ancestor to modern snakes became adept at burrowing.

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Itai Roffman of the University of Haifa documented groups of bonobos performing complex actions to extract food – a characteristic that has hitherto been regarded as an exclusive evolutionary advantage of archaic pre-humans

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Biologists at Tufts University have succeeded in inducing one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering genomic sequence. The work reveals physiological circuits as a new kind of epigenetics – information existing outside of genomic sequence – that determines large-scale anatomy.

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Called after Tolkien's character from the "Lord of the Rings" series, a new eyeless harvestman species was found to crawl in a humid cave in southeastern Brazil. Never getting out of its subterranean home, the new daddy longlegs species is the most highly modified representative among its close relatives and only the second one with no eyes living in Brazil. Its introduction to science, made by the Brazilian research team of Dr. Ricardo Pinto-da-Rocha, Instituto de Biociências da Universidade de São Paulo together with Dr. Maria Elina Bichuette and MSc. Rafael Fonseca-ferreira from Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

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A scientist from The Cleveland Museum of Natural History led research that revised the horned praying mantis group and traced the evolution of its distinctive camouflage features. Dr. Gavin Svenson and his colleagues identified a new genus and new tribe of praying mantis and discovered that disruptive camouflage evolved twice within the group.

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A new study in Nature Communications by Luis Ossa, Jorge Mpodozis and Alexander Vargas, from the University of Chile, provides a careful re-examination of ankle development in 6 different major groups of birds, selected specifically to clarify conditions in their last common ancestor.

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A new study published in Science offers clues as to why large large vertebrates disappear and take quite a lot time to come back, and return in much smaller size.

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A previously undiscovered dinosaur species, first uncovered and documented by an adjunct professor at Montana State University, showcases an evolutionary transition from an earlier duckbilled species to that group’s descendants, according to a paper published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

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A Stony Brook University-led team of evolutionary biologists has discovered that the oldest known nectar-drinking bat fossil, Palynephyllum antimaster, was probably omnivorous.

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Australopithecus deyiremeda is the name of the new fossil hominid species discovered in the site of Woranso-Mille —in the central region of Afar, in Ethiopia— by an international team of scientists led by Professor Yohannes Haile-Selassie (Case Western Reserve University, United States).

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Salmon migrating from the open ocean to inland waters do more than swim upstream. To navigate the murkier freshwater streams and reach a spot to spawn, the fish have evolved a means to enhance their ability to see infrared light.

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New research shows that an ancient protein that protects bacteria from bursting also helps pollen survive the dangerous transition from desiccated to hydrated once it lands on the female flower. But in pollen’s case, the protein has evolved to provide just the right amount of internal pressure: enough to power cell growth but not so much that the pollen bursts and dies.

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Across the animal kingdom, males hoot and holler to attract females and ward off competing suitors. Now, a new study finds that male howler monkeys with deeper calls have smaller testicles – and vice versa, according to researchers from universities of Utah, Cambridge and Vienna and other institutions.

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University of Utah biologists used cadaver arms to punch and slap padded dumbbells in experiments supporting a hotly debated theory that our hands evolved not only for manual dexterity, but also so males could fistfight over females.

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Cats have at least seven functional bitter taste receptors, according to a new Monell Center study. Further, a comparison of cat to related species reveals little relationship between biter receptor number and the extent to which a species consumes plants. The findings question the common hypothesis that bitter taste developed primarily to protect animals from ingesting poisonous plant compounds.

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Vestigial organs, such as the wisdom teeth in humans, are those that have become functionless through the course of evolution. Now, a psychologist at the University of Missouri studying vestigial muscles behind the ears in humans has determined that ancient neural circuits responsible for moving the ears, still may be responsive to sounds that attract our attention. Neuroscientists studying auditory function could use these ancient muscles to study positive emotions and infant hearing deficits.

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Discovered in Spain, the fossil of the newly described, 125-million-year old Spinolestes xenarthrosus is remarkably well-preserved, containing fur, hair follicles, hedgehog-like spines, organs and even a fungal skin infection. It pushes back the record of preserved mammalian hair and soft tissue by more than 60 million years.

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New research from the University of Georgia department of psychology gives researchers a unique glimpse at how humans develop an ability to use tools in childhood while nonhuman primates—such as capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees—remain only occasional tool users.

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A new study shows that iron-bearing rocks that formed at the ocean floor 3.2 billion years ago carry unmistakable evidence of oxygen. The only logical source for that oxygen is the earliest known example of photosynthesis by living organisms, say University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscientists.

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A research team led by Stony Brook University investigating human and chimpanzee locomotion have uncovered unexpected similarities in the way the two species use their upper body during two-legged walking.

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The genetic and developmental innovations plants used to make the leap to land have been enduring secrets of nature. Now, an international team of researchers reveals that the aquatic algae from which terrestrial plant life first arose were genetically pre-adapted to form the symbiotic relationships with microorganisms that most land plants need to acquire nutrients from the soil.

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Scientists in New Mexico have discovered the remains of an ancient mammal resembling the modern beaver that survived the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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Scientists from Virginia Tech and the University of Bristol have revealed how pigment can be detected in mammal fossils, a discovery that may end the guesswork in determining the colors of long extinct species. The researchers discovered the reddish brown color of two extinct species of bat from fossils dating back about 50 million years, marking the first time the colors of extinct mammals have been described through fossil analysis.

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Research into human fossils dating back to approximately two million years ago reveals that the hearing pattern resembles chimpanzees, but with some slight differences in the direction of humans. Rolf Quam, assistant professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, led an international research team in reconstructing an aspect of sensory perception in several fossil hominin individuals from the sites of Sterkfontein and Swartkrans in South Africa. The study relied on the use of CT scans and virtual computer reconstructions to study the internal anatomy of the ear. The results suggest that the early hominin species Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, both of which lived around 2 million years ago, had hearing abilities similar to a chimpanzee, but with some slight differences in the direction of humans.