Evolution refers to the observed changes in successive generations of biological organisms due to heritable components (genes and DNA). Charles Darwin proposed a major mechanism of evolution: natural selection.
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Does pheomelanin have a useful biological function?
Melanin is a natural pigment that is categorized into two main forms, eumelanin and pheomelanin. It's well documented in the science literature that increased eumelanin levels reduces the risk of ...
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How did the activities of protocells become inheritable?
I have learned that first a protocell came to exist and its characteristics came to be passed on by genetic material. So how come genes for all the activities come to incorporate into genetic ...
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Which texts are good for beginners to understand evolution on the genetic scope?
Are there good texts to study the evolution, how it works, and how mutations and changes lead to evolution of the organism ?
And how does the information increase through the long time using ...
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Are there natural selection experiments that quantitatively agree with theoretical modeling?
Has anyone ever conducted an evolution experiment and quantitatively compared it to theory? For example, has anyone ever put bacteria in a million petri dishes filled with antibiotics and calculated ...
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When does weak selection produce qualitatively different results from strong selection?
In evolutionary game theory, it is typical to model organisms as having a base fitness that is modified slightly by the game interaction. The ratio of the game effect versus the base fitness ...
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Structure of fitness landscapes in the NK model
The NK model of rugged fitness landscapes consists of $N$ sites where fitness contribution of each site depends on its state $\{0,1\}$ and is epistatically affected by $K$ other sites. When defining ...
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Is there a comprehensive database of fossils (with images) online?
Not sure if this is the best stackexchange to ask...
I have not been able to find a decent database of fossils on the web, does one exist?
Here are some of the links I have found through Wikipedia ...
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31 views
Cyanobacterial photosynthetic oxygen yield
I am somehow not convinced that biotic factors are solely responsible for creating 21% of atmosphere (around 40 million moles of oxygen).
There may be additional issues here. Since cyanobacteria ...
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Why aren't antheridia and archegonia touching?
Antheridia and archegonia are the two male and female gametangia, respectively, and they are found in bryophytes. To cause fertilization, usually a thin film of water must be present for the sperm ...
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What are the superiorities and inferiorities between livestock animals (cow, sheep, goat, etc)?
I'm trying to understand the effect of human race on the evolution of livestock animals (i.e.; how we end up producing currently known ones).
It is obvious that, even today, farmers don't produce ...
