Questions tagged [evolution]
Changes in the heritable attributes of populations of organisms over time. The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, migration, drift, and selection.
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Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium Test Result for Merged Genotypes
I was curious if two populations are in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE), and if they are merged, then what happens? To find out, I considered populations from the 1000 genome project data. For ...
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Could a "bomber spider" exist?
Via the behavior in spiders known as ballooning, spiders can already fly. The next step may be to gain the ability to attack enemies while still airborne. Could a spider use a projectile, such as ...
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If split peas are good for health, why didn't evolution favour humans liking split peas?
Split peas, being legumes, are a source of food unanimously considered as healthy. My question is why didn't evolution favour humans that liked the taste of split peas? And/or maybe that could eat ...
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How could an aquatic animals organ evolve so it could live outside water?
How could a fishes organs evolve so that it could one day live outside of water.
I mean did it one day fully evolve then stick it's head out of the water. That would mean that all the evolution of ...
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Was there a first biological cell on earth? or a similar cell originated simultaneously around the world?
It logically follows that if life began on earth and life is cellular, then either that life began singularly or began simultaneously around the world?
What is the evidence or argument for either ...
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Are there any plants that retrieve energy from the wind?
Many trees grow in windy places, but appear to have adapted to this by developing characteristics that provide resistance to wind.
Are there any plants that appear to have been selected for the ...
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Postulate that one sex will put more resources into reproduction than the other
What is the name of the idea that because one sex will put more resources into reproduction than the other, that sex will try to minimize the number of mates (choosing the best one) and the other sex ...
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Has the speed of animals changed over time?
I am not a biologist but always had the following questions:
Evolution theory says that the fittest of the fittest pass their genes on. Perhaps an oversimplification, but this would mean that slower ...
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Why do damaged joints or ligaments experience inflammation? Why do physiotherapists try to stop inflammation as part of the healing process?
I have had the repeated experience of going to physiotherapists with injuries to ligaments or joints and they all expressly aim to reduce inflammation.
I don’t understand this. Our mammalian (and ...
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Is there a specific book or textbook that lists all of the specific concepts of the theory of evolution in one place?
By specific concepts I mean those such as Zahavian signaling, the "sexy son" hypothesis, Mendel's peas, Lamarckism etc.
Essentially I am looking for a book that helps visualize evolution in ...
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Is there a way to measure the handicap principle?
The handicap principle is used as an explanation for some genetic traits, such as bright tails in male peacocks. However, it seems that this principle could be used to justify sexual selection of ...
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Is this scenario allopatric or sympatric speciation?
I stumbled over a speciation scenario but I am not able to say to which type it belongs. I guess for people more familiar with the theory it might be easy to tell.
I was reading about the fin whale (...
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Inheritance of child behavior based on daily life experiences of the parent
Our brain is a large network of neurons connected with each other.Our daily experiences change how our neurons are connected.Some experiences create better connections between two neurons A and B and ...
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What reproductive advantage do superhydrophobic spores bring?
Clubmoss plants produce spores that are superhydrophobic, meaning they will not mix with water. When you drop water on top of a whole bunch of these spores, the water will form tiny water droplets on ...
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An interesting paper on hunter-gatherer social dynamics and cooperation
I've read a paper long ago on the cooperativeness in the hunter-gatherer primitive societies. Their conclusion is that for hunters, cooperation dominates competition; for gatherers, competition ...
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Why have mammalian predators been so small compared to their prey compared to theropod dinosaur predators?
So this is different than the question of "why are megafaunal mammals smaller than dinosaurs", which I understand to be a combination of:
live birth limiting size (even sauropods had ...
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Models of evolution by positive versus negative selection
I am making a program for simulating natural selection. Now, I have discovered an interesting difference between positive selection and negative selection.
Positive selection occurs when the ...
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Trying to find information about intraspecific allelic expression divergence in recombinant individuals due to changes in the cis regulatory regions
I am trying to find any research articles or resources that focus on differences in expression levels at the allelic level due to changes in cis regulatory regions in recombinant individuals. For ...
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What is the evolutionary origin of euphoria and dysphoria?
What kingdoms from the three domains haven't evolved something like the reward system in us? Couldn't we feel neutral all the time and undergo an involuntary push towards the right behavior instead, ...
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is there an assumption of homology?
Recently, i watched evolution vs creationism especially in islam view of evolution. There is one particular guy called subboor ahmad (he is muslim apologist). he claimed that there is an assumption of ...
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At what point does the capability of sexual reproduction diverge in evolution?
I am asking this question as a layman in biology: What the title is supposed to mean is, as a species evolves, say humans and chimps from its common ancestor, at what point and why are humans or ...
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Could trophy hunting lead to deer evolving to lack antlers?
There was a recent paper in Science which showed that elephants are quickly evolving tusklessness because elephant hunting imposes selective pressure against having tusks:
Shane C. Campbell-Staton et ...
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Are mutation rates normally distributed? If not, what are they?
On average, there are 64 mutations per generation in the human genome. Is this constant, or can we expect variation in the number of mutations?
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Genetic differences between Africans and non-Africans due to cross-breeding with Neanderthals?
It is estimated that soon after the "out of Africa event" there was some interbreeding between Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. All non-African peoples are thought to have ...
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Is it possible that East Asians are a hybrid between modern and achaic humans?
As I understand it, all populations outside Africa have at least 2% Neanderthal ancestry. In eastern Asia and I think Papua New Guinea in particular that percentage could be more than 4%.
Now you also ...
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Why are there so few organisms that are both photosynthetic and eat for energy?
Carnivorous plants don't count as they don't use their prey for energy. Photoheterotrophs don't seem to fit based on a quick read as they use light and carbon in the same reaction. I'm looking for ...
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Is there an example in evolution where a huge jump in evolution happened due to a dramatic mutation?
Here is a chicken that due to a mutation got 4 legs:
I wonder, are there examples, where such one-time dramatic mutational chages gave rise to a new species?
Are there species that appeared not due ...
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How well evolution is supported by experts? Are there acceptable scientific objection to evolution? [closed]
There are people in internet , with professional sounding voice , who claim that evolution is not scientifically possible (such as there is not enough time for evolution, or modern genetics has ...
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Did animals primarily evolve to differentiate UV-rich sky from UV-poor substrate OR did they evolve to see visible light? [duplicate]
I read two things that appear to contradict each other.
The reason humans only see light in the visible spectrum is likely related to the transmission of light waves through water: most infrared and ...
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Is there any research on whether a choanozoan might have invaded a similar enough holozoan to make the first metazoan?
My mind was piqued by the idea of endosymbiosis of a bacterium penetrating the cell of an archaean being a precursor to the advent of eukaryotes. And I thought that perhaps something analogous to this ...
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What actually causes temporal isolation
Temporal isolation is caused when members of the same species are available to reproduce at the same time. How is such a phenomenon even possible, is it caused by mutations which lead to a certain ...
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How do we know that the DNA we share with other species (especially primates) isn't fully the result of transposable elements?
I recently read a couple studies that concluded the 25% of genetic similarity between cows and reptiles is actually primarily due to TEs (transposable elements) rather than common ancestry.
Here's the ...
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Can somebody explain why mouse and cow are the least related based on this sequenece alignment?
Answer key says out of the choices, the mouse and cow and the least related. Is it because they have the most number of differences out of the four choices? (Hedgehog/Horse is 5, dog/horse is 3, mouse/...
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Did predators evolve eyes first?
I'm an engineer and biology is my weakest point, so please forgive if this question is dumb.
Lately I've been wondering, "Why do animals that have eyes tend to have exactly 2 of them?" The ...
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Why do Bactrian camels have two humps and dromedaries one?
Why has the Bactrian camel evolved to have two humps instead of the one that the dromedary has?
I searched on Google and I found nothing about it.
All I found was that the that humps store fat, that ...
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Why are mallards ornately green despite lack of sexual selection?
Mallards reproduce by group sex, with multiple males mating with a female against its will. This means that the common explanation of ornate birds evolving due to sexual selection isn’t applicable to ...
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Flora and fauna of early homo sapiens environment?
Where can I find as much detail as possible on the flora and fauna (and perhaps geological structures too) between the time of the origin of Homo Sapiens say ~300kya to their "out of Africa" ...
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Has Darwin's abominable mystery been solved or not?
When I research Darwin's abominable mystery, the abrupt origin and rapid diversification of the flowering plants during the Cretaceous, I read different conclusions about whether it has been solve or ...
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Are giraffes living on Calauit island an example of Island dwarfism?
When I traveled to Calauit island I was stricken by the small size of giraffes living there. The giraffes are the descendants of Africa animals imported in the 1970s.
Like Noah and the biblical ark, ...
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What is the origin of mammals X/Y sex determination system and what/when was the last common ancestor to possess these chromosomes?
I know many animals use an X/Y sex determination system, but not all of these animals use the same X/Y genes. That is to say the X/Y sex determination system has convergently evolved in many species, ...
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Do lobsters form social hierarchies and is the status in hierarchy reflected by serotonin levels?
In his book 12 rules for life Jordan Peterson claims that:
Consider serotonin, the chemical that governs posture and escape in the lobster. Low-
ranking lobsters produce comparatively low levels of ...
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Why does 360 degree rotation not seemed to ever have evolved?
Of the designs of species that have evolved, I am curious why a 360 degree rotation, like a joint that can spin, does not seem to have evolved, for example wheels or a propeller.
Like, is there some ...
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Intelligence without natural selection?
Natural selection is not the only driving force of evolution. There are other mechanisms such as genetic drift, mutations, gene flow, etc... To what extent can these different mechanisms (which don't ...
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How are ray finned and lobe finned fish are sister clades?
I think my previous questions may have been misinterpreted (I honestly was too tired to formulate what exactly I was confused about), so I’d like to elaborate on my confusion about the phylogeny of ...
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Correlated evolution of discrete traits: do traits need to have phylogenetic signal?
I'm doing a phylogenetic analysis using the Discrete program in BayesTraits. Of the traits I am testing, one of them does not show any phylogenetic signal (using the Fritz and Purvis d-statistic).
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How are ray-finned and lobe-finned fish related in terms of their evolutionary history?
I'm trying to trace human evolution back to the first eukaryotic cells (as a tool to research the evolution of various bodily systems), and I understand that lobe-finned fishes are considered a key ...
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How do we logically infer large time scales using Molecular Clocks?
If molecular clocks are uses in genetics to determine the mutation rate of genes to estimate times speciation occurred between two or more life forms, are there genes that have mutation rates that we ...
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Has there been evidence that there has been coevolution in E. Coli strains with the T4 bacteriophage?
According to Evolution of T4-related phages, there have been multiple instances of evolution in the T4 coliphages. Per the article, there are many T-even phages that have insertions from other ...
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In this representation of the tree of life, what are the lateral connections?
I found this simple representation of the tree of life in a wikipedia article, and I was curious what these horizontal connections shown here are supposed to be, like the ones between plants and ...
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What motivates an organism to reproduce? [closed]
What is the biological factor (gene or something else in case of humans) which motivates an organism to reproduce?
By reproducing the evolutionary success of an organism increases. But why would an ...
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