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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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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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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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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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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Is there evidence of an evolutionary strategy similar to human autism in mammals during the Pleistocene? [closed]
Edit trying to reopen this now that I am bored at work
I hoppe it is a bit more clear now. You can comment what you want if you are interested in reopenning this too.
As a geologist, I enjoy creating ...
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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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Endogenous retroviral insertions as evidence for evolutionary relationships among primates
A synopsis of a 2005 paper in PlosBiology by Yohn et al. states that:
Searching the genomes of a subset of apes and monkeys revealed that
the retrovirus had integrated into the germline of ...
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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 there more biomass on earth today than there was in the past?
Is there more, (or less) matter on earth sequestered as a part of biological systems than there was at any(arbitrary) time in the past?
Edit:
I realise I don't have a specific question, and was ...
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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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How to quantify the strength of social bonding between the individuals of a colony? How to compare the strength of social bonding across the species?
Consider two different species of honey bees. If I have to compare the strength of social bonding between the two species i.e. in which species, social bonding between the individuals is stronger than ...
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Why aren't leaves black?
I s'pose this is a variant of the age-old question, "Why are leaves green?" It's fairly easy to ask teh internets and find plenty of answers for that one.
I have a different but related question: ...
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Caloric Mimicry
I was thinking about natural "zero calorie" sweetners and how these compounds could come to be via evolution. I was specifically thinking about monk fruit. While artificial selection likely ...
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Can estimating the likelihood of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds show life is too complex for evolutionary timescales?
An acquaintance provided me with this article1. I can't understand for sure what it is about.
My acquaintance said that it proves that time for generation of even the simplest proteins is on a ...
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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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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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Why do parasites sometimes kill their hosts?
It's bothered me for a while now. I understand why a parasitoid would do this, as it only temporarily requires the host, and that not all parasites kill their hosts.
There seems to be no evolutionary ...
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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 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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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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Expected number of SNPs in a sample of size `k`
Consider a Wright-Fisher population of constant size $N$. We sample $k$ haplotypes in this population. What is the expected number of SNPs?
I think the answer should be in Watterson (1975) but it ...
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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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Does a virus that spreads more rapidly have less chance to evolve?
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for a while, there are reports of many new variants, which have presumably arisen in the past year through mutation and spread through natural ...
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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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Does the bending of a tree's trunk in the wind stimulate and strengthen root growth?
Recently Southern California experienced extreme wind velocities and afterwards the news reported over 300 trees had fallen in San Diego County. I had either heard or read somewhere that the action of ...
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Do technological developments terminate the evolution of human species? [duplicate]
One of the most agreed upon mechanisms for evolution is natural selection. Changing environmental conditions necessitates development of variations that enable the survival of that particular species. ...
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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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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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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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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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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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Why don't the female lions in a pride help their male lion to protect their children from other males?
I watched a dozen of videos taping the fights between male lions; none of them involve female lions assisting in the fight. It is also known that the male lion who take-over the pride will kill all ...
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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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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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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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Which fish did modern tetrapods descend from?
Did modern tetrapods descend from Tiktaalik or Ichthyostega? While I understand that in terms of all tetrapods, the lineages of Tiktaalik and Ichthyostega both would be included, but I want to know if ...
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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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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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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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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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Where does Darwin state his "principle of multiple utility"?
I have never heard of Darwin's 'principle of multiple utility', but several papers refer to it. For example, from Darwin at the molecular scale: selection and variance in electron tunnelling proteins ...
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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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