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The general issue of what exactly a "species" is has been addressed numerous times here, in different forms. Some good answers can be found at:
Defining "species" (Are species an emergent property or an ensemble of quantitative differences?)
How could humans have interbred with Neanderthals if we're a different species?
When has an ...
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I like "The Darwinian Revolution" by Michael Ruse.
It's far more of a history book than a science book. It won't get into the nitty gritty of evidence from molecular biology and modern genetic analyses. What it does do is to chart out how exactly Darwin (and Wallace) came to understand the key features of biological evolution and how the scientific ...
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I can name a few
Your inner fish by Neil Shubin is probably the most inviting for a layman. Just be aware the first chapter is about Shubin personal story and the discovery of Tiktaalik. It is greater starter not because it covers every of lines of evidence but because is covers six or seven specific human centered bits of evidence in great detail. it makes ...
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Geldanamycin/radicicol would be examples. They are both Hsp90 (protein chaperone) inhibitors. There is a lot of literature on their biological effects (see references therein), specifically their role modulating genetic interactions and also as chemotherapeutic agents for killing cancer cells.
Both of these natural compounds are created by microbes as ...
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While I don't have a citation at hand, I don't think that one is needed. The principle follows directly from the notion of mutation in a complex system. Put simply, once you've got a functional complex trait in play, there are many ways to break it and much fewer that can further improve it.
This fact is often mis-interpreted by creationists to claim the ...
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"Dinosaur", when used properly, refers to a clade. There's no way for a clade to evolve multiple times, or even to really evolve at all as something that happens; it's just a name for a group of descendants sharing a common ancestor.
I'm guessing instead that it's an incorrect transcription of "feathers in dinosaurs", since in and and ...
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Narrowly speaking, the answer to your question is "yes, most of them". West and Capellini (2016) analyze a data set comprising 529 mammalian species, of which only 65 have any form of male care of offspring. This figure from their paper shows that it is common in some primates and some carnivores (I haven't zoomed in to see exactly which clades ...
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I think libraries have been filled on the topic of evolution - it is an immensely broad field of study and can be looked at from a geological time scale (millions of years) to a much smaller scale observable in a scientist's career, since evolution driven by geographical separation can happen over a few generations. Nonetheless I can add my 2 cents worth.
I ...
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I've read a few on the topic, and what I would recommend would depend on your focus.
For a generally fun, smart, and accessible book on evolution, my favorite is Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution, by Richard Fortey. It's an odd approach to talking about general evolution, but trilobites were around for so long, and they left such perfect fossils, that they ...
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Recommendation:
A Short History of Humanity by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe
Not pure evolution however Johannes Krause is the Director of the Max
Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology and this is a recent book (2021) in a very rapidly changing field of Archaeogenetics. Covers the extinct species of Neanderthal and modern DNA showing traces of ...
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If you are looking for something that gives a good overview of all evolutionary processes, I recommend Evolution Unraveled from Randall Harris. The book goes into the best explanation on how evolution could work as observed by science.
For example, as @CaptainSkyfish mentioned with the Trilobites, the book expands on some great questions like how did ...
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To answer the intention of the question: evolution works by branching. To use this language of 'microbes', imagine a world with only microbe A. Say there are 100,000 individuals of the species microbe A.
Now let one of the microbe As reproduce and produce a mutation leading to the first microbe B. This evolutionary step would not transform every microbe A ...
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OK, if you insist on the vaccine vulnerability being yes/no, then you've essentially got a situation where A and B are totally unrelated viruses. Here's a real-world situation:
Let's call A "COVID" and B "RSV". Before we had a COVID vaccine and during the lockdowns, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), had dropped to very low levels because ...
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The noxious element of aposematism evolves first.
Take a second to think about how aposematism works, you will notice the underlying mechanism works even without distinctive coloration.
Bad at camouflage means more likely to be spotted which also means more likely to be identified.
If a wolf eats a pale green frog and gets sick it is likely to avoid pale ...
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