Recently in Evolution Category

A couple of years ago the late Lynn Margulis generated a flap in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by shepherding a paper through PNAS’s editorial process that advocated the notion that butterflies are the result of an ancient symbiotic relationship between “worm-like and winged ancestors.”

I was reminded of that flap the other day while I was reading Alfred Russel Wallace’s autobiography. Wallace mentions an 1872 talk he gave to the Entomological Society in which he described Herbert Spencer’s hypothesis that segmented insects are the result of an aggregation of once-separate ancestors:

In 1872, in my presidential address to the Entomological Society, I endeavoured to expound Herbert Spencer’s theory of the origin of insects, on the view that they are fundamentally compound animals, each segment representing one of the original independent organisms. (Volume II, Chapter XXVI, unpaginated in my Nook version)

The reference is to Spencer’s The Principles of Biology, Volume II, Chapter IV, where the proposal is developed on pp 93ff. The link is to Spencer’s 1899 revision of the 1867 first edition; Wallace would have used the 1867 edition as the basis for his talk.

So the preacher in Ecclesiastes was right: there’s nothing new under the sun.

By James DeGregori and Michael Antolin

The journal Evolution: Education and Outreach (EVOO) had dedicated the December issue to evolutionary medicine, with articles on how evolutionary theories are critical for understanding human disease and why thorough classroom instruction in evolution is essential. The publisher Springer has made the journal freely available through the end of December. Many of the articles are written for a broad audience and should be of interest to specialists and non-specialists alike.

The special issue was edited by Kristin Jenkins of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and Michael Antolin of Colorado State University, and in part follows a symposium organized for the 2011 annual meetings of the Society of the Study of Evolution held June 19 in Norman, Oklahoma. The purpose of that symposium broadly overlaps the EVOO special issue: to make biologists who teach evolution at every level from secondary school to medical school aware of how much biomedical science gains from understanding human evolution and our continued vulnerability to disease. An additional goal is to increase understanding and acceptance of evolutionary science in biomedical research and to help doctors become better practitioners.

Humans have a unique form of complex communication called language. While some academics have argued that language is a purely cultural invention—Humans used their brilliant brains to reason that language was the best way to communicate.—there is ample evidence that language is a biological adaptation that evolved after our ancestors split from the ancestors of chimpanzees. For example, the face, mouth, and throat contain adaptations for the physical production of spoken language. Children acquire language through an innate ability, not using their higher reasoning skills. And regions of the brain have been shown to be critical locations for cognition specifically associated with language.

As a complex adaptation, there must be some genes underlying our language ability. However, the evolutionary dynamics of language-associated genes is poorly understood. Earlier this year, I published some research that I hope will help fill this gap. (I’ve been working on this research off and on for nearly 10 years.) The paper is entitled “Bards, Poets, and Cliques: Frequency-Dependent Selection and the Evolution of Language Genes” and appeared in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. The journal is offering free access this month, so you can download the paper for free.

As a complex adaptation, language did not miraculously evolve all at once. As the saying goes, natura non facit saltum (nature does not do “poof”). Likely the communication ability of our ancestors passed through several stages eventually producing moden language ability. Some well studied transitions are the origin of combinatoric language from holistic communication and the replacement of hand gestures with vocal communication.

Now imagine that you have a human population that contains two different language phenotypes. “Bards” have the ancestral phenotype, and “Poets” have a new phenotype that is potentially more efficient and fitter.—Two Poets interacting have a higher fitness than two Bards.—This increase in fitness can come from the ability of poets to confer more information to one another, communicate more accurately, or many other things. Note, we are talking about biological differences in language faculty, not cultural differences like whether Bards speak French and Poets speak Cajun.

Photograph by James Rice.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention

Underground lake, Chapat Cave, Belize. This lake is the home of cave-adapted fish, crabs, and other life. Scientists are interested in the hydrology of Chapat Cave, since it is known to flood as much as a hundred feet above the normal level shown here. The timing and cause of the floods is not yet known.

Photograph by James Rice.

Bonneville Salt Flats, Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah. The bird in the foreground is a Warthog .

Photograph by Michael Roberts.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Cwm Idwal, a hanging valley in North Wales.

Mr. Roberts adds, “Darwin’s favourite place. This is looking down into Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia, which Darwin visited several times in the 1820s and in August 1831 just before he received the invite for the Beagle and in 1842 when he was studying glaciation.

“In 1831 Darwin studied the rocks, which are mostly Ordovician volcanics, but was a bit confused by them. He was on his own and wrote to Sedgwick for advice. In 1842 (halfway through writing his first draft on “his Theory”) he returned and found clear evidence of glaciation. To the right of the lake (Llyn Idwal) was an ice fall which Darwin called a vomitory. The dark cliffs on the left are Ordovician volcanics, which he thought were basalt.”

You may find Mr. Roberts’s article on Darwin’s fieldwork here, but you will not find it cheaply..

Photograph by Richard Hughes.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Tabanus subsimilis – striped horsefly, likely a male who landed there to drink juices from the surrounding berries, Jackson, Tennessee. For more images of bug eyes see http://www.metro.co.uk/news/picture[…]-close-ups/1

The eminent biologist Lynn Margulis has died at 73. Dr. Margulis is best known for promoting the theory, now generally accepted, that organelles such as the cell nucleus mitochondrion (I knew that!) and the chloroplast are the result of symbiosis between different species. You may read the Times obituary here.

Photograph by Marilyn Susek.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention

Phalacrocorax carbo – cormorant, dolomite stone quarry at Stainton, near Tickhill, S. Yorkshire, UK.

Oh no! It’s Granville Sewell again. At Uncommon Descent he has posted his 2^nd law of thermodynamics argument against evolution, yet again. I have twice pointed out that (here and here) that, if true, it would prove that plants can’t grow.

Is Sewell’s argument unanswerable? No, because long before I made those posts, Sewell’s argument had been thoroughly demolished by Jason Rosenhouse and by Mark Perakh. Game over, even if you don’t know that plants can grow.

But Granville Sewell’s argument over at Uncommon Descent is unanswerable. At least there … because he has the comments turned off.

Gaythia Weis has just sent me the following announcement:

Associated Students of Aims Community College invite the public to a free program to discuss evolution

The public is invited to attend a discussion on the theory of evolution, led by Richard Bond, Ph.D. “Science, Theories, Stories: The Real Issue,” will be presented on Nov. 14 from noon to 1:30 p.m. in Ed Beaty Hall Theater on the Aims Community College Greeley campus. Bond is a former president of Morgan Community College and the University of Northern Colorado, where he holds President Emeritus status as well as Professor Emeritus of Zoology. He has also served three terms in the Colorado Legislature in addition to eight years on the Aims Board of Trustees. He also occasionally teaches adult education at First Congregational United Church of Christ.

Photograph by Gaythia Weis.

Colorado front range – looking west … The photograph shows Long’s Peak, as seen from Pella Crossing Ponds, Hygiene, Colorado.

… and looking east, showing the infamous brown cloud. Photograph taken on Colorado Route 93, between Boulder and Golden, near Rocky Flats.

I’d like to thank Douglas and everyone for their kind words about my “cloning experiment” and impending appointment to Arizona State in Tempe.

I will be part of the Center for Evolutionary Medicine and Informatics in the Biodesign Institute and the Evolutionary Biology Program in the School of Life Sciences. I was hired as part of a genomics cluster, which is currently still hiring (Initial deadline is this Friday. See the ad below.) You could have the office next to me and Prof. Steve Steve.

I am looking to take students and graduate recruitment is underway. I’m looking for students with a background in biology, computation, mathematics, and/or statistics and interested in studying evolution theory and bioinformatics. I work on a variety of topics in computational evolutionary genetics, with most of my research dealing with mutations and developing analysis methods for detecting it from genomic data and high-throughput sequencing. I also have research programs in frequency-dependent selection and scientific computing with Javascript. If you are interested, you can check out my full CV, but I’ve appended a list of recent papers to this post. I can send anyone reprints if desired.

I’m also looking for undergraduate students to join my lab next semester as well. So if you are a current or future ASU undergrad and want to work along side Prof. Steve Steve, send me an email at [Enable javascript to see this email address.].

The application deadline for the graduate program is December 15^th, and the process is described here.

Rice University is also looking for a postdoc to fill my vacated Huxley Fellowship. See the ad below the fold.

The 41^st Edition of the Carnival of Evolution is now up at The Mermaid’s Tale. This month’s carnival is typically diverse in its topics and contributors, and is typically excellent. Watch for cuckoos and other parasites, learn about flapping before wings, explore historical concepts like uniformitarianism, and read about the origins of the human hand. Eyes, nurseryfish, trade-offs, Barbara McClintock. And the suggestion that “evolutionary biology needs better PR.”

Head over to The Mermaid’s Tale and sample the bounty.

Photograph by Richard Hughes.

Photography contest, Honorable Mention.

Arphia xanthoptera – autumn yellow-winged grasshopper, Eustis, Florida. Mr. Hughes writes that this is a mating pair, camouflaged amidst fallen leaves. The male is on top.

The sixth BILL is a visit with two of the biggest names in evolutionary biology, a couple of scientists who have undertaken one of the great long-term studies in recent scientific history. They are Peter and Rosemary Grant, whose work was the subject of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner.

BILL the sixth is “How and why species multiply”, a tag-team lecture by Peter and Rosemary Grant presented as part of the Darwin’s Legacy course at Stanford University in 2008.

The lectures comprise a wide-ranging, engaging, and accessible introduction to the findings that emerged from the Grants’ three decades of research in the Galapagos archipelago. A book by the same title has just been released by Princeton University Press.

Don’t be put off by the length of the YouTube video; Peter begins his lecture at :14, Rosemary starts at :48 and finishes at 1:14, so the actual lecture is an hour. The remaining time is a panel discussion/Q&A that I haven’t previewed. Rosemary’s excellent lecture can stand alone, so feel free to start at :48 to enjoy a clear and engaging account of the influences of song and size on genetic variation and speciation. She ends with a nice summary of the whole lecture.

As usual, tips and comments are below the fold. Recommendations for future BILLs should be sent to the BILL czar (BILL at pandasthumb dot org) or can be left in the comments.