Questions tagged [evolution]
Changes in the heritable attributes of populations of organisms over time. The mechanisms of evolution are mutation, migration, drift, and selection.
304 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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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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Why are animal's whiskers in a square lattice?
I was observing my cat up close when I noticed his whiskers were in a square lattice as a novice mathematician, took notice of it and wanted to know if any other animal had this peculiar feature, so I ...
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Why is the coremata of Creatonotos gangis huge?
This Australian moth has been some kind of curse image online due to its scent organs (coremata). It is inflated to attract mates. However, why does the coremata have to be inflated for it to work, ...
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Were there any terrestrial species in the ancestry of all crustaceans?
To the exception of woodlice, Crustaceans live in aquatic (marine or freshwater) environments. Crustaceans are arthropods which is an immensely diverse taxon. Many arthropods live in terrestrial ...
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How does the population fitness change after a change in mutation rate?
The mean population fitness as given by mutation load theory depends only on the genome-wide mutation rate ($U$). My question is: How many generations is needed to reach a new mutation load ...
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Do animals have greater tendency to care for their opposite sex siblings due to mate competition among same sex siblings?
According to the gene-centered view of evolution, siblings have p=1/2 relatedness, thus having greater altruism between them than cousins or unrelated animals.
For species with a conventional sex ...
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Evolutionary explanation of the bicuspid on the left and tricuspid on the right
The left heart handles more pressure and logically it would make sens to have a valve with three leafs on the left (If I had got to choose, I'd have put three on both sides).
Other than being more ...
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Escaping resource limitations during tumor evolution
In their discussion of the importance of r- and K-selection on tumors, Aktipis et al. (2013; figure 3) provide the following illustration of a hypothetical cancer growth curve:
In it, you can see ...
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Games with non-uniform interaction rates
Background:
Many models in evolutionary game theory assume uniform interaction rates. For instance, consider the $2\times 2$ game:
\begin{array}{l c c}
& A & B \\
A & a & b \\
...
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Why do naked mole rats live in colonies with a queen?
What was the evolutionary advantage in having queens? Is it because the ones that had queen like tendencies in the new environment had kids that cooperated better giving higher chance of survival of ...
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How did the nucleus of eukaryotic cells evolve?
What is/are the most popular theory/theories on how the nucleus evolved?
I know mitochondria came from alpha-proteobacteria, chloroplasts from cyanobacteria and that eukaryotes evolved directly from ...
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How is evolutionary fitness usually defined in models?
Consider a (biological) species in which the concept of an individual is well-defined, and where the number of offspring is also well-defined. In the models I have encountered, evolutionary fitness of ...
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Are Freeman Dyson's theories on the origin of life well regarded in the wider field of evolutionary biology?
Freeman Dyson, a well respected Theoretical Physicist, wrote on a range of different topics during his lifetime, including the origin of life and evolutionary biology in his 1985 book Origin of Life (...
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Is there a single protostomate common ancestor that has pseudocoelomate structure?
I think about 15 years ago I saw a new classification system that placed Plathyhelminthes worms with Annelids and Mollusks into a superphylum (or other systematic clade) Lophotrochozoa, while ...
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How do evolutionary forces influence the number of copies of the p53 gene?
p53 is an important tumor suppressor gene. Around 50% of cancers are associated with loss of function in p53.
Humans have only two copies of p53 in their genome (one on each homologous chromosome). ...
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