Evolution

The idea of the “selfish gene” was intended to shift focus from the organism to the gene to provide a different perspective on natural selection. It was been described as a metaphor, or simply a…

Contrary to many notions about predators, it would seem that there are many whose success is directly linked to their social organization and more specifically to the role of the social leaders that…

No. 1 “Evolution is the external and visible manifestation of the differential survival of alternative replicators.” This is my all-time favourite, the Dawkins Fallacy, the definition of evolution…

 “May you live in interesting times!” So goes the ancient Chinese curse, and times certainly must have been interesting for Alexander Ivanovich Oparin, who was 23 years old when he graduated…

The issue of altruism in animals is well recognized, but the explanation has always been strained. In particular, the idea that altruism would be beneficial at the group level gave rise to the idea…

Teasing out the effects of natural selection on our genomes from the effects of other evolutionary processes is hard. A group at the University of Washington, using comparisons with the genomes of 5…

In the last few columns, I described how laboratory simulations of a volcanic prebiotic environment showed that interesting organic reactions can be driven by the heat and pressure associated with…

Human laughter can be traced back 10-16 million years to the last common ancestor of humans and great apes, according to new research published today.   Dr Marina Davila Ross, a primatologist of…

The genetic code is fixed in most organisms, but sometimes microbes pull off a swap. How that swap works is hard to fathom, because you can screw up nearly all of your genes by doing it. A paper out…

Like human infants, young apes are make noises when you tickle them.  Is that really laughter? The answer to the question is yes, say researchers in Current Biology. The researchers analyzed the…