16 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Vitaly Vanchurin, Yuri I. Wolf, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Eugene V. Koonin
'Eugene V. Koonin'] Title: Significance Modern evolutionary theory gives a detailed quantitative description of microevolutionary processes that occur within evolving populations of organisms, but evolutionary transitions and emergence of multiple levels of complexity remain poorly understood. Here, we establish the…
Ádám Kun
It is often claimed that humanity has stopped evolving because modern medicine erased all selection on survival. Even if that would be true, and it is not, there would be other mechanisms of evolution which could still led to changes in allelic frequencies. Here I show, by applying basic evolutionary genetics…
Kimberly L. Cooper
Humans are curious to understand the causes of traits that distinguish us from other animals and that distinguish vastly different species from one another. We also have a proclivity for simple stories and sometimes tend toward seeking and accepting simple genetic explanations for large evolutionary shifts, even to a…
Hanna Kokko
Fisher's fundamental theorem states that natural selection improves mean fitness. Fitness, in turn, is often equated with population growth. This leads to an absurd prediction that life evolves to ever-faster growth rates, yet no one seriously claims generally slower population growth rates in the Triassic compared…
Norman A Johnson
The coverage of evolution in textbooks and popular books alike usually emphasizes its triumphs-look at the hummingbird flapping its wings extraordinarily quickly; look at the fit between the bills of Darwin’s finches and the seeds they eat; look at the fit between the colors of moths and the color of trees on which…
Ben Bradley
In the 1940s, the ‘modern synthesis’ (MS) of Darwinism and genetics cast genetic mutation and recombination as the source of variability from which environmental events naturally select the fittest, such ‘natural selection’ constituting the cause of evolution. Recent biology increasingly challenges this view by casting…
Sophie Juliane Veigl, Zinaida Vasilyeva, Ruth Müller
Over the past decade, evolutionary biology has seen an unusual number of heated debates centered around the pronouncement of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). This theoretical framework brings together researchers from a range of disciplines in biology, such as ecology, developmental biology, and epigenetics…
Pim Edelaar, Jun Otsuka, Victor J. Luque
Evolutionary theory has made large impacts on our understanding and management of the world, in part because it has been able to incorporate new data and new insights successfully. Nonetheless, there is currently a tension between certain biological phenomena and mainstream evolutionary theory. For example, how does…
Alexander O. Gusev, Leonid M. Martyushev, Robert Niven, Hisashi Ozawa
'Hisashi Ozawa'] The simplest evolutionary model for catching prey by an agent (predator) is considered. The simulation is performed on the basis of a software-emulated Intel i8080 processor. Maximizing the number of catches is chosen as the objective function. This function is associated with energy dissipation and…
Christoph Oberprieler, Alexander Shingleton
Title: Simple Summary Modern evolutionary theory still rests on a ‘Tree of Life’ (ToL) metaphor. It explains the origin and growth of diversity and complexity in biological systems mostly by processes of ongoing divergence among its units when unchecked by evolutionary forces like selection or genetic drift…
Denis Noble
Charles Darwin spent the last decade of his life collaborating with physiologists in search of the biological processes of evolution. He viewed physiology as the way forward in answering fundamental questions about inheritance, acquired characteristics, and the mechanisms by which organisms could achieve their ends and…
Walter Veit, Samuel J. L. Gascoigne, Roberto Salguero-Gómez
In this article, we revisit the longstanding debate of whether there is a pattern in the evolution of organisms towards greater complexity, and how this hypothesis could be tested using an interdisciplinary lens. We argue that this debate remains alive today due to the lack of a quantitative measure of complexity that…
Daniel G. Ferguson, Jessica Abele, Sarah Palmer, Jordan Willis + 6 more
'Connor McDonald' 'Chandler Messer' 'Juliana Lindberg' 'T. Heath Ogden' 'Elizabeth G. Bailey' 'Jamie L. Jensen'] Background Many students enter science classrooms with misconceptions about scientific principles. One of the most perceived controversial scientific principle for students is evolution. Students struggle to…
Charles C. Roseman, Benjamin M. Auerbach
The extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) is a school of thought that maintains that genetic determination and natural selection are over-emphasized in the study of evolution at the expense of non-genetic inheritance and processes of evolution beyond selection. Its proponents call for the de-emphasis of genetics and…
Laura Nuño de la Rosa, Gerd B. Müller
Pere Alberch played a pivotal role in shaping the field of evolutionary developmental biology during the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas initially his contributions were sidelined by the empirical advancements of the molecular revolution in developmental and evolutionary biology, his theoretical insights have left a lasting…
Juan C. Castro-Alonso, Alejandro A. Hidalgo, John Sweller
The mechanisms that govern biological evolution and human cognition are analogous, as both follow the same principles of natural information processing systems. In this article, we describe the following five principles that provide an analogy between biological evolution and human cognition: (a) Randomness as Genesis…