Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

I'm writing a paper on evolution I would like some statistics about how many papers on evolution are submitted, how many are accepted and how many are rejected, every year. In other words how many papers on evolution survive the peer review process? Thanks.

At what point during mans evolution did his jaw change? it would seem to me that our jaw (currently, and from jaw bones i have seen from roman and pre-roman eras) is designed to chew/eat foods that have been cultivated and cut with tools. Also having 2,500 years worth of data points to chart the evolution of the human jaw bone i would think that it should be pretty easy to define what ~year the jaw bone had teeth that were useful in non cultivated and/or cut foods.

a member of species taking care of another member's well being at the expense of it's own benefit, health, or even life, is a destructive trait to the first member.. why haven't sacrificial help in all it's forms die out? how did it escape natural selection?

I think I might as well go and post this now to spark some interesting discussions. Do you, personally, believe that evolutionary theory, as well as common descent of animals and so on, will ever become widely accepted by the general public as fact (as much as religion has been accepted as "fact")? Personally, I think it's quite possible, but a long way off. We've already found the skull of yet another link in the chain of human evolution, and the evidence is mounting. Religious beliefs may be very stubborn and hard to remove, but I have a feeling that as evolution gets more and more solid evidence, and more and more solid proponents, things will start to change. …

As CharonY has suggested, some of my points about the evolutionary selection unit in my previous thread titled 'About mutualism between human and E.coli' would be described here and for open discussion. The main idea is that I believe the selection unit is not fixed over the evolutionary time, instead, the level of this unit could change depending on circumstances. One of the important factor should be period of time available for resolution of a gene from its corresponding bundle (gene assembly). The statements about this point was quoted from my previous thread as below: "I should agree that for each time of selection (who dies, who lives), natural selection …

In brief: who's read it? I was in a bookstore yesterday with an old friend and we couldn't find a copy of it in the science section. Perhaps understandable given that the books there were purely pop science. He asked me if I'd read it, as I do have an interest in biology. I've not read it but in a way, I feel it's required reading for people in many fields. Not as a piece of dogma or gospel, but simply as historical perspective (much like Pauling's The Nature of the Chemical Bond). Wondered if anyone has any thoughts on this, and particular whether any biologists who've read it think it's worth doing so.

Surprisingly, I can't find an answer to this question. My search skills are horrid, I admit, but I can't quite find anything on Talkorigins and Google searches keep bringing up other forums that I'm not familiar with. I'd rather just ask you fellas... In discussing the complexity of the Eye, it was said that while we have observed microevolution, we have never observed something becoming more complex or sophisticated. Subtending that remark came the follow up that viruses never become anything more, and yadda yadda - after all this time we evolved into the most impressive life form, yet viruses are still...viruses. Would someone mind pointing me i…

I have just read the chapter thirteen of the selfish gene written by Richard Dawkins, it is about extended phenotype of genes. Also, it has been suggested that mutualism could have evolved from parasitism by both the so-called parasite and the host have the same means for propagation. This leads me to think about the mutualism between human and E.coli. I have tried to explain the relationship between two of them in the following way. Could any one take a look and comment on it? Here is the passage: E.coli is a bacteria which live in the human large intestine and is well adapted the the environment of human large intestine, where they could attain a higher reproductive r…

I am doing a course on canine behaviour management and have to write an essay on the selfish gene. Can anyone help please (to do with animals not humans) the question is - Does the selfish gene theory make intelligence and thought an irrelevance?

I'm having a debate with some creationist and he tells me that homoerectus suffered Pfeiffer syndrome which affects about 1 in 100,000 individuals. I think this is a baseless claim. So I need to know how many homoerectus skulls have been found. Thanks.

Under starvation conditions (medium lacking nitrogen source) yeast will undergo meiosis to produce haploid spores. Why?

Ever heard of the: Late Heavy Bombarment ? Part of what I read there suggests that the earliest life forms may have existed as much as 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists believe the resultinng boiling off of the oceans would have destroyed all of these earliest life forms. Many if not most believe that some of these earliest life forms must have managed to survive somehow to explain the relatively short interval in time when up until this still controversial event occurred [from 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago] and the widely accepted 3.8 billion year history of when life began. The source of this information is Absolute Astronomy and they give a pretty good argument tha…

Alright, i've been pondering about this text i have noticed on a different website. What would be your response to this statement? I really do not understand what they are trying to put out. This...just doesn't sound right, I can't put my finger on it but i find something strange about it, thus, i decided to ask it here. For a side-note: I believe he is talking about The Big Bang Theory.

It is most ironic that although I have never seen a "theory of evolution", I'm entitled to be called an "evolutionist". This will take some getting-used-to. Meanwhile, here's what I'm talking about: {1} I have presented this issue elsewhere and nobody has shown me what I require. "News theory" http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/theoryc/ "Car and tractor theory" http://www.dsa.gov.uk/ "Music theory" http://library.thinkquest.org/15413/theory/theory.htm "Feminist theory" http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/ Enough with the sources. "Opening theory" "Number theory" "Particle theory" "Graph theory" "Game theory" {2} The dictionary doesn't …

Do small animals have smaller neurons, or is there less space in between them? There doesn't seem to be a proportionality in the size of the skull and intelligence. Parrots are very intelligent, for instance.

From: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=evolution-details-revealed-through-2009-10-18 In 1988, an associate professor started growing cultures of Escherichia coli. Twenty-one years and 40,000 generations of bacteria later, Richard Lenski, who is now a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University, reveals new details about the differences between adaptive and random genetic changes during evolution.

Hi, What evolutionary advantage do leaf margin morphologies (dentate, crenate, siliate etc. cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf) confer compared to a plain smooth edge ? My first idea would be that having more "edge" makes for swifter gas exchanges (a damp sheet of paper dries at the edges first). Thanks for your help, McCrunchy

From time to time we see assertions that mutations and 'natural selection' result in some lifeforms having more offspring than others. And they just stop right there, like that means something. I think several questions remain to be answered, but I suppose I should give some examples first. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIE2Fitness.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Silence/Introduction_to_evolution http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat01.html Darwin didn't think it sufficient to "produce more offspring". In his chapter on "Struggle for Existence" (Link) he says "Struggle for Existence" (Link) He proceeds …

Hi! This is my first post here on SFN. I'm wondering about the evolution of the female breast. The reason why I'm thinking about this is because my field is psychology, and I'm trying to form an opinion regarding if the sexual appeal of breasts for men is more a cultural thing than an inherent preference. For example, its quite obvious that men should be drawn to younger females since they, among other things, are less likely to have a miscarriage. But what about the preference for big, up-pointing breasts? Some initial questions: Does breast size has anything to do with milk production capacity? Why does women's breast swell during pregnancy? I assume…

Friday, October 16 What Is Evolution and Why Does It Matter? by James Krupa, Department of Biology, University of Kentucky (Center Theater, University of Kentucky Student Center) Monday, October 19 Evolution in America: A Short History of the First 150 Years by Barry Werth, author of Banquet at Delmonico’s: Great Minds, the Gilded Age, & the Triumph of Evolution in America (Center Theater, University of Kentucky Student Center) Tuesday, October 20 Darwin in Wonderland: Evolution and the Science of Story by Jonathan Gottschall, Department of English, Washington and Jefferson College & author of The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of…

I know that nerve endings are jangling from some recent arguments about evolution but this is a fact-finding mission... I am making a hypothesis here: I hypothesise that if an animal, let's say a chimp, is more intelligent and designs a more useful tool for digging up juicy insects, the behaviour will be seen in a more positive light by the 'tribe' and the behaviour copied. Another hypothesis: If a chimp is as intelligent as the rest of the troop but shows aberrant behaviour or abnormal traits, i.e. signs of synesthesia or OCD, or even the aftermaths of a disease, then it is a perceived negative behaviour and will be rejected by the rest of its troop. The …

Sorry if this question has been asked. I did a search for it and nothing came up. Anyways, what I mean is that what with the advent of medicine and technology, we keep people alive that wouldn't have lived (or reproduced) a few decades ago, let alone a few centuries ago. I have a very limited understanding of biology, so I was wondering if we were "controlling" natural selection to an extent. People with genes that are "unfit" for survival usually survive in the developed countries. Some even have children and pass on their bad genes. Is this sort of thing happening, or do I have a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of natural selection? Also, taking the…

The theory of evolution maintains that those living organisms that best adapt to their environment have more opportunities to survive and multiply, and therefore, they can pass on their advantageous characteristics to subsequent generations, and species evolve by way of this “mechanism.” But the fact is that the mechanism in question—known as natural selection—cannot cause living things to evolve, nor endow them with any new features. It can only reinforce existing characteristics belonging to a particular species. In any given region, for example, those rabbits able to run fastest will survive, while others die. After a few generations, all the rabbits…

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I understand that things like geographical barriers can separate groups of a species and cause the groups to develop different dominant traits. But I don't see how this could cause a change in species. Pigs stranded on an island might develop a tendency to be tall so as to reach certain vegetation, but this is a change in dominant trait, not in genetic structure. How would the DNA and number of chromosomes of these pigs change?