Evolution highlights XV

Polar bears evolved a lot recently, but this may not help them evolving out of the melting ice, because there are so specialized.

Not exactly evolution, but close enough: Bononos use pointing to communicate, much like humans do.

And not at all evolution (quite the contrary, in fact), a Utah senator proposes cutting the 12th grade as a response to a $700 million state deficit. The senator is a creationist who has previously sponsored a bill to teach creationism in schools.

And sticklebacks (the darlings): Parallel evolution in distinct populations.

All sites are located along Alaska's south-central coast. Researchers found that all of the fish were closely related in most of their genomes, but with differences in very specific regions. Each fish contains 500 million base pairs of DNA. Researchers were surprised to find that across the independently derived populations very similar regions were identified, indicating that the same genes may be evolving when stickleback adaptation is repeated in different lakes. Researchers now are focusing efforts to understand which specific genes are involved in such adaptation.

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"We hope to learn something about these fish while they are still evolving, literally, from an ocean population to a freshwater one," Cresko said.