Got questions about evolution?

There must be lots of people out there on the interwebz with questions about evolution. People are evidently very interested, whether they are creationists, evolutionists*, or on the fence. When I first started blogging, it was really to spread the word about evolution, so maybe it's about time to explicitly invite people to ask. 

I was prompted to call for questions because I got a promotional offer from Google Adwords. I have now set up an ad so that people searching on certain keywords might find their way here, inviting them to ask questions.

So, if you have a question about evolution, you can ask them anywhere in the comments, and I'll make sure to try to answer, or refer you to someone else who can.


I'll keep a FAQ:

1) Q: Did we evolve from monkeys? A: Not from monkeys alive today, but surely it would not be much of a stretch to call the most recent common ancestor of humans and present-day monkeys monkeys, since that species probably looked at lot like something resembling a monkey. You can use Time Tree to find out when humans and monkeys split: about 29 million years ago. Since then the human and the baboon lineages have been evolving separately. That there are still monkeys around today does not invalidate evolution anymore more than the fact that there is still dust around invalidates creationism.

* I use the term 'evolutionist' to mean someone who believes in evolution, and 'evolutionary biologists' for the professional scientist.
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Titles in evolution

Here's pickings from the last month of new papers in evolution. Those are just the ones that popped out at me in the tocs, but there are of course many, many others. I wonder how many were published in creation science and intelligent design? What are those journals again? Answers Research Journal is one - nothing there since July 11th (check out the archive there, if you want to have a laugh).
  • Functional and evolutionary trade-offs co-occur between two consolidated memory phases in Drosophila melanogaster
  • Life histories and the evolution of cooperative breeding in mammals
  • Evolutionary novelty in a rat with no molars
  • General and inducible hypermutation facilitate parallel adaptation in Pseudomonas aeruginosa despite divergent mutation spectra
  • ADAPTATION AND MALADAPTATION IN SELFING AND OUTCROSSING SPECIES: NEW MUTATIONS VERSUS STANDING VARIATION
  • Epistasis from functional dependence of fitness on underlying traits
  • Dolphin genome provides evidence for adaptive evolution of nervous system genes and a molecular rate slowdown
  • Trophic specialization influences the rate of environmental niche evolution in damselfishes (Pomacentridae)
  • Kin selection, not group augmentation, predicts helping in an obligate cooperatively breeding bird
  • Genetic change for earlier migration timing in a pink salmon population
  • Superinfection and the evolution of resistance to antimalarial drugs
  • Fluctuations of Fitness Distributions and the Rate of Muller’s Ratchet
  • A Resolution of the Mutation Load Paradox in Humans
  • Calcium and salinity as selective factors in plate morph evolution of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)
  • Ontogeny Tends to Recapitulate Phylogeny in Digital Organisms
  • FISHER'S GEOMETRICAL MODEL OF FITNESS LANDSCAPE AND VARIANCE IN FITNESS WITHIN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT
  • GENETIC SIGNATURE OF ADAPTIVE PEAK SHIFT IN THREESPINE STICKLEBACK
  • EXPLOSIVE RADIATION OF A BACTERIAL SPECIES GROUP
  • The Caribbean slipper spurge Euphorbia tithymaloides: the first example of a ring species in plants
  • How does adaptation sweep through the genome? Insights from long-term selection experiments

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50th Carnival of Evolution with references


For the love of references! If the submitted posts didn't all have references for support, they do now, because host of the 50th CoE edition, Marc Srour, has provided them himself. Everyone blogger who has a post included in this edition should go read it and consider reading the paper(s) that Marc refers to.

In my case, that would be
Chapter 2 of Luisi’s 2006 book, The Emergence of Life, has an excellent overview of the definitions of life.
Unfortunately, the preview on Amazon does not include the relevant pagers (page 21-23). If you happen to have those in electronic format, please let me know.

Marc comments on every single post, and I think this is an excellent idea. Who says CoE shouldn't be a place where the merit of individual posts are discussed? Anyone?
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