All Articles Tagged As: speciation

Worldwide platypus study tracks 160 million years (5/9/2008)

A four-year international research project to sequence the entire genetic record of the platypus over the past 160 million years has revealed new insights into the biology of Australia's famous icon. ...> Full Article

Lemur Family Tree Conclusively Mapped (2/23/2008)

Pre-Monkey's evolutionary history may shed light on our own ...> Full Article

Geneticist Uses New Computational Methods to Search for a Neanderthal Legacy and for Disease Genes (1/20/2008)

Each year, Jurassic Park seems less like science fiction. Scientists are decoding woolly mammoth DNA. They also are decoding DNA from an extinct species much closer to us in genetic makeup - the Neanderthal. ...> Full Article

Youngsters Prefer a Home Like Mom's (12/28/2007)

When young mice leave their mothers' homes, they choose to live in places much like the ones where they were raised, according to research done at UC Davis. ...> Full Article

Present-day Species Of Piranha Resulted From Marine Incursion Into Amazon Basin (12/12/2007)

Piranhas inhabit exclusively the fresh waters of South America. Their geographical distribution extends from the Orinoco River basin (Venezuela) to the North, down to that of the Paraná (Argentina) to the South. Over this whole area, which also embraces the entire Amazon Basin, biologists have recorded 28 carnivorous species of these fish (2). In spite of the evolutionary success of this subfamily of fish, the mechanisms that generated the species richness of this group are still insufficiently known. ...> Full Article

Research sheds light on why humans and chimps differ (11/2/2007)

Gene splicing helps explain fundamental differences ...> Full Article

Female Chromosome Confirmed A Prime Driver Of Speciation (10/17/2007)

Researchers believe they have just confirmed a controversial theory of evolution. The X chromosome is a strikingly powerful force in the origin of new species. ...> Full Article

The difference between fish and humans (10/13/2007)

Scientists answer century old developmental question ...> Full Article

Spread Of Endogenous Retrovirus K Is Similar In The DNA Of Humans And Rhesus Monkeys (10/11/2007)

According to paleontologic and molecular studies, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is the closer relative to the humans (Homo sapiens) and that both lineages had a common ancestor at 5 to 7 million years ago. ...> Full Article

Researcher Sheds New Light on Hybrid Animals (9/19/2007)

What began more than 50 years ago as a way to improve fishing bait in California has led researchers to a significant finding about how animal species interact and that raises important questions about conservation. ...> Full Article

Scientists Help Lead Effort to 'Barcode' World's Species (9/18/2007)

Smithsonian researchers are among the leaders in a worldwide effort to revolutionize the way scientists identify species in the laboratory and in the field with a technique called DNA barcoding. Similar to the barcode that identifies an item at the grocery store, a DNA barcode is used to identify and distinguish biological species. ...> Full Article

Auto Immune Response Creates Barrier To Fertility; Could Be A Step In Speciation (9/5/2007)

Plant biologists at the Max Planck Institute of Developmental Biology and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that an autoimmune response, triggered by a small number of genes, can be a barrier to producing a viable offspring. ...> Full Article

Social Parasites Of The Smaller Kind (8/26/2007)

Cooperation is widespread in the natural world but so too are cheats -- mutants that do not contribute to the collective good but simply reap the benefits of others' cooperative efforts. In evolutionary terms, cheats should indeed prosper, so how cooperation persists despite the threat of cheat takeover is a fundamental question. Recently, biologists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford have found that in bacteria, cheats actually orchestrate their own downfall. ...> Full Article

Ancient Organisms Discovered In Canadian Gold Mine (8/23/2007)

Scientists have suspected that the three known domains of life -- eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea -- branched off and went their separate ways around three billion years ago. But pinning down the time of that split has been an elusive task. ...> Full Article

Adaptation To Parasites Drive African Fishes Along Different Evolutionary Paths (8/18/2007)

An international team of scientists from Canada (Université Laval), the U.K. (University of Hull, Cardiff University) and Spain (Doňana Biological Station), have discovered that a pair of closely related species of East African cichlid fishes -- a group of fish whose diversity comprising hundreds of species has puzzled evolutionary biologists for decades -- evolved divergent immune gene adaptations which might explain why they do not interbreed, despite living side by side. ...> Full Article

Which Came First, The Moth Or The Cactus? (8/10/2007)

Studies of desert duo show there's more to life than predator eats prey ...> Full Article

Species Detectives Track Unseen Evolution (7/21/2007)

New species are evading detection using a foolproof disguise -- their own unchanged appearance. Research published in the journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology, suggests that the phenomenon of different animal species not being visually distinct despite other significant genetic differences is widespread in the animal kingdom. ...> Full Article

Exploring the Genetic Diversity of Flowers (7/13/2007)

Unlike moths and butterflies that are often brilliantly colored to warn potential predators that they carry toxins, flowers and the fruits they produce have brilliant colors and unusual shapes because they want to attract the attention of pollinators and frugivores who will disperse their pollen and seed, thus guaranteeing the next generation. ...> Full Article

Rapid Evolution Of Defense Genes In Plants May Produce Hybrid Incompatibility (7/13/2007)

Species are kept separate in plants and animals through barriers to gene flow. However, the exact mechanisms of speciation have only been explained within the last 20 years. Scientists found that one mechanism, hybrid necrosis, is associated with a plant defense gene. Different forms of these rapidly evolving genes in parent plants can cause autoimmune responses leading to offspring inviability and may represent a molecular pathway to speciation unique to plants. ...> Full Article

Another Sexual Attraction Is Possible (6/24/2007)

The coming summer vibrates with expressions of insect love and desire. The cicada's songs or the butterflies' bright colours are examples of how an emitting sex attracts conspecific members of the responding sex. Moth odours (pheromones), though less conspicuous for us humans, are also signals by which females guide males towards them, even on the darkest nights. Such mating recognition systems tend to be very specific, hence they are thought to play a major role in the evolution of mating barriers and in the formation of new species. ...> Full Article

Color Pattern Spurs Speciation In Tropical Fish (6/18/2007)

A team of researchers from McGill University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) has provided the first example of how colour patterns on a coral reef fish species can drive its evolution into many distinct species. ...> Full Article

Misclassified for Centuries, Medicinal Leeches Found to Be Three Distinct Species (4/13/2007)

Discovery could have impact on future medical treatments ...> Full Article

Why Are There So Many More Species Of Insects? Because Insects Have Been Here Longer (4/8/2007)

J. B. S. Haldane once famously quipped that "God is inordinately fond of beetles." Results of a study by Mark A. McPeek of Dartmouth College and Jonathan M. Brown of Grinnell College suggest that this fondness was expressed not by making so many, but rather by allowing them to persist for so long. ...> Full Article

Genomics Throws Species Definition In Question (4/5/2007)

Classifying micro-organisms is hard work, and the rules are changing all the time. Genomics may offer a new method of determining how and where creatures are classified. Though this research is directed toward microbes, it may one day apply to all taxonomy. ...> Full Article

Scientists Identify How Development of Different Species Uses Same Genes Differently (4/2/2007)

Biologists at New York University have identified how different species use common genes to control their early development and alter how these genes are used to accommodate their own features. ...> Full Article

No sex for 40 million years? No problem. (3/26/2007)

New research shows that tiny asexual creatures have managed to evolve into different species ...> Full Article

Species Evolve Faster in Cold Climates (3/17/2007)

University of British Columbia researchers have discovered that contrary to common belief, species do not evolve faster in warmer climates. ...> Full Article

Hobbit new species Homo floresiensis not microcephalic person (2/5/2007)

In October 2004, Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered bones of the miniature humans in a cave on Flores, an island east of Bali between Asia and Australia. The original skeleton, a female, stood at just 3 feet 4 inches tall, weighed about 55 pounds, and was around 30 years old at the time of her death 18,000 years ago. ...> Full Article