Featured series 
Tag: Evolutionary Biology
-
Science & Tech
Female lower back has evolved to accommodate strain of pregnancy
According to a new study by researchers at Harvard and the University of Texas at Austin, women’s lower spines evolved to be more flexible and supportive than men’s to increase…
-
Science & Tech
Seabed microbe study leads to low-cost power, light for the poor
A Harvard biology professor’s fascination with seafloor microbes has led to the development of a revolutionary, low-cost power system consuming garbage, compost, and other waste that could provide light for the developing world.
-
Health
Telling the arthropod tale of life
They had sifted through the forest floor’s leaves and dirt for days, looking for a tiny type of daddy longlegs native to New Zealand, but had little more than dirty hands to show for it.
-
Health
Species thrive when sexual dimorphism broadens niches
Some Caribbean lizards’ strong sexual dimorphism allows them to colonize much larger niches and habitats than they might otherwise occupy, allowing males and females to avoid competing with each other for resources and setting the stage for the population as a whole to thrive. The finding, reported this week in the journal Nature, suggests sex…
-
Health
Opossum genome shows ‘junk’ DNA source of genetic innovation
A tiny opossum’s genome has shed light on how evolution creates new creatures from old, showing that change primarily comes by finding new ways of turning existing genes on and…
-
Science & Tech
Lizards shed light on species diversity
Some people are drawn to majestic racehorses, melodious songbirds, or cuddly puppies. Jonathan Losos has had a lifelong love affair with reptiles.
-
Health
Big brains better for birds
As you might guess, big-brained birds survive better in the wild than those less cerebral for their size. Scientists guessed that too, but they had to prove it to themselves.
-
Campus & Community
Pressured by predators, lizards see rapid shift in natural selection
Countering the widespread view of evolution as a process played out over the course of eons, evolutionary biologists have shown that natural selection can turn on a dime – within…
-
Health
Beetles’ past tells volumes about tropical evolution
Experts seeking to explain the amazing diversity of the tropical rain forest have typically done so in two ways, viewing forests as either “evolutionary cradles” that encourage the rapid development…
-
Campus & Community
Monkey see, monkey infer
Monkeys keep turning out to be smarter than people think they are. Researchers have shown that they can count to four and are aware of differences between languages like Dutch…
-
Campus & Community
Wakeley examines ancestral lines
John Wakeley is devising new ways to trace the evolutionary road taken by humans and the creatures with whom we share planet Earth by creating new models that examine how…
-
Science & Tech
Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals
Paleontologists have discovered fossils of a species that provides the missing evolutionary link between fish and the first animals that walked out of water onto land about 375 million years…
-
Campus & Community
A tale of a venomous dispute
Sea spiders as large as a foot across have been seen crawling along the deep ocean floor from the windows of submersible research vessels. Most of them, however, including those in a Harvard study, are a scant millimeter (.04 inch) in size. But big or small, they boast long snouts, on either side of which…
-
Science & Tech
First edition of HapMap released
A flurry of high-profile scientific manuscripts published in October 2005 describe both the content and uses of HapMap, a catalog that maps human genetic variation and relates it both to…
-
Campus & Community
Study: Predatory dinosaurs had birdlike pulmonary system
What could the fierce dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously…
-
Health
Bacterium proves essential to immune system development
In the July 15, 2005 Cell, a team led by Dennis Kasper, the William Ellery Channing Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor of microbiology and molecular…
-
Science & Tech
Human skull is 7 million years old
When a 7-million-year-old skull was first found, Daniel Lieberman, a professor of anthropology at Harvard, called it “one of the greatest discoveries of the past 100 years.” After studying new…
-
Campus & Community
The accidental ‘best friend’
Harvard researchers studying Siberian foxes have uncovered evidence that the ability to interpret human expressions and gestures that helped transform the wild wolf into humankind’s cooperative “best friend” may have…
-
Health
“Commoner” in brain crowns the cortex
With its role in higher cognitive functions, the cortex represents a significant evolutionary development in mammals, culminating in the enlarged hemispheres of humans and other primates. In the development of…
-
Science & Tech
Oldest mammal is found
When dinosaurs ruled the world, scampering around their feet were platoons of diminutive insect-eating animals, part reptile, part something new. When the giant reptiles and many other animals were wiped…
-
Health
Understanding how fish swim
The pattern is hard to see at first because the movement seems to happen in the blink of an eye.
-
Science & Tech
What killed the dinosaurs?
Charles Marshall’s childhood passion led him to a career in paleontology, trying to understand the interplay between inheritance, environment, and catastrophe in directing evolution. Marshall’s work attracted media attention in…