Featured series 
Tag: Evolutionary Biology
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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 comfort and mobility during pregnancy, and to accommodate the special biology of carrying a baby for nine months while standing on two feet. The study…
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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.
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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.
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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…
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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 off. The research, by an international consortium led by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, revises our understanding of genetic evolution. Scientists previously thought…
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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.
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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.
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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 months – as a population’s needs change. In a study of island lizards exposed to a new predator, the scientists found that natural selection dramatically…
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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 of new species, or as “evolutionary museums” that allow species to accumulate over time. New work by Harvard researchers on tropical beetles indicates that both…
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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 and Japanese, even though they don’t known what is being said. Now, Harvard psychologists find that monkeys can draw correct conclusions about novel situations. For…
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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 DNA has changed over time. A theoretical population geneticist, Wakeley’s research focuses on how our DNA changes as it is passed from generation to generation.…
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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 ago. The newly found species, Tiktaalik roseae, has a skull, a neck, ribs, and parts of the limbs that are similar to four- legged animals…
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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…
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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 disease and to human evolutionary history. HapMap gives scientists worldwide a first good look at the “order in variety” that is the human genome. All…
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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 thought, according to new research from Harvard University and Ohio University. Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and…
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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 genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Sarkis Mazmanian, HMS instructor in microbiology and molecular genetics, both at the Channing laboratory, reports that Bacteriodes fragilis…
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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 evidence including teeth and jaw fragments, Lieberman stands by that statement. “The next oldest, reasonably complete humanlike skull we have is just over 3 million…
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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 occurred by accident. The research casts doubt onto a previous theory that domestic dogs’ ability to interpret human communication results from generations of selection for…
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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 this crowning structure, neurons are guided by factors that are both genetic and environmental. A research team led by Christopher A. Walsh, the Bullard professor…
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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 out some 65 million years ago, the shrewlike newcomers prospered. They began evolving into different types of mammals and eventually gave rise to everything from…
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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.
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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 1996. He and University of Washington geologist Peter Ward concluded there may have been other causes than just the well-publicized comet or asteroid impact responsible…