life inspired

"Darwin referred to the origin of species as "that mystery of mysteries", and despite decades of study, evolutionary biologists still cannot agree on the underlying processes that have produced the great diversity of life around us. Most contentious of all has been the question of whether speciation can occur within a population (sympatrically). On page [...] van Doorn et al. suggest that mating preferences can halt the movement of genes within a population. Their work gives credibility to the concept of sympatric speciation, which has long been the ugly duckling of evolutionary biology, and suggests that both local adaptation and sexual selection may play a far more important role in speciation than previously thought". Full commentary @ Science Magazine.

Labels: evolution, natural selection, sexual selection, speciation

In the past few decades group selection has made a quiet comeback among evolutionary theorists. E. O. Wilson of Harvard University and David Sloan Wilson (no relation) of Binghamton University are trying to give group selection full-fledged respectability. They are rebranding it as multilevel selection theory: selection constantly takes place on multiple levels simultaneously. And how do you figure the sum of those selections in any real-world circumstance? “We simply have to examine situations on a case-by-case basis,” Sloan Wilson says. Full article @ Scientific American

Labels: evolution, group selection, multilevel selection, natural selection