Natural Science Forum / Biology / Evolution / July 2006

Robert Karl Stonjek wrote:

Group selection is generally dismissed for reasons that are

I posted a theme here entitled "I Is complexity of evolutionary change
explainable?" but it has been rejected because it has been understood
to be Evolution/Creation discussion (I think it is not, just a question
about the evolutionary process). Because I think I made some good

First off, I would like to state that I am a biochemist not a biologist
and evolutionary biology is not my main field of activity. Anyway, this
brings me to my first question. I was recently on answers.yahoo and
someone asked about the origin of metamorphosis. I realized that in

Much of the debate on the Haldane/ReMine threads has focused on
the notion of 'reproductive excess'.  If reproductive excess is
high, then ReMine's case is weakened - the number 1667 becomes
a larger number.  So there has been controversy over how

The human animal seems to have developed mental faculties far in excess of
what was required to survive on the African savanna a few million years ago.
I'm curious what factors might have been responsible for such  rapid
evolution in so short a time.

Human Imprinted Chromosomal Regions Are Historical Hot-Spots of
Recombination
Ionel Sandovici, Sacha Kassovska-Bratinova, Joe E. Vaughan, Rae Stewart,
Mark Leppert, Carmen Sapienza

"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net>

My paper, Cost Theory and the Cost of Substitution -- a clarification"
is published, and available for free here:
http://SaintPaulScience.com/CostTheory1.pdf
The paper clarifies many long-standing confusions about the cost of

For me the origin of life was simply like all evolution -
it was what best survived and later was able to build
in its environment.
Energy forces changes in the chemistry of the earth.

"Perplexed in Peoria" jimmenegay@sbcglobal.netwrote:-

I've been slogging my way through the later chapters of Sean Rice's
excellent book "Evolutionary Theory: Mathematical and Conceptual
Foundations".  These chapters deal with the Price equation, quantitative
genetics, and some rather bizarre stuff using tensors (a la relativity

Question for group,
Is intelligence in different species convergent evolution?
Ex. dolphins, chimps, humans and perhaps octupi.
Tom Hendricks

Does Haldane's lemma take into account that chimps and ape's are both
evolving, and that at some point and time they became reproductively
incompatible?
Would not having multiple species evolving increase the rate at which

"Perplexed in Peoria" jimmenegay@sbcglobal.net wrote:-

"Females were getting big relative to males. Whereas in modern
chimpanzees and australopithecines and the earliest ape-men
fossils, males were one and a half times the size of females, in