Evolutionary Biology

Repeatability of energy metabolism and resistance to dehydration in the invasive slug Limax maximus

by Juan Diego Gaitán-Espitia

Invertebrate Biology, Volume 131, Issue 1, pages 11–18, March 2012

Standard metabolic rate (SMR) and resistance to body dehydration (BD) are important physiological traits that have an... more Standard metabolic rate (SMR) and resistance to body dehydration (BD) are important physiological traits that have an effect on water balance and the amount of energy available for activity and production, and thus could contribute to variation in life history traits expressed across a range of environments. Few studies have tested whether SMR and BD show consistent between-individual variation in molluscs. Significant repeatability of SMR and BD indicates that the traits might be heritable and therefore a possible target for natural selection, so describing the repeatability of SMR and BD is important in studies of phenotypic variability. Here, we studied energy metabolism (body mass-corrected SMR) and the change in the scaling relationship of SMR and body mass in response to time between measurements in the giant garden slug Limax maximus. Limax maximus is one of the most invasive terrestrial molluscs, with a wide geographical distribution, and is considered an important pest of horticultural and agricultural crops. Our results show that L. maximus follows the expected relationship of increasing SMR with increasing mass, but the scaling exponent varies through time and is different from that described for other gastropods. We also found significant inter-individual variation in VCO2 Mean, VCO2 Min, VCO2 Max, and BD (τ=0.25, 0.29, 0.24, 0.22, p<0.05, respectively), and significant repeatability of body mass (τ=0.90). To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of the repeatability of body mass-corrected SMR and BD in terrestrial slugs. Our results suggest that energy metabolism and water balance could potentially respond to selection.

DARWINIAN EVOLUTION – BROAD ENOUGH FOR CULTURE?

by Dwight Read

Co-authored with David Lane. Published in Anthropology Today 24(2), 2008.

The difficulty social and cultural anthropologists
have had with developing a unifying
theory about cultural... more The difficulty social and cultural anthropologists
have had with developing a unifying
theory about cultural systems, their relationship
to human behaviour, and how they change
through time stems from the complexity of
modelling self-modifying systems, not from
failure to embed the enterprise in a Darwinian
evolutionary framework as argued by Mesoudi
et al.

Do we need to invoke multiple levels of selection to explain the evolution of altruism?

by Martin Huncovsky

Written as a part of course assignment.

Are Species Intelligent?

by Jon Schull

The Adaptive Evolution Point of View in Evolutionary Psychology

by Jon Schull

The Successful Fathers Argument for Sex

by Jon Schull

The View from the Adaptive Landscape

by Jon Schull

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

The fundamental role of competition in the ecology and evolution of mutualisms

by Emily Jones

Jones, E. I., R. Ferriere, and J. L. Bronstein. 2012. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Volume 1256, The Year in Evolutionary Biology, 66–88.

Mutualisms are interspecific interactions that yield reciprocal benefits. Here, by adopting a consumer–resource... more Mutualisms are interspecific interactions that yield reciprocal benefits. Here, by adopting a consumer–resource perspective, we show how considering competition is necessary in order to understand the evolutionary and ecological dynamics of mutualism. We first review the ways in which competition shapes the ecology of mutualisms, using a graphical framework based on resource flows rather than net effects to highlight the opportunities for competition. We then describe the known mechanisms of competition and show how it is a critical driver of the evolutionary dynamics, persistence, and diversification of mutualism. We argue that empirical and theoretical research on the ecology and evolution of mutualisms will jointly progress by addressing four key points: (i) the existence and shape of physiological trade-offs among cooperation, competition, and other life-history and functional traits; (ii) the capacity for individuals to express conditional responses to variation in their mutualistic and competitive environment; (iii) the existence of heritable variation for mutualistic and competitive traits and their potentially conditional expression; and (iv) the structure of the network of consumer–resource interactions in which individuals are embedded.

Engineering love

by Brian Earp

Savulescu, J. and Sandberg, A. (2012). Love machine: Engineering lifelong romance. New Scientist, 2864, 28-29.

Essay partially adapted from Earp, B. D., Sandberg, A., and Savulescu, J. (2012). Natural selection, childrearing, and the ethics of marriage (and divorce): Building a case for the neuroenhancement of human relationships. Philosophy & Technology, forthcoming [see "profile" box in article].

Available at the New Scientist website: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html

New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks... more New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks like we may be outliving our inborn capacity to love. But there could be a way to outwit evolution and make love last.

Also available at New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html.

Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A new method to enhance interdisciplinary research between the life and human sciences.

by Nathalie Gontier

pdf download here: http://kairos.fc.ul.pt/nr%204/Applied%20Evolutionary%20Epistemology.pdf

Parallel evolution of auditory system for echolocation in bats and toothed whales

by Robert Murphy

Shen, Y.-y., L. Liang, G.-S. Li, R.W. Murphy, and Y-.p. Zhang. In press. Parallel evolution of auditory system for echolocation in bats and toothed whales. PLoS Genetics

A New Argument for Animalism

by Stephan Blatti

Analysis (forthcoming, 2012)

The view known as “animalism” asserts that we are human organisms—that each of us is an instance of the Homo sapiens... more The view known as “animalism” asserts that we are human organisms—that each of us is an instance of the Homo sapiens species. The standard argument for this view is known as the “thinking animal argument.” Here I offer a second argument for animalism: the “animal ancestors argument.” This argument illustrates how the case for animalism can be seen as piggybacking on the credibility of evolutionary theory. Two related objections are considered and answered.

Phylogenetics of Pteropodidae

by M.T. Abdullah, PhD

Phylogenetics of Macroglossinae

by M.T. Abdullah, PhD

Phylogenetics of Pteropodinae. 2006

by M.T. Abdullah, PhD

Commemorative Reconsiderations

by Marion Endt-Jones

book review in Art History, vol. 34, issue 5, November 2011, pp. 1053-1057

A cryptic intermediate in the evolution of chameleon tongue projections

by Kurt Schwenk

Function and the Evolution of Phenotypic Stability: Connecting Pattern to Process

by Kurt Schwenk

Constraint

by Kurt Schwenk