Evolutionary biologists have come to recognize humans as a tremendous evolutionary force. In hospitals, we drive the evolution of resistant bacteria by giving patients antibiotics. In the oceans, we drive the evolution of small-bodied fish by catching the big ones.

In a new study, a University of Minnesota biologist, Emilie C. Snell-Rood, offers evidence suggesting that we may be driving evolution in a more surprising way. As we alter the places where animals live, we may be fueling the evolution of bigger brains.

Continue reading “As Humans Change Landscape, Brains of Some Animals Change, Too” →

If we could somehow rewind the history of life to the dawn of the animal kingdom, it would be unlikely that we humans would ever evolve, the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould argued. The history of life was shaped by too many flukes and contingencies to repeat its course.

Scientists can’t turn back the clock 700 million years, so we can’t know for sure whether Dr. Gould was right on that particular point. But in experiments using bacteria and other fast-breeding organisms, scientists can replay evolution many times over in their labs. And the results of a new experiment published Thursday in the journal Cell Reports demonstrate — with movies — that evolution can be astoundingly predictable.

Continue reading “Watching Bacteria Evolve, With Predictable Results” →

Henrietta Lacks was only 31 when she died of cervical cancer in 1951 in a Baltimore hospital. Not long before her death, doctors removed some of her tumor cells. They later discovered that the cells could thrive in a lab, a feat no human cells had achieved before.

Soon the cells, called HeLa cells, were being shipped from Baltimore around the world. In the 62 years since — twice as long as Ms. Lacks’s own life — her cells have been the subject of more than 74,000 studies, many of which have yielded profound insights into cell biology, vaccines, in vitro fertilization and cancer.

Continue reading “A Family Consents to a Medical Gift, 62 Years Later” →

“Monogamy is a problem,” said Dieter Lukas of the University of Cambridge in a telephone news conference last week. As Dr. Lukas explained to reporters, he and other biologists consider monogamy an evolutionary puzzle.

In 9 percent of all mammal species, males and females will share a common territory for more than one breeding season, and in some cases bond for life. This is a problem — a scientific one — because male mammals could theoretically have more offspring by giving up on monogamy and mating with lots of females.

In a new study, Dr. Lukas and his colleague Tim Clutton-Brock suggest that monogamy evolves when females spread out, making it hard for a male to travel around and fend off competing males.

Continue reading “Monogamy and Human Evolution” →