The New York Times, December 28, 2004

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Bigger is better, the saying goes, and in the case of evolution, the saying is apparently right.

The notion that natural selection can create long-term trends toward large size first emerged about a century ago, but it fell out of favor in recent decades. Now researchers have taken a fresh look at the question with new methods, and some argue that these trends are real.

Biologists have recently found that in a vast majority of animals and plants, bigger individuals are more successful at reproducing than smaller ones, whether they are finches, damselflies or jimsonweed.

Continue reading “‘Bigger Is Better’ View of Evolution Gains Credence” →

The New York Times, December 7, 2004

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Scientists have used computer analysis to read evolution backward and reconstruct a large part of the genome of an 80-million-year-old mammal. This tiny shrewlike creature was the common ancestor of humans and other living mammals as diverse as horses, bats, tigers and whales.

Actual DNA molecules cannot survive such lengths of time. Mammal fossils from this period are extremely rare. But by tracking the course of mammalian evolution, scientists can pinpoint when a common ancestor existed and what, in general terms, it was like.

Continue reading “When Bats and Humans Were One and the Same” →

The New York Times, November 30, 2004

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Swallows are getting sexier.

Male barn swallows attract females with long tail feathers, and European researchers have observed that over the last 20 years those feathers have become much longer.

“We’ve demonstrated quite a dramatic change in a short period of time,” said Dr. Anders Pape Moller, an evolutionary biologist at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, who conducted the research with Dr. Tibor Szep of the College of Nyiregyhaza in Hungary. The findings are to be published in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

Continue reading “Sexier Posterior Evolves Almost Overnight” →

The New York Times, November 23, 2004

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Artists and scientists, so the story goes, glare at each other across a cultural divide. The scientist coldly hacks nature into pieces. The artist is unwilling to do the hard work necessary to understand how the world works.

This story is mostly fiction, as the work of the printmaker Joseph Scheer makes abundantly clear.

For the past six years, Mr. Scheer has made pictures of moths. He does not use paint or silk screens to make them. Instead, he has devised a method for placing real moths on a high-resolution digital scanner without crushing them flat.

Continue reading “The Face of Nature Changes as Art and Science Evolve” →

The New York Times, October 19, 2004

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As trees across the northern United States turn gold and crimson, scientists are debating exactly what those colors are for.

The scientists do agree on one thing: the colors are for something. That represents a major shift in thinking. For decades, textbooks claimed that autumn colors were just a byproduct of dying leaves. “I had always assumed that autumn leaves were waste baskets,” said Dr. David Wilkinson, an evolutionary ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England. “That’s what I was told as a student.”

Continue reading “Those Brilliant Fall Outfits May Be Saving Trees” →