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The OP's view is essentially correct and commonly accepted in the recent literature. It is, in fact, a logical consequence of a multi-level view of evolution that selection pressures can point in different directions at different levels of analysis - that individual cells may have incentives to 'cheat' even in successful multicellular lifeforms.

And because the maths of multi-level selection is domain agnostic, the same understanding of cancer can be appled to the study of some sociological phenomena, as I do in Chapter 13 of my book, "Evolutionary Politics: Socialism for Social Species".

It's not the Y chromosome that's key in this theory. It's the single X chromosome, which is a large chromosome containing some 2000 genes. The recessive versions of any of those genes will affect men at a higher rate than women.

For example, men exhibit colorblindness at a drastically higher rate than women (1 out of 12 men vs. 1 out of 200 women) because the X chromosome can contain a recessive gene for colorblindness. The Y chromosome has nothing to do with it, except insofar as it displaces a second X chromosome. Unpaired chromosomes lack an important buffer against recessive traits, as shown in this chart.

In species where it's the females that carry the "odd" sex chromosome (such as birds), females display a higher variance in body size than males, even though males exhibit a greater variance in reproductive success (source). This is not to say that the sex chromosomes are responsible for all the variance differences between men and women, but it does mean that they probably play an important role.

I actually did my master's on human nose evolution. There are lots of good answers here but they can be simplified: the fossil evidence for whether a hominin had a nose or not are everted nasal margins. If the edges of the nasal opening are flat against the face, it didn't have a nose; if they curve outward, it did. If you do a google search using that terminology you should find some examples.

The sub has some decent resources in the FAQ. Other than that, Evolution: A Very Short Introduction is great. It's part of a series of pocket-sized handbooks on various topics, evolution among them.

If you wanna go heavy, Evolution by Douglas Futuyma is where to go.

Grandmother Fish. Our Family Tree also looks good, but we haven't read it.

This is a really wide open question. There are theories, but no one has any truly strong evidence. Steven Pinker is an evolutionary psychologist and linguist, and wrote an excellent book on the subject. It goes into several of the more common theories, and then lays out his own theory. Much of the book may be fairly dry if you don't have a real interest in language itself (how language works, as opposed to how it evolved), but I found it very worthwhile and fascinating.

Under the grandmothering hypothesis (hominins evolved longer lifepans when Homo erectus grandmothers started gathering and child caring to increase their daughters' reproductive fitness), there might be some selection.

We shouldn't assume past Alzheimer's risk was similar. Diet and environment play large roles in Alzheimer's risk, and for most of hominin evolution, low saturated fat and high fiber/polyphenol intake would be expected to lower risks, as would living in social groups (living alone doubles risk in modern humans). Some have argued that the modern epidemic began with household copper plumbing (risk remains low in Japan where stainless steel is used).

I highly recommend Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. It's really easy to read and understand, lays out all the evidence in a very compelling way, and is just generally fascinating. That isn't exactly a deep dive, but it will get you a solid grounding and an introduction to most of the relevant topics. from there you will be better equipped to dive deeper into the various specific topics..

I think you're confusing hominid evolution with mammalian evolution (though there is obviously some overlap). While the common ancestor of all mammals may have been a small shrew-like or weasel-like animal, the common ancestor of all modern primates was definitely more ape-like than human. If you think about it, though, most modern primates except humans still reside in environments that are likely more similar to the one our common ancestor may have lived in, so there has been less selective pressure to change.

There is some evidence that we have influenced elephant tusk size through hunting driven selection: Abstract

There are also the cases of creating "superbugs" that have evolved as influenced by antibiotic use. Similarly, evolution of insects that are more tolerant to pesticides.

https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Origin-Facsimile-First-Species/dp/0674032810#:\~:text=The%20Annotated%20Origin%20is%20the,Darwin%20Summer%20Course%20at%20Oxford.&text=biologist%20can%20provide.-,Charles%20Darwin's%20On%20the%20Origin%20of%20S....

Very good start, but I think you should look into reading books written by atheists. Maybe you have such a powerful feeling that the Quran is real, that it may cloud any judgment of its veracity. Do keep in mind that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A single book may present a case of providing circular logic. It's important to have many corroborating sources, but religious books so rarely have that quality.

You should consider what role 'faith' plays in your beliefs, what faith exactly means (how do you define it), and how if you have faith in faith?

I have found that a lack of understanding about evolution is shared with Christian Creationists. Maybe this feeling of faith is preventing them from wanting to understand. The same poor 'why are there monkeys' and such examples turn up time and time again.

Also, be aware that the easiest person to convince of a falsehood is yourself. Personally, I discovered that faith was a false virtue. Losing it broke the entire structure down, for how could anything be known past an assumption? I found that science was a better tool for knowing with greater confidence that my beliefs were true.

I have found a lot of people use faith to believe in other beliefs outside of God. Magic water with spirit energies, psychics, mediums, prayer, karma. It's common for people to do it, but I believe it is uniquely better to you to be a skeptic in all things until proven otherwise.

Great books to read:

The God Delusion,

god is not great

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The Belief Instinct.

Good luck on your journey. You sound smart and well educated. I respect your person, but I have never respected beliefs bespoken based on faith.

Hagfish and lampreys are jawless fish. They represent a radically different kind of vertebrate since they diverged at an early stage of fish evolution with those fish that would develop jaws. They have never possessed jaws, rather than possibly having lost them at some point. This makes them basal to jawed fish.

This isn't contradicting. What they are saying is that all vertebrates have hair cells in their ears, but there are other morphological differences that are clade-restricted. These are not shared between the lineages since they developed after the divergence.

The following diagram Procession of ear evolution in vertebrates has hair cells as "mechanosensory cells" that existed since chordates. Without an ear these probably just existed on the surface of the skin.

Hagfish (craniates) = simple torus, cristae without cupulae, common and dorsal macular

Lampreys ("true vertebrates?") = two channels with cupulae, common and dorsal macular

Lungfish (gnathostomata) = horizontal canal, sacular attricular access, lagena in sacular recess

I personally stopped liking Dawkins after his God Delusion. It became too much anti-religion instead of pro-science for me.

I can very much recommend The Big Bang, by Simon Singh. It's a history of astronomy and basically walks through the major discovery and people that showed us the universe started with the Big Bang. Sorry for the massive amazon link.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Big-Bang-Important-Scientific-Discovery/dp/0007152523/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=59936160713&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIqeDArvPy4QIVTLTtCh2DQQ-DEAAYASAAEgLqt_D_BwE&hvadid=291335549187&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=20474&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=b&hvrand=15052326827831956578&hvtargid=kwd-364592476477&hydadcr=8241_1756991&keywords=simon+singh+big+bang&qid=1556458404&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Stephen Jay Gould is really good for paleontology stuff. Neil Shubin "Your inner fish" is quite good too about the Tiktaalik discovery.
And maybe a strange suggestion, but I really, really like The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. This is a great, accessible history of ancient Egypt and it is eye opening how religion was constantly reinvented to deal with current situations. There is no reason to think Judaic religion was or is any different.
I'll post some more if I can think of any.

There was this article about that last week.

> Developmental psychologists have identified two cognitive biases in very young children that help to explain the popularity of intelligent design. The first is a belief that species are defined by an internal quality that cannot be changed (psychological essentialism). The second is that all things are designed for a purpose (promiscuous teleology). These biases interact with cultural beliefs such as religion but are just as prevalent in children raised in secular societies. Importantly, these beliefs become increasingly entrenched, making formal scientific instruction more and more difficult as children get older.

It was done really well in the episode of the new cosmos series that covered this same topic.

http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/neil-degrasse-tyson-tells-fox-viewers-evolution-is-a-scientific-fact-on-cosmos.html

The Big Bang by Simon Singh is my absolute go-to for this! Easy to read, general overview of the history of cosmology!

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Universe-Simon-Singh/dp/0007162219/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ME3UGC9UCOV9&dchild=1&keywords=simon+singh+big+bang&qid=1620477473&sprefix=the+big+bang+simo%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-1

Very cool that you wrote that book. In my book The Cheating Cell, I go into much more depth than in that Slate article about applying cooperation theory and evolutionary biology to cancer. Given your work you might be interested in joining our new Cooperation Science Network which includes people from all different disciplinary backgrounds who study cooperation.

This paper says it's caused by diet, a high carb diet specifically. It says only 0.4% of tribal people have myopia, while 25-35% of people of European descent do.

But then this paper says it's genetic.

I don't know about that high carb stuff though, because my daughter definitely had a lower carb diet than I did growing up, but her eyes are worse than mine. But genetics don't explain the very high modern prevalence of myopia, it would seem there must be some environmental factor. There could always be both.

edit: Is genetics singular or plural?

BoxCar2D uses Flash, which doesn't work on some mobile devices. Luckily, there's a Javascript version here. It definitely is a good demonstration of concepts like mutation and selection and fitness.

this book does include dinosaurs, but it's comprehensive and covers EVERYTHING. we used it as a textbook in my "evolution of life" class but it's super fun because it's fully illustrated throughout so you get a good picture of basically everything. https://www.amazon.com/Book-Life-Illustrated-History-Evolution/dp/0393321568

I can recommend two books:

1. Kemp's the Origin & Evolution of Mammals (OUP, 2005)
2. Protero's Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals (PUP, 2016).

I hope that these two titles will help you to find the answers you're seeking.

Cheers (:

Not necessarily the direct beginning, but a neat fact apropos to your time frame is that the Tiktaalik was uncovered around 2006. This creature bridged the gap between fish and land animal, and is widely regarded as one of the biggest breakthroughs in evolution. It was discovered by a team, and one of its members, Neil Shubin, wrote a book on both his discovery, and evolution.

Here is the book, and I would 100% recommend reading it, or at least giving it a try with the free sample :)

The term "just so story" comes from Just So Stories, a wonderul collection of children's stories Rudyard Kipling wrote to explain various things like How the Camel Got His Hump, and The Beginning of the Armadillos. It's well worth reading, and I recommend you check it out at the Project Gutenberg link I provided.

In the context of science, a "just so story" (Wikipedia link here) is "an unverifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals."

With respect to the pro-capitalism arguments you're looking to shoot down: I think you might be well-served to look into Guaranteed Basic Income (aka Universal Basic Income, Guaranteed Minimum Income, Basic Income, etc). Under whatever name, it's actually been tried a number of times, and it's far from clear that the people who recieved these benefits actually suffered the ill effects which apologists for capitalism would assure you are inevitable.

> how does cooking so significantly increase the number of calories?

Do digestion of foodstuffs requires breaking down the components of those foodstuffs into the component parts. For instance, carbohydrates are constructed of long chains of simple sugars strung together. Meat is made of muscle tissue and fats which are all fibrous and made of more-or-less coiled protein structures.

When you cook food, you "denature" these proteins, breaking them down into their component parts. If you add heat, you break some of the bonds of the protein, wrecking it's shape and leaving bits hanging around. You can see this in action with an egg. The reason that the egg white goes from a viscous solid to a liquid when you boil it is denaturing the egg white.

Similarly, the enzymes and bacteria in your gut also go through this process of breaking down the incoming foodstuffs into simpler parts by denaturing them. So it's really just "jump starting" the process.

Another reason for the increase in calories is this process making otherwise inaccessible parts able to be digested. Here's a great answer from this forum: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/982660-calories-cooked-vs-raw

> Starches, for instance, like those in wheat, barley, potatoes, and so on, are composed mostly of two sugar-based molecules, amylopectin and amylose, which, when raw, are tightly packed and inaccessible to digestive enzymes. Studies have found that cooking gelatinizes starch, which means that amylopectin and amylose are released and exposed to enzymes. Thus, cooked starches yield more energy than raw ones.

This process is largely the same in meats as well, I'd imagine? (I'm not an expert on nutrition, but my assumption is that the same accessibility applies also here).

There's a javascript version of that program that does not use Flash. It also simulates a whole bunch of cars at the same time and is faster.

Here is it: http://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/

Edit: Flash kind of sucks.

If you look at a book about population genetics, like Ewens you will see that it is all about genes. Nothing to contradict Dawkins.

The professor you are talking about may be one of those who doesn't like math and wants some English (or other natural language) to do the math for him or her. Then you argue about what natural language best approximates the mathematics. If you follow the genes, you cannot go wrong. If you argue at the individual or group level, you may happen to agree with what gene tracking gives, but you can also go wrong.

Great list. Thought others interested might enjoy a (it's free/ no ads) app I made about evolutionary anatomy I made a while back. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.terc.evolutionaryanatomy&hl=en

Cichlid fish very rapid, recent speciation in Lake Victoria.

Snails. These guys are great, they had one genetic mutation which led to a reversal of the direction of the shell's twist, immediately preventing reproduction with "normal" snails and outsmarting their predators.

Demonstrating Species Evolution, Macro Evolution, on Your Kitchen Table

"A species is a group of individual organisms that interbreed and produce fertile, viable offspring. According to this definition, one species is distinguished from another when, in nature, it is not possible for matings between individuals from each species to produce fertile offspring." The Biological Species Concept - boundless . com

In 1979 it was discovered that the two sub species plants of the same species Senecio vulgaris and Senecio squalidus could interbreed and produce a hybrid.

Now the hybrid generated by this inter-breeding was given the name Senecio eboracensis. This new plant can breed with itself which means it is a viable hybrid. However, and this is the really important part, it cannot breed with either of its parent plants or any other plants. So this means that the new hybrid must be of a new and different species than its originating plants.

So what we have is two plants interbreeding to create a new never before seen plant species.

Needless to say as these are plants you can of course repeat this on your own kitchen table as often as you want. You know repeatable testable evidence of macro evolution, the evolution of a new species.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49756476_Plant_Invasions_Interspecific_Hybridization_and_the_Evolution_of_New_Plant_Taxa

http://jkmpic.blogspot.ca/2013/06/senecio-vulgaris-plants-for-sale.html

You'll need to look through Chris Brochu's work on crocodylian phylogeny, if you're incorporating paleontological data (and you should be). https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Brochu/publications

I'll include my edit again.

>They start puberty about 10, by the time they're about 12/13 they've developed "sexual swellings" on their chests that signal they're ready to start mating and, similarly to chimps, they don't actually start ovulating until several years later (first period doesn't actually mark beginning of fertility, girls don't typically start ovulating until 2-3 years afterwards).

This is completely misinformed, the average age of menarche is 11-14. Which means the girls you've mentioned are very much able to get pregnant.

Interesting that you didn't deny you're looking for scientific reasoning to condone pedophilia, though.

> Then what I understand is that through ~~variation~~ mutation a land-dwelling mammal can evolve to be a cetacean, and mutations are (and I would like to know more about examples of mutations trough evolution) for example blue eyes and lactose tolerance.

Mutations happen that enter the gene pool (giving rise to variation,) and if they are beneficial, they can be selected for.

Imagine you have a dictionary with only 1 word:

• cat

This isn't very exciting. Now imagine that we start mutating these words a bit:

• cat
• cab
• cabs
• crabs
• crab
• crap
• carp
• tarp
• trap
• traps
• trips

In each step, a mutation happened. In each step, I changed, added, removed, or swapped a letter. As a result of those mutations, I now have variation - my dictionary (ie, my gene pool) now has a lot more words to choose from.

> Is the statement "evolution would be practically halted without mutation" correct?

Yes. Any decent evolution simulator will demonstrate why.

Intelligence is one of those things that's difficult to define to everyone's satisfaction, but essentially it comes down to problem solving and behavioral adaptability. That can include manipulation of other species, but it absolutely does not need to.

>'intelligence', in the broadest sense of the term, refers to the ability of an organism to adapt to its environment through learning and through shaping the environment, the organism employing its cognitive abilities to do so. 'Intelligence', in that sense, translates as the ability of an organism to exhibit such adaptive plastic behavior (Stanovich 2009).

Source

Hahah, i just don't comment because an article like this gets published every year and it's just wrong. No one has exactly replicated Masataka's work per say, but others have shown that fear is most likely not coded into our genome. Miller, D.B. (1995). Nonlinear experiential influences on the development of fear reactions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18(2), 306-307

The Masataka paper has some flaws though, which are nicely outlined by Taylor, S. (1997). Sensitizing experiences and fear acquisition: comment on Masataka (1993). Animal Behaviour, 53, 879-880

Either way, Masataka makes a compelling argument that fear of snakes is not innate, but dependent on experiential factors. I could got on my soapbox on how people always discount experiential factors, but it's just not worth it. I also realize that these are all old papers, but when you search for "fear of snakes" before doing research you don't usually search for "development of fear."

pm me for copies of the papers I cited if you don't have access.

You can count me as one of your readers. Good content like what you've described will be very welcome here.

Be aware of Patreon. It would be perfect for this kind of thing. Aron Ra does this, for example, and is doing well with it.

Fish didn't exist until about 500 million years ago, and our fish ancestors first started crawling on land about 375 million years ago.

You might want to read The Ancestor's Tale.

This is the kind of question that evolutionary psychology tries to answer, successfully or not. Old man sapolsky gives it discussion, for another resource; see https://youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA and https://www.amazon.com/Behave-Biology-Humans-Best-Worst/dp/1594205078

Interesting to note is that, from a game theoretic perspective, in the context of human society multiple "natural" parenting styles could coexist in a stable state. Human young require lots of investment from at least the mother. In a world where all fathers abandon their children immediately, though, a father who instead stays around and cares for the child can give that child an advantage, making it advantageous behaviour. In the opposite setting, though, where all fathers invest heavily, a sneaky father could "cheat" and insert his young into a setting where it will then be cared for and raised by someone else, while he continues on to mate elsewhere, also advantageous. thus you could maybe expect a stable state somewhere in the middle, a mix of investors and cheaters. Human behaviour is more complicated in practice, of course, with cultural influences etc, but.

> they just calculate all outcomes and pick the one with the highest pobability

Complex systems like the weather or Go are vastly too complicated to "calculate all outcomes". AlphaGo uses analysis of previous games, heuristics, models, sample trials to narrow the possible moves (about 10^200) to something that wouldn't take forever.

Even if every atom in the universe was universe of its own and each atom in each of those universes was a supercomputer analysing 1 move per nanosecond, you'd need to billions of years to exhaustively search all the moves!

From the guardian

> AlphaGo looks ahead by playing out the rest of the game in its imagination, many times over.” The program involves two neural networks, software that mimics the structure of the human brain to aggregate very simple decisions into complex choices, running in parallel.

> One, the policy network, was trained by observing millions of boards of Go uploaded to an online archive. Using those observations, it built up a predictive model of where it expected the next piece to be played, given knowledge of the board and all previous positions, that could accurately guess the next move of an expert player 57% of the time (compared to a previous record of 44.4% from other groups).

> This “supervised learning” was then backed up by a bout of “reinforcement learning”: the network was set to play against itself, learning from its victories and losses as it carried out more than 1m individual games over the course of a day.

> The policy network was capable of predicting the probability that any given move would be played as next, but the system also needed a second filter to help it select which of those moves was the best. That network, the “value network”, predicts the winner of the game given each particular board state.

This paper by Robert O'Hara.

There is a free coursera course (from Duke University) starting this week "Introduction to Evolution and Genetics"

You can do as much or as little as you want. You can just watch the videos, or you can watch all the videos, do all the assignments and all the extra reading. It's up to you. There are suggested articles and papers to read and extra videos if you are interested in a particular topic. The book requirements are provided online for the most part.

I have found previous coursera courses to be excellent and I'm looking forward to this one.

Boxcar2D is always fun.

I've also played Species. It's interesting, but looks complicated and I admit I didn't get into it very fair. It looks like they've added new features since I last played it.

He fails to make any real claims and instead fills it with a bunch of terms that are pretty much abstract. That and he says the stuff like memory implants are centuries off

Link to a thing your thing reminded me of.

EDIT: More details to make comment seem less click-baity:

It's a program that evolves cars to go down a track. It was really popular a few years back under the meme-name "derp bikes."

http://boxcar2d.com/ At this website they can watch evolution happening before their eyes. You can google 'genetic algorithm car'. You could also print out recent articles on neanderthal DNA. Anyone who has seen the Maury show understands the value of DNA evidence.

If you want a better understanding of the topic, Sean Carroll's book Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a great intro to the topic.

> So the 150th Aniv is good?

The one I linked to looks OK.

> Now to piss off my teachers at my Christian school.

Just stick to the science. No need to antagonise them. If they want to argue established science, that's their prerogative.

Be aware of the recommended reading list in the wiki. Obviously, Darwin didn't know anything about genetics or DNA, and there's quite a bit we know that he didn't. If you're looking for a good general purpose book for learning evolution, On The Origin might not be the best book.

Edit: Also note that there are different versions of the book. Darwin published different versions, each one with additional changes or responses to critics. Darwin modified the language of some of his statements, and in hindsight, he didn't need to. If you're a purist, you'll want a copy of the original version as he originally published it.

As such, you'll see "first edition" copies for sale in Amazon, like this one. Obviously, these aren't actual first editions (they'd be very expensive) but these are decent copies of the first edition.

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on the topic at all. I have a surface understanding of the topic, but no more.

But out of curiosity, I just did some digging on Amazon and found a couple that look interesting and are well reviewed.

• Origin Story claims to deal with "the origin of the universe, the beginning of life, the emergence of humans, and what the future might bring". It looks like a good overview.
• What is Life?: How Chemistry Becomes Biology looks very interesting. I might pick this one up myself.

If you do find a book on the topic that you like, please let me know, because i would also like to learn more.

I highly recommending giving these Khan Academy videos a watch. They are concise, accessible, and will hopefully give you an idea of a key point or area you wish to discuss!

You can find a lot of discussions by many scientists on this paper at:

(1) Paper Refuting Darwinism Published in Journal 'Communicative & Integrative Biology': https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/online_sadhu_sanga/Mcv2O-yhqLE (2) "...abiogenesis is an insult to the life force.": https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/online_sadhu_sanga/zshRoQl85WM

Example like or just any successive fossils that make somewhat of a “chain”….

Finches in the Galapagos from the researchers: https://www.amazon.com/40-Years-Evolution-Darwins-Finches/dp/0691160465/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1LKPI3Y5WTKV7&keywords=40+years+of+evolution&qid=1667098798&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjAwIiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=40+years+of...

https://www.amazon.com/Beak-Finch-Story-Evolution-Time/dp/067973337X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3CF0U3CSSWM8H&keywords=the+beak+of+the+finch&qid=1667094607&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIxLjUxIiwicXNhIjoiMS4yMCIsInFzcCI6IjEuMzkifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=the+beak%2...

An older book, but very readable: Taking Wing by Pat Shipman.

There is a whole response book here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1477697284/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Dan Savage doesn't know anything about human evolution, so I'd take his evaluation of it with a grain of salt.

Most likely human have a mixed pattern of mating, but serial monogamy is much more common than the model Christopher Ryan is suggesting.

Perhaps this book by Ian Redmond can be of interest.

The book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett, uses the analogy of skyhooks versus cranes. A skyhook is a magical hook that hangs from the sky that you can use to lift things. A crane does the same thing — there is a hook from the sky that can lift things — but once you understand how it works, it's not magical at all.

Dennett argues that people sometimes see "magical" things happening in evolution (skyhooks), but when you dig deeper, it turns out not to be magical at all. I suspect that all of the stuff in this article will turn out to be like that.

Am example they mention is the punctuated evolution theory from Gould and Eldredge. They made a big deal about how Darwin got it wrong about evolution being continuous. But when you dug into the details, nothing they said really violated the ideas of Darwinism. If the environment stays the same for a long time, then there is no evolutionary pressure for a long time, and so it's not surprising that the species doesn't change much for a long time. If the environment changes rapidly, then it only makes sense that the species would need to respond rapidly. That's a useful refinement to Darwin's theory, but hardly some major violation of it.

So that was my reaction to this whole article. It's good for one's career to be seen discovering some major violation to the old theory. But in the end, it's much more likely that these are all refinements to it.

Sexual selection is the underrated Darwinian theory and yet it seems to be more prevalent then previously thought... The Evolution of Beauty is a great exploration of SS. Pardon the amazon link (all other links dealt with fashion), def try your local bookshop if interested: https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory/dp/0385537212

https://www.amazon.com/Convergent-Evolution-Earth-Extraterrestrial-Theoretical-ebook/dp/B08BT2WCXQ/ref=sr_1_2?crid=W79SZ2BEV47L&keywords=convergent+evolution+alien+life&qid=1650329064&sprefix=convergent+evolution+alien+life%2Caps%2C57&sr=8-2

I'm enjoying this book and it makes some good points!

I haven't read it, but Chris Mason, one of the leading exobiologists wrote a book called "The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds". Though, inherently it is not about evolution because it is about biological engineering, but some of the issues of bioengineering implicate evolution (e.g. biodiversity, teleology).

the annotated origin is a reprint of the first version, with additional notes and perspective in the page margins by a modern evolutionary biologist (it's printed on square paper). It was available in hardcover, but I could only find softcover versions for a reasonable price.

Abridged is probably just a shortened version, I would skip that.

I highly recommend the graphic novel Evolution by Jay Hosler on the history of life on earth!

It's also great for adults but I think a seven year old could read it with maybe a little help!

Grandmother Fish is great, but it’s geared toward younger kids like you mentioned.

I haven’t picked this up, but it looks a little more substantial.

https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Life-First-about-Evolution/dp/1847804853

On the Origin of Species by Sabina Radeva is a beautifully illustrated and nicely written summary of evolution by natural selection for kids.

Not to toot my own horn (ok, maybe a little), my book looks at the ESS concept across different domains with minimal math, and will point you in the direction of more academic texts: Evolutionary Politics

Before Darwin explained evolution, it was hard not to believe in a creator. When you look at a human hand, a bird's wing, or the puffs on a dandelion, they are so obviously designed. And where there is design, there must be a designer, right?

Wrong. Darwin showed how a simple, mindless algorithm can create design, and that changes everything. It is now respectable to believe that there is no god, and that, of course, is a radical change in our worldview.

You might read Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett for lots more on this theme.

Yeah that's a bit of a stretch. However there's a very good book on the history of same-sex relations throughout history and even makes a good case that the general norm for humans is bisexuality, using historical records as well as cross-referencing with studies on animal behavior.

https://www.amazon.com/Origins-Same-Sex-Relations-Human-Societies/dp/0786469269

Correct.

There's actually a great episode of the documentary series Leaps in Evolution that is centered on the origin of eyes. It does a great job of showing the scientific argument, including the extensive fossil record supporting the argument.

"Better looking" is highly subjective and changes from culture to culture and over time but what you seem to be describing is the often overlooked Darwin theory of sexual selection and there are some arguments that some of our traits exists as a result of this form of selection... if you are interested, here's a book making that argument: "The Evolution of Beauty" by Richard O. Prum

Amazon link but support your local book seller... https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Beauty-Darwins-Forgotten-Theory/dp/0345804570/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P21OAI0X24EY&keywords=the+evolution+of+beauty&qid=1645727743&sprefix=frida+k%2Caps%2C296&sr=8-1

In the book I noted in my post, it is explained. when chimps encounter a few male chimps outside of their group, it was immediate war. If they found a female it was immediate gang rape of the female.

Bonobos are known to have lesbian encounters where they rub vaginas. When bonobos encountered a stranger- the female bonobos would go to the other side and have sex- I can't remember if it was male or female- but I just remember the lesbian encounters. The theory was this approach basically chilled everyone out and the encounter was largely peaceful.

Another difference is that female chimps show they are ovulating- they get that big thing on their butt. And that excites the male chimps and if there is no alpha to claim her, my professor described the group reaction to be straight out of a porn scene, with the female winding up covered in male sperm.

If a chimp believes a female had an offspring with someone else- the quickest way to reproduce is to kill/eat the infant so the female chimp will be ready to reproduce sooner.
So there is a lot of potential, pent up violence.

Bonobos, though, do not show that they are ovulating and because they are more hippy in their sex, meaning the females have sex with more males at all times, the chimps never know who the offspring are and there so the threat to the offspring is lessened.

​

The book I cite is Demonic Males- it's more than 20 years old so the info may be outdated but it is an excellent read - https://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431

Yeah, I love this example. It is so informative and useful for people who have these kinds of questions. If you want to read more about Tiktaalik and how it ties in with human evolution, I would heartily recommend "Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin.

I recommend Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett. Most people seriously underestimate the power of evolution. It does seem impossible. A relatively simple process of natural selection can produce what *looks like* intelligent design. We have to admit, the "design" in the natural world is so amazing that it is hard not to believe that there is some kind of divine force behind it. And yet, that is exactly what Darwin's Dangerous Idea proposes. The better you understand how it all works, but more reasonable it seems, and that's exactly what this book helps you do.

What u/AffableAndy said. Then, if you really wanna go deep, you can read Futuyma's Evolution. That was literally my university textbook. Once you reach that level, all that's left is peer-reviewd literature, i.e articles in journals (Nature, Science, etc.)

I enjoyed The Jesuit and the Skull.

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Jesuit-and-the-Skull-Audiobook/B002V1NXQY?gclsrc=aw.ds&ds_rl=1262685&ds_rl=1263561&source_code=GO1GB908MSH060513&gclid=CjwKCAiA_P3jBRAqEiwAZyWWaI0-Ac4VFp1DAsBPW5eYYFzn1rO2lm0RPF8n2Juageql_BxRZQsMURoC3...

The Evolution of Male Homosexuality

Also:

Genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality may increase mating success in heterosexuals (2007)

> We show that psychologically masculine females and feminine men are (a) more likely to be nonheterosexual but (b), when heterosexual, have more opposite-sex sexual partners. With statistical modelling of the twin data, we show that both these relationships are partly due to pleiotropic genetic influences common to each trait. We also find a trend for heterosexuals with a nonheterosexual twin to have more opposite-sex partners than do heterosexual twin pairs. Taken together, these results suggest that genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.

There are a fair number of examples of probable sympatric speciation. Periodic cicadas, apple/hawthorne maggot flies, many plants, gray treefrogs. It can happen via hybridogenesis, ploidy elevation, host switching, or when periodic breeders develope asynchrony. An interesting recent example is European black caps.

Genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality may increase mating success in heterosexuals (2007)

> We show that psychologically masculine females and feminine men are (a) more likely to be nonheterosexual but (b), when heterosexual, have more opposite-sex sexual partners. With statistical modelling of the twin data, we show that both these relationships are partly due to pleiotropic genetic influences common to each trait. We also find a trend for heterosexuals with a nonheterosexual twin to have more opposite-sex partners than do heterosexual twin pairs. Taken together, these results suggest that genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.

Demonstrating Species Evolution, Macro Evolution, on Your Kitchen Table

"A species is a group of individual organisms that interbreed and produce fertile, viable offspring. According to this definition, one species is distinguished from another when, in nature, it is not possible for matings between individuals from each species to produce fertile offspring." The Biological Species Concept - boundless . com

In 1979 it was discovered that the two sub species plants of the same species Senecio vulgaris and Senecio squalidus could interbreed and produce a hybrid.

Now the hybrid generated by this inter-breeding was given the name Senecio eboracensis. This new plant can breed with itself which means it is a viable hybrid. However, and this is the really important part, it cannot breed with either of its parent plants or any other plants. So this means that the new hybrid must be of a new and different species than its originating plants.

So what we have is two plants interbreeding to create a new never before seen plant species.

Needless to say as these are plants you can of course repeat this on your own kitchen table as often as you want. You know repeatable testable evidence of macro evolution, the evolution of a new species.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49756476_Plant_Invasions_Interspecific_Hybridization_and_the_Evolution_of_New_Plant_Taxa

http://jkmpic.blogspot.ca/2013/06/senecio-vulgaris-plants-for-sale.html

Agreed with respect to the references. Other than Prigogine, which I read xx years ago, I didn't even go to the literature beforehand (doesn't excuse anything, just wanted to get the idea out there and see what happens). I plan to add this at the very least.

I also saw this if anyone has access, I'd like to read more.

The Winnower is great. Note that there is a revision built in before I publish and get a DOI (at least I thought so). I'd say they need to add a more informal comment stream on each article. They could leave it to the authors to moderate (and shut down if authors fail).

Despite being a mammal man, I've never done anything with laurasiatherians. You're right about Pegasoferae. I'm embarassed, and I'll edit my original comment to reflect the correct topology. I had just done a quick google scholar search to refresh my memory of the basal splits and came across Nishihara et al.

In terms of turtles, however... I was supporting Testudines as sister to Archosauria but saying that Sauropterygia (including plesiosaurs) should be moved sister to Testudines. This placement is supported by recent fossil evidence (Odontochelys, Proganochelys, Pappochelys and new sauropterygians). Check out Jiang et al. 2014 and Schoch and Sues 2015 for the phylogenetics. I think the methods of at least the latter are quite solid (though you'll have to go to supplementary materials to actually view them). Schoch and Sues did recover the Sauropterygia-Pantestudines clade as sister to lepidosaurs rather than archosaurs in their analysis, but I don't think they actually dispute the preponderance of molecular data.

Well, to start, he's done a little more than "play" at biology (note the multiple papers in Science, Nature, PNAS on... biology.). But let's discuss this based on the merit of the statements rather than who the statements came from.

If you're familiar with "what genes do" and "how evolution works," then perhaps you're familiar with the concept of "fitness valleys." If not, here's how they work: sometimes in order for an evolving population to reach a higher "fitness peak," some of the individuals in the population must sacrifice fitness before reaching this higher "fitness peak." For example, a bacteria may have to lose the ability to metabolize a certain nutrient before its offspring can gain resistance to a toxic substance. The immediate loss of the ability to metabolize a nutrient is certainly detrimental to the individuals who are afflicted with that mutation -- that's less food for the bacteria to reproduce with -- but the long-term benefit of gaining resistance to a toxic substance that often afflicts the population more than pays off for its offspring. This is called "crossing a fitness valley," and is quite common in nature.

It's entirely probable that the human fitness landscape has similar fitness valleys, e.g., using your example: impaired eyesight before gaining the ability to see in a broader spectrum. If we concentrate our population's fitness in what's always fit now, we miss out on all the other possible fitness valley crossings that could occur. If you're familiar with the Evolutionary Computation term, we'll find ourselves stuck on a "local optima" because we're only focused on what's best now, and not what could be best in the long run.

That is entirely beside the point. You asserted that "there is no such thing" as microevolution and macroevolution, when, in fact, these are terms used within the scientific literature.

You also stated "If someone uses the phrase 'macro evolution' then there is a very high probability they are a creationist."

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=macroevolution&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

Are these journal authors creationists?

It doesn't matter what creationists claim; microevolution & macroevolution are still valid terms used by scientists that refer to specific aspects of study within evolutionary biology.

Check out The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. It is about how humans have evolved to learn and evolved to learn in groups.

Here's a crazy example. The whites of our eyes make it easy to look at someone and see exactly where they are looking. That's really useful if you want to learn from them. We also seem to have instinctive heuristics about who to copy for different kinds of knowledge.

Absolutely wild book. Changed how I think about how humans learn and accumulate knowledge. It is a community activity, not a solo activity.

Evolutionary Analysis by Herron and Freeman. That was the textbook I used for Evolutionary Biology in undergrad. It sort of the introduces phylogenetics prior to coursework where that information would be applied, eg., Mammalogy, Mycology, Plant Taxonomy, etc.

Sounds like you might be interested in niche construction.

Check your nearest university library for this monograph

I read a book titled “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe”

It taught me that everyone has some beliefs that are part of their identity. For my Mom (and likely your Dad) God is a core belief that is unwavering. Because of that and their beliefs God made everything they can’t just believe in evolution fully.

My Mom believes evolution happens in everything but humans didn’t come from apes. This is the steps she won’t cross because it violates her core beliefs. I gave up on her knowing about evolution. Why does it really matter anyway is what I told myself.

I do teach both my kids about evolution and we have gone to the natural history museum in DC and talked about the human evolution section. All you can do is worry about the next generation. Talk to your friends about it. Good luck.

Genetic factors predisposing to homosexuality may increase mating success in heterosexuals (2007)

> We show that psychologically masculine females and feminine men are (a) more likely to be nonheterosexual but (b), when heterosexual, have more opposite-sex sexual partners. With statistical modelling of the twin data, we show that both these relationships are partly due to pleiotropic genetic influences common to each trait. We also find a trend for heterosexuals with a nonheterosexual twin to have more opposite-sex partners than do heterosexual twin pairs. Taken together, these results suggest that genes predisposing to homosexuality may confer a mating advantage in heterosexuals, which could help explain the evolution and maintenance of homosexuality in the population.

White skin color has it's advantages, too: It allows higher UVB-induced synthesis of D3. There's a trade-off between UV-protection and D3-production. More info: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248400904032

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/259827828_fig1_Comparison-of-age-specific-maternal-mortality-ratios-for-38-countries-against-Blanc-and

This research and other shows that teens are safer for the mother than 25+

Demonstrating Species Evolution on Your Kitchen Table

In 1979 it was discovered that the two sub species plants of the same species Senecio vulgaris and Senecio squalidus could interbreed and produce a hybrid.

Now the hybrid generated by this inter-breeding was given the name Senecio eboracensis. This new plant can breed with itself which means it is a viable hybrid. However, and this is the really important part, it cannot breed with either of its parent plants or any other plants. So this means that the new hybrid must be of a different species than its originating plants.

So what we have is two plants interbreeding to create a new never before seen plant species.

Needless to say as these are plants you can of course repeat this on your own kitchen table as often as you want. You know repeatable testable evidence of macro evolution, the evolution of a new species.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49756476_Plant_Invasions_Interspecific_Hybridization_and_the_Evolution_of_New_Plant_Taxa

He's been called a journalist by a reputed scientist, but not a clown as far as I know. Maybe you could clarify your qualification with some arguments?

If you're looking for an example of where species A and C can't fertilize with each other but species B can fertilize with both, except for species D than can only fertilize with species A, while species C can also fertilize with species of another Genus...... you can start here [1] 😅😅😅

Plants are complicated.

1) Development of Advanced Interspecific-bridge Lines among Cucurbita pepo, C. maxima, and C. moschata; Qi Zhang et al, 2012: [PDF] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Development-of-Advanced-Interspecific-bridge-Lines-Zhang-Yu/1a4e670851f981707d8156eb906c47cda73a4dd6

Not the immediate ancestor, but the ancestor of all extant placental mammals, including both whales and humans, was very likely insectivorous.

>We reconstructed the hypothetical placental ancestor using synapomorphic and symplesiomorphic characters. It weighed between 6 and 245 g, was insectivorous and scansorial, and single young were born hairless with their eyes closed. Females had a uterus with two horns and a placenta with a trophoblast, and males produced sperm with a flat head and had abdominal testes and absent.

This link should take you to a .pdf, no paywall.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you are not sure where to begin, may I suggest that you definitely don't begin with insulting or patronizing your opponent?

As I wrote above, the male assistance theory is not mine. See:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225723337_The_Evolutionary_Biology_of_Human_Female_Sexuality

Here is an extract from an article on bonobos:

" It has been speculated by anthropologists - including C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University and Helen Fisher of Rutgers University - that sex is partially separated from reproduction in our species because it serves to cement mutually profitable relationships between men and women. The human female's capacity to mate throughout her cycle and her strong sex drive allow her to exchange sex for male commitment and paternal care, thus giving rise to the nuclear family. This arrangement is thought to be favored by natural selection because it allows women to raise more offspring than they could if they were on their own."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-society-2006-06/

Regarding your "extrapolations", I would tell that they are no more than educated guesses, some more "educated" than others. And they are hardly applicable to this particular case for the following reason. Can you give me an example of a single species, except ours, where child upbringing would vary in different groups? I am not aware of any. This shows that this is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one. Our instincts and biology were being formed long before time when we started developing any culture.

Apparently brain capacity isn't nearly so advantageous as we like to think. I mean, who is telling us that our big brains are so great? That's right: Our Big Brains.

For a philosophical deep dive on this topic, read Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut.

Your Inner Fish is a fantastic book and I can't recommend it enough. It's written by the paleontologist who discovered Tiktaalik and serves as a really good introduction to evolutionary theory for non-biologists.

If I may recommend a book to you then.

Try to find The Big Bang by Simon Singh. It's a great and easy to read history of Astronomy and takes you step by step through the proces of how science found out about the big bang.

You might try Darwin's Dangerous Idea. I really enjoyed that one, and have since read many other books by the author.

There is a surprising amount of "horizontal gene transfer" that doesn't follow the rules that people have historically thought applied to "the tree of life." Read The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life for more details.

This has been clear for a long time in single celled organisms. Drug immunity, for instance, seems to be able to quickly spread between individuals, much more quickly than would happen if each bacteria had to develop the protective mutation on its own. In school they showed a simple model of bacterial reproduction in which a bacteria splits, leaving two descendants, but that model doesn't at all capture what's really going on in gene spread.

But even in multi-cellular organisms, there is apparently much more horizontal gene transfer than was previously understood. One source is occasional interbreeding between different species. For instance, there seems to be quite a tangled tree between Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and Denisovians. In addition, it looks like viruses can sometimes spread genes from one species to another.

So in this sense, it may well make sense to consider living organisms as a whole to be a macro gene pool. That will become even more true as humans increasingly use gene splicing techniques to move genes around. All living organisms together constitute a "macro gene pool" with an amazing amount of evolutionarily created "design", and that design can potentially spread throughout the "macro gene pool" through both natural and artificial (i.e. human) means.