Evolution

A definitive explanation for why plants evolved spines remains elusive, and human biases compound the problem.

How Darwinian natural selection can produce and sustain a Lamarckian “inheritance of acquired characteristics.”

Spiders appear to offload cognitive tasks to their webs, making them one of a number of species with a mind that isn’t fully confined within the head.

Answering three questions can help reveal how the “inheritance of acquired characteristics” fits into modern evolutionary theory.

The computational biologist John Novembre uses our genetic code to rewrite the history of humanity.

How to calculate when a gene’s rate of evolution will slow to a crawl.

How quickly will a gene’s rate of evolution slow to a crawl?

Examine evolution over the course of years or centuries, and you’ll find that it progresses much more quickly than it does over geologic time.

The ancient creatures who first crawled onto land may have been lured by the informational benefit that comes from seeing through air.