Evolution

  1. The Burgess Shale music, composed by Rand Steiger.

  2. Language and the Structure of Proteins.

  3. How did the Zebra get its Stripes? Three species. Jonathan Bard study.

  4. What is a Species, including Allopatric Speciation and the Isolating Mechanisms (Prezygotic and Postzygotic)?

  5. The WIKI on Charles Darwin is worth referring to often.

  6. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

  7. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (First Edition).

  8. The PBS Library of Evolution and Darwin resources.

  9. The MODERN SYNTHESIS:
    1. Ernst Mayr and the concept of isolation and evolving of new traits as the key to explaining new species. Isolating mechanisms. Adaptive radiation. 1942 book: "Systematics and the Origin of Species".
    2. Dobzhansky and 1937 work "Genetics and the Origin of Species". Mutation creates or supplies the raw material, genetic variation, for natural selection to act upon.
      • Before Dobzhansky, mutation and NS were alternative, competing explanations.
      • Before Kant and Hegel, Continental Rationalism and British Empiricism were competing philosophical approaches.
      • Before ??somebody?? the light or electron as a wave was competing with the light or electron as a particle.
    3. George Gaylord Simpson and the integration of population genetics with the fossil record. Concept of gene pools.
      Simpson's 1944 book: Tempo and Mode in Evolution

  10. Alfred Russell Wallace's 1858 essay: On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type.

    The ARW page. Wallace lived from 1823 to 1913.

  11. Some thoughts on Road Runner needing to escape the wily Coyote and how this might relate to peacock plumage. Camouflage for predator and prey versus sexual selection and attraction of mates as two separate issues in evolution.

  12. Wyckoff Lab on Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and Bioinformatics.

  13. The Discovery of Introns.

  14. What movie is this the opening script from? ANSWER. 
    EXTREME CLOSEUP of glowing honey-colored stones.  Their shapes ABSTRACT
     as THE CAMERA EXAMINES air bubbles and crystalline patterns.

MOVING UP AND OVER this amber abstraction, the CAMERA FINDS unusual
     shapes and imperfections caught in the glassy stone:  flecks of dirt,
     hairs, cracks.  STILL MOVING.  STARBURSTS OF LIGHT ricochet off the
     different surfaces of the stones.
    Link to entire moviescript.

  15. Ants, Plants and antibiotics by Ted R. Schultz. Nature/Vol 398/22 APRIL, 1999. Fungus-growing ants use antibiotic-producing bacteria to control garden parasites.

    Leaf-cutting ants and their fungus farms and the discovery of the fact that what was thought to be a two player game is actually at least a four player game. The attine ants are leaf-cutters, fungus growers.

    Farmer Ants and their bacterial farmhands. Science News, 1999. Beautiful example of mutualistic relationships. Streptomyces bacteria ridding Attini Ant gardens containing Lecucocoprini fungus of the Escovopsis fungus, which can reduce a beautifully cultivated ant garden to brown ooze in just a few days.

    Ants and Agriculture.

  16. Examples and definition of Coevolution. 
    Coevolution: evolution of two species totally dependent on each other

(co = with, together; evolut = an unrolling)

    Ants that live only in the swollen thorns of several acacia species.

    An extensive Coevolution definition and discussion, from Brown University.

    Extensive set of Coevolution examples from www.bio.miami.edu site.