15 Evolutionary Gems

15 Evolutionary gems
by Nature, Pharyngula
See Nature's article "15 Evolutionary Gems" in PDF form here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/newspdf/evolutiongems.pdf

From Pharyngula:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/evolutionary_gems.php

This week, Nature magazine published a short list of recent important developments in evolutionary biology that support the theory of evolution, as a tool to help explain that evolution is definitely a dynamic and useful theory in our field and to demonstrate that the evidence is still growing. Here's a short summary of the 15 stories the editors picked out, but you should also read the freely available article, 15 Evolutionary Gems. Teachers, put this in your classroom!

1. The discovery of Indohyus, an ancestor to whales.

2. The discovery of Tiktaalik, an ancestor to tetrapods.

3. The origin of feathers revealed in creatures like Epidexipteryx.

4. The evolution of patterning mechanisms in teeth.

5. The developmental and evolutionary origin of the vertebrate skeleton.

6. Speciation driven indirectly by selection in sticklebacks.

7. Selection for longer-legged lizards in Caribbean island populations.

8. A co-evolutionary arms race between Daphnia and its parasites.

9. Non-random dispersal and gene flow in populations of great bosoms.

10. Maintenance of polymorphisms in populations of guppies.

11. Contingency in the evolution of pharyngeal jaws in the moray.

12. Developmental genes that regulate the shape of beaks in Darwin's finches.

13. Evolution of regulatory genes that specify wing spots in Drosophila.

14. Evolution of toxin resistance.

15. The concept of evolutionary capacitance: the idea that environmental stress can expose hidden variations that are then subject to selection.