Principles Of Evolutionary Biology Research Articles

How to Better Explain and Develop Evolution Today

Studies over the past two decades have provided important information on evolution. An essential discipline gradually formed called evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo combines the principles of evolutionary biology and developmental biology to investigate the genetic and environmental factors that affect the development of organisms and how these elements affect evolutionary change. In this discipline, evolution can be explained by genetics, cell biology, and developmental biology. These fields provide crucial insights into how genetic variation, cellular processes, and developmental mechanisms contribute to population changes over time. With the popularity of emerging information technologies such as mobile Internet and big data, the global digital economy is booming. The development of gene sequencing technology has led to the rapid growth of genomic data, and the combination of large-scale genomics, metabolomics, and functional research systems, known as “big data” and bioinformatics, has brought about a “technological revolution” in evolutionary research. Therefore, enhancing the interconnection between scientific research in various fields is extremely necessary and will be effective.

Application of the evolutionary theory of behavior dynamics to severe challenging behavior.

The evolutionary theory of behavior dynamics (ETBD) is a genetic algorithm that applies the Darwinian principles of evolutionary biology to model how behavior changes dynamically via selection by contingencies of reinforcement. The ETBD is a complexity theory where low-level rules of selection, reproduction, and mutation operate iteratively to animate "artificial organisms" that generate emergent outcomes. Numerous studies have demonstrated the ETBD can accurately model behavior of live animals in the laboratory, and it has been applied recently to model automatically maintained self-injury. The purpose of the current series of studies was to further extend the application of the ETBD to model additional functional classes of challenging behavior and clinical procedures. Outcomes obtained with artificial organisms generally corresponded well with outcomes observed with clinical cases sourced from consecutive controlled case series studies. Conceptual and methodological considerations on the application of the ETBD to model challenging behavior are discussed.

Editorial

Editorial

Applying Principles of Evolutionary Biology to Plastic Surgery at an Organizational Level Predicts an Extinction Event.

As an organized profession, plastic surgery struggles delivering a clear message regarding scope of practice to patients given the diversity of procedures performed. Whereas granting licensure to practice medicine resides with governmental bodies, certification rests with organizations. However, certification is not required to practice plastic surgery. Since plastic surgery operationalizes techniques rather than working within a defined body organ, competition for patients is intense. Mapping territorial interactions between healthcare providers while parsing taxonomy elucidates individual, community, organizational, and governmental levels, creating various selection pressures. Applying evolutionary biology as a framework predicts the termination of plastic surgery over time as a unique specialty. An entirely new domain, Restorative Healthcare, is proposed which circumvents an extinction outcome.

Commentary on: Applying Principles of Evolutionary Biology to Plastic Surgery at an Organizational Level Predicts an Extinction Event.

Commentary on: Applying Principles of Evolutionary Biology to Plastic Surgery at an Organizational Level Predicts an Extinction Event.

Bryan Campbell Clarke. 24 June 1932—27 February 2014

Professor Bryan Clarke was a world-leading evolutionary geneticist. He combined theoretical understanding of the principles of evolutionary biology, an appreciation of the process of molecular evolution, and a love of fieldwork, through which he studied the genetic diversity of wild populations and the patterns of natural selection that operated on them. Bryan's primary interest was in studying evolution in the wild. In trying to observe evolution in action, geneticists focus on genetic polymorphisms, in which different genetic types (‘morphs’) coexist in the same wild population. In understanding how such variation is generated, and how it is maintained, we gain insight into the process of evolution as it has operated over the course of life on Earth.

Sex and design in our evolutionary cousins: The perception of beauty in nature

Taking an evolutionary approach to the question of beauty, we discuss the expression and perception of sexual beauty across the animal kingdom. Animals experience beauty in their brains, and animal brains are tuned to features of the environment most relevant to their survival. Over evolutionary time, sexually reproducing animals have exploited that tuning to maximize their attractiveness to the opposite sex, often leading to extreme courtship traits and behaviors. These are the traits of sexual beauty. Combining modern principles of neuroscience and neuroaesthetics with established principles of evolutionary biology, we aim to understand the biological basis and evolution of beauty in all animals, including ourselves.

Evolution frames the dose response for all endpoints including application to cancer risk assessment: Time for a mid-course correction

An underappreciated perspective is that the quantitative features of the dose-response in the low dose zone are a genetically based biological characteristic with a highly conserved evolutionary basis. Failure to recognize and take this into account has been a major failing of toxicology and radiation biology, affecting regulatory agencies worldwide. The present perspective clarifies the historical foundations of this misstep and calls for a mid- course correction that replaces the public health based Precautionary Principle for risk assessment with one based on the principles of evolutionary biology.

A Brief Introduction to Darwinian Medicine

Darwinian/evolutionary medicine is a nascent, but rapidly developing field that applies the principles of evolutionary biology to help explain and prevent human disease. This article examines selected topics in Darwinian medicine, including diet-culture coevolution and health, developmental origins of health and disease, ageing (life history evolution and disease), nutrigenomics/pharmacogenomics, and the hygiene hypothesis (microbiota, pathogens and parasites within the Darwinian perspective of human health). It also looks at the future and how Darwinian medicine fits into anthropogenic changes at the planetary level. Although Darwinian medicine has a very broad domain, encompassing ageing, immunity, reproductive health, cancer, infectious disease, diet-culture interactions, the application of personalised medicine, the microbiome, and behavioural conditions, there are several core principles drawn from evolutionary biology that it applies, and which are integrated into this review. These include selection, drift, plasticity, mismatch, cultural practices, trade-offs, life history traits, antagonistic pleiotropy, heterozygote advantage, constraints, biologic defences, co-evolution (i.e., microbiome), adaptation/maladaptation, novel environments, and the genome-phenome relationship.

The Financial System Red in Tooth and Claw: 75 Years of Co-Evolving Markets and Technology

The 75th anniversary of the founding of the Financial Analysts Journal offers a rare vista of the evolutionary path of financial analysis and its practitioners. That path is by no means random but is shaped by a complex ecosystem in which technological innovation interacts with shifting business conditions and a growing population of financial stakeholders. Using the lens of the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis—the principles of evolutionary biology and ecology applied to the financial system—we can clearly identify eight discrete financial “eras” in which unique combinations of economic need and technological advances gave rise to new products, services, and financial institutions. By understanding the underlying drivers and resulting dynamics of these eras, we can begin to develop a deeper appreciation for the origins of financial innovation and its great promise for our future.

Senescence-Induced Chemoresistance in Triple Negative Breast Cancer and Evolution-Based Treatment Strategies.

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is classically treated with combination chemotherapies. Although, initially responsive to chemotherapies, TNBC patients frequently develop drug-resistant, metastatic disease. Chemotherapy resistance can develop through many mechanisms, including induction of a transient growth-arrested state, known as the therapy-induced senescence (TIS). In this paper, we will focus on chemoresistance in TNBC due to TIS. One of the key characteristics of senescent cells is a complex secretory phenotype, known as the senescence-associated secretory proteome (SASP), which by prompting immune-mediated clearance of senescent cells maintains tissue homeostasis and suppresses tumorigenesis. However, in cancer, particularly with TIS, senescent cells themselves as well as SASP promote cellular reprograming into a stem-like state responsible for the emergence of drug-resistant, aggressive clones. In addition to chemotherapies, outcomes of recently approved immune and DNA damage-response (DDR)-directed therapies are also affected by TIS, implying that this a common strategy used by cancer cells for evading treatment. Although there has been an explosion of scientific research for manipulating TIS for prevention of drug resistance, much of it is still at the pre-clinical stage. From an evolutionary perspective, cancer is driven by natural selection, wherein the fittest tumor cells survive and proliferate while the tumor microenvironment influences tumor cell fitness. As TIS seems to be preferred for increasing the fitness of drug-challenged cancer cells, we will propose a few tactics to control it by using the principles of evolutionary biology. We hope that with appropriate therapeutic intervention, this detrimental cellular fate could be diverted in favor of TNBC patients.

Evolutionary Medicine – A Great Way to Teach Biology

Great teaching is often all about the questions posed to students. When learners get their teeth into an interesting question, they grow as they chew on it. As physicians, we have discovered that disease makes more sense if you ask evolutionary questions, and these questions make a great starting point for science education. One of Darwin's two main questions was how species are related to each other. His answer was that all organisms have common ancestors. This is the foundation for studies of phylogeny. To teach phylogenetic trees, you can use canids or birds, but students are particularly interested if they are tracing the origins of HIV or tuberculosis, or the history of human traits, such as the appendix. Darwin's other question was about why bodies work so well. His answer was natural selection. The characteristics of individuals who have more offspring than others become more common over the generations. This explains why kidneys, hearts, eyes, and brains are so astoundingly well suited to their purposes. As physicians, we constantly confront a very different question. If natural selection is so …

Core principles of evolutionary medicine: A Delphi study.

Evolutionary medicine is a rapidly growing field that uses the principles of evolutionary biology to better understand, prevent and treat disease, and that uses studies of disease to advance basic knowledge in evolutionary biology. Over-arching principles of evolutionary medicine have been described in publications, but our study is the first to systematically elicit core principles from a diverse panel of experts in evolutionary medicine. These principles should be useful to advance recent recommendations made by The Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to make evolutionary thinking a core competency for pre-medical education. The Delphi method was used to elicit and validate a list of core principles for evolutionary medicine. The study included four surveys administered in sequence to 56 expert panelists. The initial open-ended survey created a list of possible core principles; the three subsequent surveys winnowed the list and assessed the accuracy and importance of each principle. Fourteen core principles elicited at least 80% of the panelists to agree or strongly agree that they were important core principles for evolutionary medicine. These principles over-lapped with concepts discussed in other articles discussing key concepts in evolutionary medicine. This set of core principles will be helpful for researchers and instructors in evolutionary medicine. We recommend that evolutionary medicine instructors use the list of core principles to construct learning goals. Evolutionary medicine is a young field, so this list of core principles will likely change as the field develops further.

Myths about memes

Memes are conceived of as the cultural equivalents to genes. As cultural change can be modelled using theories and concepts from population genetics, a “meme’s eye view” of cultural change is arguably valid. However, such views are frequently dismissed. Whatever the merits or demerits of memetics are as a science, no prominent objections to the meme concept appear well-grounded by either evidence or logic. This paper suggests that such criticisms arise from a few key misunderstandings and fallacies concerning memes and questionable assumptions about evolution, culture and psychology on which these misunderstandings are based. These misunderstandings are described in this paper using examples of criticisms which have been made about the meme concept. These are then scrutinized using basic principles of evolutionary biology, economics, and psychology. It is hoped that future attempts to apply the meme concept are encouraged by addressing these issues here.

An evolutionary perspective on coastal adaptations by modern humans during the Middle Stone Age of Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of Africa documents the earliest and longest record of marine resource use and coastal settlements by modern humans. Here, we provide a long-term and evolutionary perspective of these behaviors. We propose a definition of “coastal adaptations” rooted in the principles of evolutionary biology as a workable analytical device and review the MSA archaeological record from Africa to characterize the specific nature of coastal adaptations by Homo sapiens. On this basis we evaluate current models addressing the importance of coastal adaptations for human evolution and formulate new hypotheses within the larger framework of evolutionary causality by linking these behaviors directly to reproductive success. While the current archaeological record suggests that modern humans occasionally consumed marine resources during the late Middle Pleistocene, systematic and optimized gathering of a variety of marine food items dates to MIS 5 and 4. Archaeozoological studies show that people exploited marine resources in a methodical manner on the Atlantic, Indian, and Mediterranean coasts of Africa during this time frame. Despite the similarities in coastlines, mobile hunter–gatherers also integrated these variable coastal landscapes into their settlement strategies for more than 100 ka, as shown by evidence for stable, repeated and planned occupations. Additionally, elements of complex material culture, such as bone tools and shell beads, occur particularly often in (near-) coastal MSA sites. The specific nature of coastal adaptations by modern humans can thus be characterized by their systematic nature, long duration and verifiable impact on the overall adaptive suite. By combining archaeological data with ethnographic, nutritional and medical studies we propose several evolutionary scenarios for how modern humans could have increased survival and fecundity rates by their specific adaptations to coastal environments. In order to test these hypothetical scenarios for the selective advantages of coastal adaptations for Homo sapiens, we need more data deriving from an expanded spatiotemporal archaeological record, just as much as more formal evolutionary models and research strategies.

The Luria-Delbrück Fluctuation Test as a Classroom Investigation in Darwinian Evolution

Microbial cultures swiftly adapt to lethal agents such as antibiotics or viruses by acquiring resistance mutations. Does this remarkable adaptability require a Lamarckian explanation, whereby the agent specifically directs resistance mutations? Soon after the question arose, Luria and Delbrück devised a clever experiment, the fluctuation test, that answered this question in the negative: microbial adaptation, they showed, is entirely consistent with a Darwinian explanation. Their 1943 article is a classic of biology literature, with practical and theoretical implications that continue to expand today. Implementing an updated fluctuation test in a college teaching lab provides a simple experimental setting in which beginning students learn to apply basic principles of evolutionary biology and scientific reasoning, while gaining hands-on experience in core technical advances of contemporary life science.

Evolutionary robotics in two decades: A review

Evolutionary robotics (ER) has emerged as a fast growing field in the last two decades and has earned the attention of a number of researchers. Principles of biological evolution are applied in the form of evolutionary techniques for solving the complicated problems in the areas of robotic design and control. The diversity and the intensity of this growing field is presented in this paper through the contributions made by several researchers in the categories of robot controller design, robot body design, co-evolution of body and brain and in transforming the evolved robots in physical reality. The paper discusses some of the recent achievements in each of these fields along with some expected applications which are likely to motivate the future research. For the quick reference of the readers, a digest of all the works is presented in the paper, spanning the years and the areas of the research contributions.

GENETIC-BASED NUTRITION RECOMMENDATION MODEL

Evolutionary computing is the collective name for a range of problem-solving techniques based on principles of biological evolution, such as natural selection and genetic inheritance. These technique s are being widely applied to a variety of problems i n many vital fields. Also, Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) which applied the principles of Evolutionary c omputations, such as genetic algorithm, particle swarm, ant colony and bees algorithm and so on play an important role in decision making process. EAs serve a lot of fields which can affect our life directly, such as medicine, engineering, transportations, communications. One of these vital fields is Nutrition which can be viewed from several points of view as medical, physical, social , environmental and psychological point of view. This study, presents a proposed model that shows ho w evolutionary computing generally and genetic algorithm specifically-as a powerful algorithm of e volutionary algorithms-can be used to recommend an appropriate nutrition style in a medical and phy sical sides only to each person according to his/he r personal and medical measurements.

Expanding the population genetic perspective of cnidarian-Symbiodinium symbioses.

The modern synthesis was a seminal period in the biological sciences, establishing many of the core principles of evolutionary biology that we know today. Significant catalysts were the contributions of R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright (and others) developing the theoretical underpinning of population genetics, thus demonstrating adaptive evolution resulted from the interplay of forces such as natural selection and mutation within groups of individuals occupying the same space and time (i.e. a population). Given its importance, it is surprising that detailed population genetic data remain lacking for numerous organisms vital to many ecosystems. For example, the coral reef ecosystem is well recognized for its high biodiversity and productivity, numerous ecological services and significant economic and societal values (Moberg & Folke 1999;Cinner 2014). Many coral reef invertebrates form symbiotic relationships with single-celled dinoflagellates within the genus Symbiodinium Freudenthal (Taylor 1974), with hosts providing these (typically) intracellular symbionts with by-products of metabolism and in turn receiving photosynthetically fixed carbon capable of meeting hosts' respiratory demands (Falkowski et al. 1984; Muscatine et al. 1984). Unfortunately, the health and integrity of the coral reef ecosystem has been significantly and negatively impacted by onslaughts like anthropogenic eutrophication and disease in addition to global climate change, with increased incidences of 'bleaching' events (characterized as the loss of photosynthetic pigments from the algal cell or massive reduction of Symbiodinium density from hosts' tissue) and host mortality leading to staggering declines in geographic coverage (Bruno & Selig 2007) that have raised questions on the viability of this ecosystem as we know it (Bellwood et al. 2004; Parmesan 2006). One avenue towards anticipating the future of the coral reef ecosystem is by developing a broader and deeper understanding of the current genotypic diversity encompassed within and between populations of their keystone species, the scleractinian corals and dinoflagellate symbionts, as they potentially possess functional variation (either singularly or in combination) that may come under selection due to the ongoing and rapid environmental changes they are experiencing. However, such studies, especially for members of the genus Symbiodinium, are sparse. In this issue, Baums et al. (2014) provide a significant contribution by documenting the range-wide population genetics of Symbiodinium 'fitti' (Fig.1 ) in the context of complementary data from its host, the endangered Caribbean elkhorn coral Acropora palmata (Fig. 2). Notable results of this study include a single S. 'fitti' genotype typically dominates an individual A. palmata colony both spatially and temporally, gene flow among coral host populations is a magnitude higher to that of its symbiont populations, and the partners possess disparate patterns of genetic differentiation across the Greater Caribbean. The implications of such findings are discussed herein.

Emission constrained unit commitment of Kuwait power generation system using genetic algorithm

Emission Constrained Unit Commitment (ECUC) is an extension of the conventional Unit Commitment (UC) problem that takes into consideration the minimization of the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from generating units in power plants. This paper presents a Genetic Algorithm (GA) solution of ECUC for thermal power plants in Kuwait. GA is an efficient optimization technique based on the principle of biological evolution. This complicated nonlinear ECUC problem is solved in two stages; the first stage uses GA to perform the Economic Dispatch (ED) taken into account all system constraints, while the second stage uses also GA to decide the ON/OFF status of the generating units. The simulation results indicated the efficient convergent of the GA to the final optimal solution of the ECUC in Kuwait generation system.