When our distant ancestors first traded nomadic life for farming, villages, and permanent homes, you might assume that the beastly forces of natural selection lost their ability to shape our species, ...

Molecular evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei says Darwin never proved natural selection is the driving force of evolution — because it isn't. In a cavernous concert hall, before an eager audience of ...

One hundred years ago, a substitute teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was charged with the crime of teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. His name was John Scopes. At the time, ...

“Where are all the genetic cures?” asks Denis Noble, a frustrated biophysicist, Royal Society fellow and pioneer of the field of systems biology. “They don’t exist. Where will they be? They won’t ...

Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life is a work of scientific literature by the English naturalist Charles Darwin that is considered to be the ...

Nearly 200 years after Charles Darwin stepped off the HMS Beagle, his luggage is still giving up secrets. We often think of the story of how we came up with the theory of evolution by natural ...

Survival of the fittest. Nature red in tooth and claw. The common view of natural selection is based solely on the individual: A trait allows an organism to out-compete its rivals and is thus passed ...

Evolution is a fact of life. So much so that even the theory of evolution is evolving. Lately, a centuries-old discredited idea has been making a strong comeback. It helps us explain scientific ...

The peppered moth is an iconic example of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. For centuries peppered moths (Biston betularia) were common in the forests around Manchester, ...

Most of us know that as living things evolve, they take on traits that help them thrive in their home environments. But how are certain traits "chosen" for future generations, and how are others cast ...