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Human intelligence, the most evident and accessible form of source of reasoning, hosted by biological hardware, has evolved and been refined over thousands of years, positioning itself today to create new artificial forms and preparing to…
This article evaluates bias in one class of methods used to estimate archaic admixture in modern humans. These methods study the pattern of allele sharing among modern and archaic genomes. They are sensitive to "ghost" admixture, which…
Constraints in embryonic development are thought to bias the direction of evolution by making some changes less likely, and others more likely, depending on their consequences on ontogeny. Here, we characterize the constraints acting on…
One outcome of interspecific hybridization and subsequent effects of evolutionary forces is introgression, which is the integration of genetic material from one species into the genome of an individual in another species. The evolution of…
Generally, genotypes and phenotypes are expected to be spatially congruent, however, in widespread species complexes with few barriers to dispersal, multiple contact zones, and limited reproductive isolation, discordance between phenotypes…
Divergence between populations for a given trait can be driven by natural or sexual selection, interacting with migration behaviour. Mating preference for different phenotypes can lead to the emergence and persistence of differentiated…
Extensive cooperation among biologically unrelated individuals is uniquely human and much current research attempts to explain this fact. We draw upon social, cultural, and psychological aspects of human uniqueness to present an integrated…
When biological populations expand into new territory, the evolutionary outcomes can be strongly influenced by genetic drift, the random fluctuations in allele frequencies. Meanwhile, spatial variability in the environment can also…
The Cambrian explosion is a grand challenge to science today and involves multidisciplinary study. This event is generally believed as a result of genetic innovations, environmental factors and ecological interactions, even though there are…
Foot stiffness underlies its mechanical function, and is central to the evolution of human bipedal locomotion. The stiff and propulsive human foot has two distinct arches, the longitudinal and transverse. By contrast, the feet of non-human…
Humans have created artificial intelligence (AI), not the other way around. This statement is deceptively obvious. In this note, we decided to challenge this statement as a small, lighthearted Gedankenexperiment. We ask a simple question:…
The hypothesis of existence of primordial black holes with large masses (\geq 10^6 M\odot), formed at the earliest stages of the Universe evolution, is considered in the paper. The possibility does not contradict some theories, see e.g.…
Migration is a key mechanism for expansion of communities. In spatially heterogeneous environments, rapidly gaining knowledge about the local environment is key to the evolutionary success of a migrating population. For historical human…
The genetic code is nearly universal, and the arrangement of the codons in the standard codon table is highly non-random. The three main concepts on origin and evolution of the code are the stereochemical theory; the coevolution theory; and…
The shift from outcrossing to self-fertilization is among the most common transitions in plants. Until recently, however, a genome-wide view of this transition has been obscured by a dearth of appropriate data and the lack of appropriate…
Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual organisms as they occur in nature, tested features proposed to explain the evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution is better…
There is a general consensus among archaeologists that replacement of Neanderthals by anatomically modern humans in Europe occurred around 40K to 35K YBP. However, the causal mechanism for this replacement continues to be debated. Searching…
We consider the Moran model of population genetics with two types, mutation, and selection, and investigate the line of descent of a randomly-sampled individual from a contemporary population. We trace this ancestral line back into the…
Mitochondrial and nuclear genomes must be co-adapted to ensure proper cellular respiration and energy production. Mito-nuclear incompatibility reduces individual fitness and induces hybrid infertility, suggesting a possible role in…
Motivated by the question of the impact of selective advantage in populations with skewed reproduction mechanims, we study a Moran model with selection. We assume that there are two types of individuals, where the reproductive success of…