• Tutorial 23.1 on Natural Selection - Flash example of "Stabilizing Selection", "Directional Selection", and "Disruptive selection" - http://bcs.whfreeman.com/thelifewire/content/chp23/2302001.html
  • Note that butterflies are still butterflies! No new species are occuring. Selective adaptation due to environmental pressures has never been denied by creationists.
• Hardy Weinberg Equilibrium - http://bcs.whfreeman.com/thelifewire/content/chp23/2302002.html - Java based

• Example of the costs of adaptations - http://bcs.whfreeman.com/thelifewire/content/chp23/2302003.html
  • "Some populations of garter snakes have evolved sodium channel resistant to rough skin newt toxins" - Note that the newts and garter snakes are still newts and garter snakes. No evolution has occurred!
  • Plasmids to put resistant alleles into populations

• Microevolution and speciation - http://trc.ucdavis.edu/biosci10v/bis10v/week8/08week8day3.html
  • Claims that speciation can occur because the gene drift in two isolated populations produces individuals who can not interbreed as well due to prezygotic isolation (mechanical changes in mating apparatus, changes in prefered time of mating, different number of chromosomes, behavioural differences preventing mating), and postzygotic isolation (changes that diminish the ability of the fertilized hybrid zygotes to develop into reproducing individuals.) These mechanisms stop gene flow and encourage divergence.
  • Reproductive isolating mechanisms - http://trc.ucdavis.edu/biosci10v/bis10v/media/ch13/isolating_mechanisms.html
  • Speciation of wheat - http://trc.ucdavis.edu/biosci10v/bis10v/media/ch13/wheat_speciation.html
    • Interesting about increasing chromosome counts in different varieties of wheat.
  • Again - in all of these cases, the animals are still basically the same eventhough there are two separate groups. Wheat doesn't change into a tree. Sparrows don't change into parrots, or something wildly different from a bird. Snakes dont change into salamanders.

Human genetics

• Genetic research into migrations of early man, haplogroups and haplotypes - http://www.dnaheritage.com/masterclass2.asp

• Genetic evidence for different male and female roles during cultural transitions in the British Isles - http://www.pnas.org/content/98/9/5078.full

Other interesting biological articles

• Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer - http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/08/22/0803650105.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc
  • Resting red and roe deer align their body axes in roughly a north-south direction. Direct observations of roe deer revealed that animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting. Where there is high magnetic declination, magnetic north was a better predictor of alignment than geographic north.
  • Magnetoreception