Thirty-four yeago ago Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, proposed the idea that "selfish genes", not individual organisms or entire species, are the units on which evolution acts.
The geomorphological character of a river network provides the template upon which evolution acts to create unique biological communities.
Instruction in coevolution can thus work to dispel the misconception that evolution acts only over long time-scales in response to abiotic changes, such as glaciation.
Women who carry the inversion have slightly more children on average than those who don't, which would have a powerful effect over the long timeframe on which evolution acts.
Yet Prum, who has studied the evolution of avian plumage coloration, says that the generalizations arrived at in the study are meaningless, because evolution acts on individual lineages in different ways.
While the level of agreement was much lower than for the previous two phenomena, we were surprised that there was any agreement given that the origin of life is still an unanswered question and that biological evolution acts on living organisms.
