Evolution Diary

 
Hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific, report researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. (…)

In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris Bachtrog and her colleagues show that the history of the X chromosome is every bit as interesting as the much-studied, male-determining Y chromosome, and offers important clues to the origins and benefits of sexual reproduction. (…)

A fossil fish from Australia was one of the earliest known vertebrates to reproduce by fertilising eggs inside the female, a study suggests. (…)

A fish species, which is all female, has survived for 70,000 years without reproducing sexually, experts believe. (…)

Sex is part of the “oldest profession” and is often called the subject of the “world’s oldest joke.” Now scientists think they’ve found evidence of the oldest known creatures to engage in sexual reproduction. (…)