Research claiming that men are to blame for menopause has gone viral in the popular media in the past week. But does the theoretical model’s fundamental assumption – that men prefer young women – stack…
Articles on Evolutionary biology
Displaying 161 - 180 of 187 articles
For half the population, it comes three to five days each month, 12 months each year, for 40 years of our lives. Menstruation can be debilitating, relieving, disappointing, or simply an inconvenient fact…
In romantic circles, reproduction is viewed as a harmonious venture between the sexes. After all, if you aim to produce the best offspring possible, wouldn’t it also be best to cooperate with your partner…
Menstruation is a reproductive quirk that humans share with only a few other mammals. But even stranger is the fact that women stop menstruating when they have a whole third of their lives left to live…
It’s not always easy to tell if a fish is male or female: they look more or less the same. But there are exceptions, such as guppies and, as with humans, guppy genitalia varies in size across the species…
Researchers from University of Sydney have helped uncover imprints left in teeth by dietary changes from maternal milk to…
Purple sea urchins have been found to be able to evolve extremely rapidly in relation to their environment. Experiments conducted…
In an evolutionary sense, memory of pain serves an important purpose. Pain indicates a threat to our safety or our life, and human survival depends on us avoiding things that are going to kill us. Historically…
Have you ever wondered why coral reef fishes are so brilliantly coloured and bizarrely patterned? A quick flick through any coral reef fish guide will leave you bewildered and awed. To answer this question…
To state the obvious: human evolution is not without its drama – and the latest salvo in the ongoing Hobbit, or Homo floresiensis, battle confirms this yet again. The 2004 announcement of Homo floresiensis…
A new study has revealed what many people possibly already suspect – males are more honest when displaying their “quality” to a partner than to an unfamiliar female. These findings, from a study of a socially…
An aquatic lizard twice the length of a Komodo dragon once lurked in rivers during the age of dinosaurs, according to a team of Hungarian-Canadian researchers. The 85 million-year-old Pannoniasaurus is…
A study into the birdsong of the zebra finch has found male birds can deceive newly encountered females by exaggerating their…
In the late Devonian period, roughly 365 million years ago, fish-like creatures started venturing from shallow waters onto land. Among the various adaptations associated with the switch to land life was…
The negative impacts of cigarettes on both smokers and those around them are widely known. While some effects are cosmetic (wrinkling, yellowing of the skin), others, such as cancer, can be fatal. But…
In a study published today in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters, my colleagues and I ask if there is any validity in judgements of sexual faithfulness made from the faces of unfamiliar men and…
A group of red colobus monkeys in Uganda have been found to care less about grooming and more about sex after eating leaves…
For taxonomists, days often start – and sometimes end – with the question: what’s that? Whether you’re an entomologist, staring at a new species of riffle bug from a rainforest stream, or a paleontologist…
Why are some animals blue and others red? Explaining the diversity of colours in nature is a central issue in evolutionary biology. And part of the answer may lie in the most obvious place: the eye. In…
Just when did our human ancestors come down from the trees to become permanent ground-dwelling apes? Did the evolution of our upright posture and two-footed (bipedal) locomotion mark the end of a life…
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Emeritus Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University
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Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW
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Senior Lecturer, Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, Newcastle University
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Mark Elgar is a Friend of The Conversation.
Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology, The University of Melbourne
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Jenny Graves is a Friend of The Conversation.
Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor's Fellow, La Trobe University
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Postdoctoral Researcher , The University of Melbourne
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Senior lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, University of Bristol
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Professor of Avian Behavioural Ecology, Macquarie University
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PhD Researcher, Nature and Function of Human Nonverbal Vocalisations, University of Sussex
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Lecturer, Macquarie University
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Postdoctoral Researcher of Evolutionary Biology, University of Pennsylvania
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Research fellow, University of Sydney
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Sexual health researcher, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR)
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Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland