Monday, January 05, 2009

12 Elegant Examples of Evolution


The end of the year is always time for the countdown lists, but this one is a little different. Wired Magazine writes of "12 Elegant Examples of Evolution" from dinosaurs to birds to anoles to whales there are some really cool stories. Read the whole thing, but here is the excerpt for the anole:

Lizard Games. Take an island in the Bahamas, add a predatory lizard called Leiocephalus carinatus, and the results are immediate. Males among the lizard's favorite prey, Anolis sagrei, soon became longer-legged, so as to better flee after drawing predatory attention during mating displays. In contrast, more sedentary females became larger, making them harder to ingest — a neat display of sex-specific selection pressures.

Photo by Flickr user Steven2005 used under a Creative Commons License.

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