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Our modern conception of evolution started with Charles Darwin and his idea of natural selection – "survival of the fittest" – to explain why certain individuals thrive while others fail to leave a legacy. Then came genetics to explain the underlying mechanism: changes in organisms caused by random mutations of genes. Now this powerful picture is changing once more, as discoveries in genetics, epigenetics, developmental biology and other fields lend a new complexity and richness to our greatest theory of nature. Find out more in this 12-page feature special. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the complexity of evolution in nature. Terry Deacon, a well regarded professor of biological anthropology and linguistics at the University of California in Berkeley, California, infers that complexity is not always a gift to the fit, but rather more often to the lazy or the lucky. It discusses the natural selection which was first identified by Charles Darwin in "On the Origin of Species." Information regarding Deacon's study about relaxed selection is also discussed.

Hot climates select animals with heat-dispersing adaptations, such as large ears or the ability to pant. But no matter how much an animal flaps its ears or pants, it is not going to affect the local temperature to any significant extent. Environments shape living things: it rarely works the other way around. At least, that is the conventional view of evolution. There is much more to this process of "niche construction" than the creations of charismatic animals. Plants change levels of atmospheric gases, modify nutrient cycles, engage in chemical warfare, promote forest fires, create shade and alter wind speeds.

The glorious theory of evolution by natural selection has seen off all comers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A tiny genetic change can transform the function of an enzyme, scientists who captured the forces of natural selection in a Petri dish have shown. Their experiment is the first demonstration of how families of genes can evolve within living organisms. Inside every cell is a complicated metabolic factory where specific proteins act as enzymes, converting available molecules into compounds vital for the life of the cell. A key question for evolutionary biologists is how this complicated machinery arose.

This article examines various aspects of mental illness in human beings. A team of researchers started with the fairly standard evolutionary psychology view that the mind consists of a large stock of modules, each crafted by natural selection to do certain jobs. The idea is that the mind is a set of structures with evolved functions and that mental illnesses can best be understood as failures of those structures. In mental illnesses either something goes wrong with the system itself or a system that was functioning perfectly well ends up in an environment it wasn't designed for.

Focuses on the debate whether evolution equals progress or not. View on progress and evolution by philosophers including Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer; Description of natural selection in the book 'Masks of the Universe,' by Edward Harris; Growth in consciousness and intelligence.

This article explains that some of the earliest creatures to crawl out of the ocean onto land half a billion years ago borrowed shells to carry a bit of the sea with them, allowing them to survive in an otherwise hostile world. This is conclusion of a study conducted by paleontologist James Hagadorn of Amherst College in Massachusetts, who has been studying fossilized tracks left in sandstone in central Wisconsin, dating back 490 to 510 million years.

This article discusses algorithms, and whether the new programs that evolve from them will displace conventional design. The debate that once focused on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution now centers on evolutionary algorithms (EAs), which mimic the processes of natural selection and random mutation by breeding, selecting, and re-breeding possible designs to produce the best ones.

A thought-provoking theory suggests that natural selection may not be evolution's main driver after all. Instead, evolution and extinction may be controlled by an internal clock in every species. Reinhard Stindl of the Institute of Medical Biology in Vienna, Austria, is proposing that the protective caps on ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, act like a timer, eroding slowly with each generation and inexorably counting years toward a species' doom. Natural selection is still important, but it is telomere erosion that ultimately limits how long any species can exist.

Highlights the results of a study showing the evolution of the natural selection and the behavioral trait of Drosophila melanogaster or fruit flies. Tendency of maggots with the `rover' allele to roam far and wide as they dine; Explanation for the existence of the rover allele.