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Darwinism and evolutionary theory have a bad track record in political theory, given their entanglements with fin-de-siècle militarist imperialisms, racialized hierarchies, and eugenic reformism. In colonial contexts, however, Darwinism had an entirely different afterlife as anticolonialists marshaled evolutionist frameworks to contest the parameters of colonial rule. This article exhumes just such an evolutionary anticolonialism in the political thought of Aurobindo Ghose, radical firebrand of the early Indian independence movement. I argue that Ghose drew on a nuanced reform Darwinism to criticize British imperialism and advance an alternative grounded in the Indian polity's mutualism. Evolutionism formed a conceptual ecosystem framing his understanding of progress—national, civilizational, and spiritual—and reformulating the temporal and conceptual coordinates of the liberal empire he resisted. The article thus exposes the constructiveness of anticolonial politics, the hybridity of South Asian intellectual history, and the surprising critical potential of Darwinism in colonial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his article, Grossmann argues that, in the context of human cooperative caregiving, heightened fearfulness in children and human sensitivity to fear in others are adaptive traits. I offer and briefly defend a rival hypothesis: Heightened fearfulness among infants and young children is a maladaptive trait that did not get deselected in the process of evolution because human sensitivity to fear in others mitigates its disadvantageous effects to a sufficient extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late 1960s witnessed a key conjunction between political activism and the history of science. Science, whether seen as a touchstone of rationality or of oppression, was fundamental to all sides in the era of the Vietnam War. This essay examines the historian Robert Maxwell Young's turn to Marxism and radical politics during this period, especially his widely cited account of the 'common context' of nineteenth-century biological and social theorizing, which demonstrated the centrality of Thomas Robert Malthus's writings on population for Charles Darwin's formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. From Young's perspective, this history was bound up with pressing contemporary issues: ideologies of class and race in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, the revival of Malthusian population control, and the role of science in military conflict. The aim was to provide a basis for political action – the 'head revolution' that would accompany radical social change. The radical force of Young's argument was blunted in subsequent decades by disciplinary developments within history of science, including the emergence of specialist Darwin studies, a focus on practice and the changing political associations of the history of ideas. Young's engaged standpoint, however, has remained influential even as historians moved from understanding science as ideology to science as work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare and contrast the 60 commentaries by 109 authors on the pair of target articles by Mehr et al. and ourselves. The commentators largely reject Mehr et al.'s fundamental definition of music and their attempts to refute (1) our social bonding hypothesis, (2) byproduct hypotheses, and (3) sexual selection hypotheses for the evolution of musicality. Instead, the commentators generally support our more inclusive proposal that social bonding and credible signaling mechanisms complement one another in explaining cooperation within and competition between groups in a coevolutionary framework (albeit with some confusion regarding terminologies such as "byproduct" and "exaptation"). We discuss the proposed criticisms and extensions, with a focus on moving beyond adaptation/byproduct dichotomies and toward testing of cross-species, cross-cultural, and other empirical predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memes have been proposed to explain wide swathes of human culture and language use. I argue that what is really doing the explanatory work in many of these cases is a basic mechanism of information transmission, which is distinct from memetic evolution by natural selection in significant ways. Perhaps the most significant of these is that information transmission depends primarily on the interests of the users of information, rather than the reproductive interests of the informational entities—'memes'—themselves. Although my main target is memetic approaches, this argument also applies to some other, nonmemetic, theories of cultural evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darwin's theory of evolution emphasized that positive selection of functional proficiency provides the fitness that ultimately determines the structure of life, a view that has dominated biochemical thinking of enzymes as perfectly optimized for their specific functions. The 20th-century modern synthesis, structural biology, and the central dogma explained the machinery of evolution, and nearly neutral theory explained how selection competes with random fixation dynamics that produce molecular clocks essential e.g. for dating evolutionary histories. However, quantitative proteomics revealed that selection pressures not relating to optimal function play much larger roles than previously thought, acting perhaps most importantly via protein expression levels. This paper first summarizes recent progress in the 21st century toward recovering this universal selection pressure. Then, the paper argues that proteome cost minimization is the dominant, underlying 'non-function' selection pressure controlling most of the evolution of already functionally adapted living systems. A theory of proteome cost minimization is described and argued to have consequences for understanding evolutionary trade-offs, aging, cancer, and neurodegenerative protein-misfolding diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defends lineage pluralism; the view that biological lineages are not a single, unified type of entity. I analyze aspects of evolutionary theory, phylogenetics, and developmental biology to show that these areas appeal to distinct notions of lineage. I formulate three arguments for lineage pluralism. These arguments undercut the main motivations for lineage monism; the view that biological lineages are a single, unified type of entity. Although this view is rarely made explicit, it is often assumed in philosophy and biology. Hence, this article sheds light on this monistic assumption and shows why lineage pluralism should be adopted instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elizabeth Grosz's interpretation of Darwinian evolutionary theory to ground a feminist ontology of biology has been particularly controversial. Most critics have understood Grosz as supporting her theory with empirical evidence, and they criticize her for being either inaccurate or uncritical of and overly dependent on science. I argue that Grosz reads Darwin as a philosopher in a Deleuzian and Irigarayan sense, and that Grosz's project is therefore better understood in terms of its ethical and political goals rather than in terms of empirical adequacy. Employing this evaluative framework leads to a novel route for critique of Grosz's ontology in terms of its reliance on the Darwinian distinction between organism and environment. I conclude that Grosz's work is valuable for the way it maintains ethical and political considerations in feminist ontological debates, and that introducing a more sensitive understanding of the organism–environment relation will lead us closer to a truly feminist ontology of biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The replicator dynamics and Moran process are the main deterministic and stochastic models of evolutionary game theory. The models are connected by a mean-field relationship—the former describes the expected behavior of the latter. However, there are conditions under which their predictions diverge. I demonstrate that the divergence between their predictions is a function of standard techniques used in their analysis and of differences in the idealizations involved in each. My analysis reveals problems for stochastic stability analysis in a broad class of games, demonstrates a novel domain of agreement between the dynamics, and indicates a broader moral for evolutionary modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective, synchronous music-making is far from ubiquitous across traditional, small-scale societies. We describe societies that lack collective music and offer hypotheses to help explain this cultural variation. Without identifying the factors that explain variation in collective music-making across these societies, theories of music evolution based on social bonding (Savage et al.) or coalition signaling (Mehr et al.) remain incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although it can be straightforward to define the features of physical traits, complex cultural categories tend to elude widely accepted definitions that transcend cultural and historical context. Addressing papers by Mehr et al. and Savage et al., which both aim to explain music as an evolved trait, we discuss fundamental problems that arise from their conceptualizations of music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we focus on the subset of evolutionary theorising self-identified as Feminist Evolutionary Analytic (FEA) within security studies and International Relations. We offer this accounting in four sections. First, we provide a brief overview of the argument that reproductive interests are the 'origins' of international violence. Second, we break down the definitions of gender, sex, and sexuality used in evolutionary work in security studies generally and in FEA specifically, demonstrating a lack of complexity in FEA's accounts of the potential relations among the three and critiquing their essentialist heteronormative assumptions. Third, we argue that FEA's failure to reflect on the history and context of evolutionary theorising, much less contemporary feminist critiques, facilitates its forwarding of the state and institutions as primarily neutral and corrective bulwarks against male violence. Fourth, we conclude by outlining what is at stake if we fail to correct for this direction in feminist, IR, and security research. We argue that FEA work misrepresents and narrows the potential for understanding and responding to violence, facilitating the continued instrumentalisation of women's rights, increased government regulation of sexuality, and a more expansive form of militarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Darwinian ideas were developed and radically transformed when they were transmitted to the alien intellectual background of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. The earliest references to Darwin in China appeared in the 1870s through the writings of Western missionaries who provided the Chinese with the earliest information on evolutionary doctrines. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassadors, literati and overseas students contributed to the dissemination of evolutionary ideas, with modest effect. The 'evolutionary sensation' in China was generated by the Chinese Spencerian Yan Fu's paraphrased translation and reformulation of Thomas Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture 'Evolution and ethics' and his 'Prolegomena'. It was from this source that 'Darwin' became well known in China – although it was Darwin's name, rather than his theories, that reached Chinese literati's households. The Origin of Species itself began to receive attention only at the turn of the twentieth century. The translator, Ma Junwu (1881–1940), incorporated non-Darwinian doctrines, particularly Lamarckian and Spencerian principles, into his edition of the Chinese Origin. This partially reflected the importance of the pre-existing Chinese intellectual background as well as Yan Fu's progressive 'evolutionary paradigm'. In this paper, I will elucidate Ma Junwu's culturally conditioned reinterpretation of the Origin before 1906 by investigating his transformation of Darwin's principal concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenged by Lord Kelvin's claims that earth and sun were too young to give evolution sufficient time to do its work, especially in the human case, where care for the weak blunts the edge of natural selection, Darwin leaned on Lamarckian thoughts to accelerate the process. The mental and moral traits crowning human distinctiveness, he urged, arose through sexual selection. But promiscuity, infanticide, early betrothals, and female drudgery undermined these effects in "savage races." In the inevitable decline and ultimate extinction of the "melanin races" Darwin believed he could observe human evolution underway before his eyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I consider recent uses of the notion of neutrality in evolutionary biology and ecology, questioning their relevance to the kind of explanation recently labeled 'topological explanation'. Focusing on fitness landscapes and genotype-phenotype maps, I explore the explanatory uses of neutral subspaces, as modeled in two perspectives: hyperdimensional fitness landscapes and RNA sequence-structure maps. I argue that topological properties of such spaces account for features of evolutionary systems: respectively, capacity for adaptive evolution toward global optima and mutational robustness of genotypes. Thus many models appealing to "neutral" manifolds provide topological alternatives to hypothetical mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two cosmological models of quantum gravity (from string theory and loop quantum gravity) to investigate the foundational and conceptual issues arising from quantum treatments of the big bang. While the classical singularity is erased, the quantum evolution that replaces it may not correspond to classical spacetime: it may instead be a nonspatiotemporal region that somehow transitions to a spatiotemporal state. The different kinds of transition involved are partially characterized, the concept of a physical transition without time is investigated, and the problem of empirical incoherence for regions without spacetime is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that there are two different kinds of altruistic motivation: classical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms at least partly for those organisms' sake, and nonclassical psychological altruism, which generates ultimate desires to help other organisms for the sake of the organism providing the help. We then argue that classical psychological altruism is adaptive if the desire to help others is intergenerationally reliable and, thus, need not be learned. Nonclassical psychological altruism is adaptive when the desire to help others is adaptively learnable. This theory opens new avenues for the interdisciplinary study of psychological altruism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, philosophers have sought to determine the nature of individuals relevant to evolution by natural selection or evolutionary individuals. The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis is a claim about evolution that emphasizes the role of contingency or dependency relations and chance-based factors in how evolution unfolds. In this article, I argue that if we take evolutionary contingency seriously, then we should be pluralists about the types of individuals in selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is Aristotle committed, as a theoretical matter, to fixed species in biology? The answer seems to be a resounding no, if we were to infer his theoretical commitments from the actual practice found in his biological works. The answer, however, is far from clear, if we turn to the ‘philosophical discussion of biology’ found in Book 1 of Parts of Animals. In fact, I shall note that its context suggests that, contrary to some recent interpretations put forward, the phrase τὰ ἔσχατα εἴδη at 644a23 is best translated and understood as ‘infima species’, and that such a reading implies that Aristotle favours the methodology that reflects his theoretical commitment to fixed species (at least in Book 1 of Part. an.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Callous–unemotional (CU) behaviors demonstrate meaningful individual differences in early childhood, even in nonclinical samples with low mean levels of CU, but the factors underlying this variation have not been examined. This study investigated genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences and to sources of continuity and change in CU in toddler twins (145 monozygotic, 169 dizygotic) assessed at ages 2 and 3 years. CU, as assessed by the Child Behavior Checklist 1.5–5 (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000), was moderately stable across age (r = .45, p < .0001). Longitudinal biometric analyses revealed genetic and nonshared environmental influences on CU at both ages, with no significant contribution from shared environmental factors. Stability from age 2 to 3 was due to genetic factors, whereas change was due to both genetic and nonshared environmental influences. This genetic and nonshared environmental change was substantial, suggesting malleability of CU in early childhood. Over 50% of the genetic influences and 100% of the nonshared environmental influences on CU at age 3 were independent of those that operated at age 2. Implications of novel sources of variance across age are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of glacier length fluctuations serves as a reliable indicator of the past climate. In this paper, a numerical flowline model has been used to study the relationship between length variations of Chhota Shigri glacier and local climate since 1876. The simulated front positions of Chhota Shigri glacier are in agreement with those observed. After a successful simulation of the past retreat, the model was also used to predict future evolution of the glacier for the next 100 years under different climatic scenarios. These simulations indicate that the Chhota Shigri glacier may lose ~90% of its present volume by 2100 if the local temperature increases by 2.4 K, and for a temperature rise of 5.5 K, the glacier loses almost all its volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clade selection is unpopular with philosophers who otherwise accept multilevel selection theory. Clades cannot reproduce, and reproduction is widely thought necessary for evolution by natural selection, especially of complex adaptations. Using microbial evolutionary processes as heuristics, I argue contrariwise that (1) clade growth ( proliferation of contained species) substitutes for clade reproduction in the evolution of complex adaptation, (2) clade-level properties favoring persistence--species richness, dispersal, divergence, and possibly intraclade cooperation--are not collapsible into species-level traits, (3) such properties can be maintained by selection on clades, and (4) clade selection extends the explanatory power of the theory of evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans and technology are not in symbiosis. They are one species, not two. Humans, enveloped in artefacts of many kinds and ages (from writing, to airplanes), are evolving as one species, the ‘human & machine species’. This evolution is visible and recorded in our lifetime. Here, I illustrate the evolution of the human & machine species by focusing on commercial aircraft, the cooling of electronics, and modern athletics, which is a special laboratory for witnessing the evolution of animal locomotion. I show that these evolutionary forms of flow organization are in accord with, and can be predicted based on the law of physics that governs evolution in nature, bio and non-bio: the constructal law. Evolution, life and the human & machine species are physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is a widely used framework for studying the evolution of social behavior, but controversy surrounds its status. Hamilton originally derived his famous rb > c rule for the spread of a social gene by assuming additivity of costs and benefits. However, it has recently been argued that the additivity assumption can be dispensed with, so long as the –c and b terms are suitably defined, as partial regression coefficients. I argue that this way of generalizing Hamilton’s rule to the nonadditive case, while formally correct, faces conceptual problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musa L. was previously separated into five sections (Eumusa, Rhodochlamys, Callimusa, Australimusa and Ingentimusa) based on basic chromosome numbers and morphological characters. However, several molecular analyses currently support restructuring of Musa species into two sections, Musa and Callimusa. The application of simple sequence repeat molecular marker analysis to Musa phylogeny provided valuable, supplemental information about the classification of, and relationships between, Musa species and subspecies. Totally, 28 accessions of Musa acuminata Colla subspecies and varieties and 25 accessions of other Musa species were evaluated; 12 primers produced 91 polymorphic bands, polymorphic information content ranged from 0.4473 to 0.8394 (average = 0.7226), indicating that the primers showed a high level of polymorphism. Our results generally agreed with previous phylogenetic analyses based on molecular data. One clade comprised species of sections Australimusa and Callimusa (X = 10/9); most species of sections Eumusa and Rhodochlamys (X = 11) formed the other clade. The relationships between most species were as expected; however, some species did not conform to findings of previous studies. A wide range of variability was observed in the M. acuminata complex. M. acuminata var. chinensis and M. acuminata subsp. 522 showed the most distant relationships to other subspecies: Musa laterita, Musa ornata and Musa velutina clustered with M. acuminata var. chinensis, suggesting that they may constitute a secondary gene pool for the improvement of cultivated bananas. Molecular data indicated that Musa tongbiguanensis Chen You & Yao-Ting Wu, which was observed and described by our research group in Yunnan, China, was a distinct, new species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the game theoretic properties of a model of crime first introduced by Short et al. (2010 Phys. Rev. E82, 066114) as the SBD Adversarial Game. We identify the rationalizable strategies and one-shot equilibria under multiple equilibrium refinements. We further show that SBD's main result about the effectiveness of defecting-punishers (“Informants”) in driving the system to evolve to the cooperative equilibrium under an imitation dynamic generalizes to a best response dynamic, though only under certain parameter regimes. The nature of this strategy's role, however, differs significantly between the two dynamics: in the SBD imitation dynamic, Informants are sufficient but not necessary to achieve the cooperative equilibrium, while under the best response dynamic, Informants are necessary but not sufficient for convergence to cooperation. Since a policy of simply converting citizens to Informants will not guarantee success under best response dynamics, we identify alternative strategies that may help the system reach cooperation in this case, e.g., the use of moderate but not too severe punishments on criminals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discoveries that the Earth has a supra-chondritic 142Nd signature have thrown chondritic geochemical Earth models into doubt. Several solutions have been proposed to explain this discrepancy but none has been widely accepted. This paper reviews Nd isotope data for the Moon which bridge the gap between the 142Nd signatures of chondritic meteorites and the accessible Earth. Different chondrite classes define a 142Nd–148Nd correlation line attributed to incomplete mixing of nucleosynthetic components in the solar nebula. Terrestrial standards have 142Nd signatures well above this correlation line, but the 142Nd signature of the Bulk Moon is c. 6 ppm lower than terrestrial (assuming a chondritic Sm/Nd ratio) and falls within error of enstatite chondrites. In view of the demonstrated isotopic similarity between the Earth and Moon, giant impact models require the Moon to be a sample of the early Earth. Therefore, it is inferred that the Earth–Moon system was generated from material similar to enstatite chondrites, but Earth's mantle experienced Sm/Nd fractionation very soon after the Moon-forming collision. Such fractionation processes have been attributed to subduction of early Fe-enriched crust into a deep mantle storage reservoir. Because Sm/Nd fractionation occurred when most 146Sm had already decayed, the hidden incompatible-element-enriched reservoir only became slightly depressed in its 142Nd signature, explaining why this signal has not yet been detected in ocean island basalt sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life poses a threat to materialism. To understand the phenomena of animate nature, we make use of a teleological form of explanation that is peculiar to biology, of explanations in terms of what I call the ‘vital categories’ – and this holds even for accounts of underlying physico-chemical ‘mechanisms’. The materialist claims that this teleological form of explanation does not capture what is metaphysically fundamental, whereas her preferred physical form of explanation does. In this essay, I do three things. (1) I argue that the ‘vital categories’, such as life form and life-process, do not reduce to the ‘physical categories’ and show that there are no grounds for the materialist's metaphysically limiting claim; (2) I sketch a positive view on how vital and physical explanations can both apply to a given phenomenon, and on how they interrelate; and (3) I show that this view meshes nicely with evolutionary theory, despite being committed to a form of ‘biological essentialism’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Galen's Technê iatrikê (Tegni, for short) was translated into Hebrew three times. The first two translations were executed in the Midi, around the year 1199: once from Constantine the African's Latin version, by an anonymous physician who used the pseudonym “Doeg the Edomite”; and a second time from Arabic, by Samuel Ibn Tibbon in Béziers, using as his Vorlage Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq's Arabic version (al-Ṣinā'a al-saġīra), accompanied by 'Alī Ibn Riḍwān's commentary. (Samuel Ibn Tibbon's authorship of this translation has been called into doubt, but is reestablished in a paper by Gad Freudenthal in this issue of ASP.) A third translation, again from Latin and including Ibn Riḍwān's commentary, was done by Hillel ben Samuel in Rome, in the late thirteenth century, but is not considered in this paper.We present the Tegni and discuss its history. We then ask why this work was translated into Hebrew twice, at precisely the same time and area. We show that both translators responded to the need of Jewish physicians who read only Hebrew. Doeg's translation was part of his vast project of making the greater part of the Salernitan corpus available in Hebrew. Samuel Ibn Tibbon translated the Tegni with Ibn Riḍwān's commentary both because he was responding to a social need and because he was in the process of switching his profession from physician to translator of philosophic works. Galen's medico-philosophic text was a perfect fit for his intellectual evolution from a philosophically minded physician to a philosopher-scientist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparative and evolutionary analysis of social learning and all manner of cultural processes has become a flourishing field. Applying the 'comparative method' to such phenomena allows us to exploit the good fortunate we have in being able to study them in satisfying detail in our living primate relatives, using the results to reconstruct the cultural cognition of the ancestral forms we share with these species. Here I offer an overview of principal discoveries in recent years, organized through a developing scheme that targets three main dimensions of culture: the patterning of culturally transmitted traditions in time and space; the underlying social learning processes; and the particular behavioral and psychological contents of cultures. I focus on a comparison between humans, particularly children, and our closest primate relative the chimpanzee, for which we now have much the richest database of relevant observational and experimental findings. Commonalities across these sister-species can be identified in each of the three dimensions listed above and in several subcategories within them, but the comparisons also highlight the major contrasts in the nature of culture that have evolved between ourselves and closest primate relatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I first briefly argue that some issues in the individualism-holism debate have been fairly clearly settled and others are still plagued by unclarity. The main argument of the article is that there is a set of clear empirical issues around the holism-individualism debate that are central problems in current social science research. Those include questions about when we can be holist and how individualist we can be in social explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that information about the distal causes of moral beliefs, such as evolution, is only relevant for assessing the epistemic status of moral beliefs in cases where we cannot determine whether the proximal processes producing these beliefs are reliable just by examining the properties of these proximal processes. Any investigation into the epistemic status of moral beliefs given their causes should start with a look at proximal causes—not at evolution. I discuss two proximal psychological influences on moral beliefs—disgust and sympathy—to demonstrate the feasibility of drawing epistemic conclusions from an examination of proximal causes alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North Singhbhum Mobile Belt (NSMB) is a 200 km long, curved Proterozoic fold–thrust belt that skirts the northern margin of the Archean Singhbhum Craton of NE India. The Singhbhum Shear Zone (SSZ) developed between the Dhanjori and Chaibasa formations near the southern margin of the NSMB and represents an important Cu-U-P metallotect. A SHRIMP U–Pb zircon date of 1861±6 Ma, obtained for the syn- to post-kinematic Arkasani Granophyre that has intruded the SSZ, provides a minimum age for the prolonged tectonic activity and mineralization along the SSZ and for the time of closure of the Chaibasa and Dhanjori sub-basins. The Dalma Volcanic Belt, a submarine rift-related bimodal mafic-felsic volcanic suite, forms the spine of the NSMB. A SHRIMP U–Pb zircon igneous crystallization date of 1631±6 Ma was obtained for an unfoliated felsic volcanic rock from the base of the Dalma volcanic sequence. These new findings suggest that the different sub-basins in the NSMB evolved diachronously under contrasting tectonic environments and were juxtaposed during a later orogenic movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planktonic foraminifera assemblage across the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the base of the Cenomanian Stage defined at Mont Risou (Haute-Alpes in France) is here restudied to clarify the identification and stratigraphic distribution of Thalmanninella globotruncanoides ( = Rotalipora globotruncanoides Sigal, 1948) and Pseudothalmanninella tehamaensis ( = Rotalipora tehamaensis Marianos & Zingula, 1966) whose appearance levels are primary and secondary criteria for placing the Albian/Cenomanian boundary. Since the ratification of the GSSP in 2002, the identification of the foraminifera index species across the Albian/Cenomanian boundary has been reported to be sometimes difficult either because of their rarity or uncertainty in the taxonomic identifications. We discuss the taxonomic status of Thalmanninella brotzeni Sigal 1948, a species regarded for a long time to be a junior synonym of Th. globotruncanoides, through images of Sigal's type materials deposited at the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris), and elucidate the taxonomically important characters that enable unequivocal identification of Th. brotzeni, Th. globotruncanoides and Ps. tehamaensis. Planktonic foraminifera marker species from Mont Risou are compared with well-preserved specimens from Blake Nose Plateau (ODP 171B, North Western Atlantic Ocean) to verify the reliability and stratigraphic distribution of these marker taxa outside the Mediterranean Tethyan area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the New Siberian Islands the rocks of the east Russian Arctic shelf are exposed and allow an assessment of the structural evolution of the region. Tectonic fabrics provide evidence of three palaeo-shortening directions (NE–SW, WNW–ESE and NNW–SSE to NNE–SSW) and one set of palaeo-extension directions revealed a NE–SW to NNE–SSW direction. The contractional deformation is most likely the expression of the Cretaceous formation of the South Anyui fold–thrust belt. The NE–SW shortening is the most prominent tectonic phase in the study area. The WNW–ESE and NNW–SSE to NNE–SSW-oriented palaeo-shortening directions are also most likely related to fold belt formation; the latter might also have resulted from a bend in the suture zone. The younger Cenozoic NE–SW to NNE–SSW extensional direction is interpreted as a consequence of rifting in the Laptev Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temple Chevallier, the first Professor of Astronomy at Durham University, was one of the leading British scientists of the nineteenth century. While his scientific work has been widely recognised, little has been written on his theological approach which provides an insight into the use of the design argument and revelation. In common with many scientists of the period, Chevallier had strong theological interests, was Reader in Hebrew at Durham University, and an Anglican priest. His Hulsean Lectures, ‘On the proofs of Divine Power and Wisdom, derived from the study of astronomy and the evidence, doctrines and precepts of Revealed Religion’, provide a fascinating picture of the engagement of Christian theology with science, in stark contrast to the dominant narratives of conflict which have been applied to this century. Having had many things in common with his contemporary Darwin, including the influence of Paley, Chevallier departed from both in his understanding of the Bible and the created order.Chevallier's use of the design argument demonstrated the holding together of natural and revealed theology. This enabled him to use science to give pointers to God rather than proofs. Science was seen as a gift from God, engendering awe and reflecting God's sustaining of the Universe. Indeed it is argued that this was characteristic of the origins of the design argument in its earliest forms.This strong context of revealed theology allowed him, with many others in the nineteenth century, to respond in a relaxed way to Darwin's evolutionary theory. Chevallier is a reminder of the complexity of British theological thinking in this period. Furthermore, this historical account is an important cautionary voice in the contemporary revival of the design argument in modern astronomy, whether used by the proponents of intelligent design or by those such as Paul Davies who would exclude revelation from any part of the discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We report two newly identified Ordovician ophiolite belts in west Junggar, NW China: Tajin–Tarbahatai–Kujibai–Honguleleng (TTKH) and Tangbale–Baijiantan–Baikouquan (TBB) ophiolitic belts. These two ophiolitic belts provide constraints for the Palaeozoic reconstruction of Central Asia and the geological evolution of this region. The TTKH and TBB ophiolitic belts are dismembered parts of different ophiolitic belts which represent relics of Ordovician oceanic floor; they subducted to the north under the Chingiz–Tarbahatai arc and to the south under the Junggar plate, respectively. The Baijiantan–Baikouquan ophiolite mélanges comprise the major part of the TBB. Flat rare Earth element (REE) patterns with positive Eu anomalies and insignificant depletion of high-field-strength elements (HFSE) relative to melts of primitive mantle suggest a mid-ocean-ridge basalt (MORB) origin for the metagabbro. Lherzolite samples define a Sm–Nd isotopic isochron with age of 474 Ma and ɛNd(t) of +8.9. Lherzolite samples with positive ɛNd(t) values of +8.8 to +9.1 and initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.7037–0.7040 are rather homogeneous in Sr–Nd isotopic composition, whereas metagabbro samples show wider Sr–Nd isotopic compositional ranges with ɛNd(t) of +5.9 to +11.0. The Sm–Nd isotopic isochron age (c. 380 Ma) for garnet amphibolite samples, consistent with a zircon U–Pb age (c. 385 Ma) for metagabbro, represents a magmatic event prior to subduction. Thermodynamic calculations for garnet amphibolite yield a clockwise pressure–temperature path with peak metamorphic condition of c. 15 kbar and 520–560°C at 342 Ma, indicating a subduction-channel setting. The Rb–Sr isochron ages (335 Ma, 333 Ma) for metagabbro represent a metamorphic event during exhumation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among mycologists, questions persist about what entities should be treated as the fundamental units of fungal populations. This article articulates a coherent view about populations of heterokaryotic fungi and the individuals that comprise them. Using GodfreySmith's minimal concept of a Darwinian population, I argue that entities at two levels of the biological hierarchy satisfy the minimal concept in heterokaryotic fungi: mycelia and nuclei. I provide a preliminary answer to the question of how to understand the relation between these two populations. This article contributes to discussions about the nature of biological individuality, organismality, and evolutionary transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mehr et al. propose a theory of the evolution music that can potentially account for most animal vocalizations as precursors to human music. Therein lies its appeal but also its Achilles' heel, for the wider the range of animal vocalizations treated as premusical expressions, the wider the gap to human music. Here, I offer a few critical observations and constructive suggestions that I hope will help the authors strengthen their case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Savage et al. and Mehr et al. provide well-substantiated arguments that the evolution of musicality was shaped by adaptive functions of social bonding and credible signalling. However, they are too quick to dismiss byproduct explanations of music evolution, and to present their theories as complete unitary accounts of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both target papers cite evidence from infancy and early childhood to support the notion of human musicality as a somewhat static suite of capacities; however, in our view they do not adequately acknowledge the critical role of developmental timing, the acquisition process, or the dynamics of social learning, especially during later periods of development such as middle childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the most important properties of human groups – including properties that may give one group an evolutionary advantage over another – are properly defined only at the level of group organization. Yet at present, most work on the evolution of culture has focused solely on the transmission of individual-level traits. I propose a conceptual extension of the theory of cultural evolution, particularly related to the evolutionary competition between cultural groups. The key concept in this extension is the emergent group-level trait. This type of trait is characterized by the structured organization of differentiated individuals and constitutes a unit of selection that is qualitatively different from selection on groups as defined by traditional multilevel selection (MLS) theory. As a corollary, I argue that the traditional focus on cooperation as the defining feature of human societies has missed an essential feature of cooperative groups. Traditional models of cooperation assume that interacting with one cooperator is equivalent to interacting with any other. However, human groups involve differential roles, meaning that receiving aid from one individual is often preferred to receiving aid from another. In this target article, I discuss the emergence and evolution of group-level traits and the implications for the theory of cultural evolution, including ramifications for the evolution of human cooperation, technology, and cultural institutions, and for the equivalency of multilevel selection and inclusive fitness approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of mankind, man has been concerned with the conservation of food in order to prolong its edibility. Over time, different food preservation methods have been discovered and improved, and there are many works that describe these techniques. This work will describe the knowledge and the development of preservation techniques of inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula. The work focuses on the various achievements from the first to the sixteenth centuries, allowing us to appreciate the different historic contributions. The selected and consulted works are: L.J.M. Columela, Los doce libros de Agricultura (The Twelve Books of Agriculture), Abū al-Jayr, Kitāb al-Filāḥa. Tratado de agricultura (Book of Agriculture), Ibn Baṣṣāl, Kitāb al-Filāḥa. Libro de agricultura (Book of Agriculture), Ibn al-'Awwām, Kitāb al-Filāḥa. Libro de Agricultura (Book of Agriculture), Ibn Luyūn, Kitāb al-Filāḥa. Tratado de Agricultura (Book of Agriculture), Alonso de Herrera, Agricultura general (General Agriculture). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attitude of biologists to the history of their discipline varies. For some, a hazy knowledge of the recent past is all that is necessary to provide an explanatory basis for their work. They take it for granted that everything of value from the less recent past has been appropriately incorporated into present-day thinking. Other biologists see history as an integral part of their research: the historical roots of accepted facts and theories help in the evaluation of present positions. These biologists bring to history their specialized knowledge, which can be an advantage, but often they also bring an agenda that biases what they investigate and how they present it. We illustrate this by describing our own foray into history, which was motivated by findings in cell biology that suggested that some accepted views about heredity and evolution were wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review article examines the major premises concerning the evolution of language offered in Tecumseh Fitch's The Evolution of Language (2010). Various aspects of Fitch's argumentation are disputed, specifically including the idea that language was preceded in evolution by a musical protolanguage stage in which there were no words, but which instead exhibited a prosodic, meaningless ‘bare phonology’. According to Fitch, this putative stage in language evolution also laid the foundations for syntax, providing musical phrases which were subsequently filled by meaningful words. Counterarguments to these ideas are presented, and an alternative, word-based model of protolanguage is defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tests two evolutionary hypotheses on grandparental investments differentiated by the child's sex: the paternity uncertainty hypothesis and the Trivers–Willard hypothesis. Data are from two culturally different countries: the Dutch Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (n=2375) and the Chinese Anhui Survey (n=4026). In the Netherlands, grandparental investments are biased towards daughters' children, which is in accordance with the paternity uncertainty hypothesis. But in China, grandparental investments are biased towards sons' children, which is in conflict with the paternity uncertainty hypothesis. This study found no support for the Trivers–Willard hypothesis. These results raise doubts over the relevance of paternity uncertainty as an explanation of a grandparental investment bias towards daughters' children that is often found in Western populations. The results suggest that discriminative grandparental investments are better understood as the outcome of cultural prescriptions and economic motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Nature of Selection, Elliott Sober argued that natural selection is in principle powerless to explain why any individual organism has the traits it does rather than the very same individual having different traits. In this note, I argue that in a recent and prominent critique of Sober's position, Bence Nanay talks past that position rather than addressing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Qaidam Basin is the largest intermontane basin of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau and contains a continuous Cenozoic sequence of lacustrine sediments. A ~1000-m-deep drilling (SG-1) with an average core recovery of ~95% was carried out in the depocenter of the Chahansilatu playa (sub-depression) in the western Qaidam Basin, aimed to obtain a high-resolution record of the paleoenvironmental evolution and the erosion history. Stepwise alternating field and thermal demagnetization, together with rock magnetic results, revealed a stable remanent magnetization for most samples, carried by magnetite. The polarity sequence consisted of 16 normal and 15 reverse zones which can be correlated with chrons 1n to 2An of the global geomagnetic polarity time scale. Magnetostratigraphic results date the entire core SG-1 at ~2.77Ma to ~0.1Ma and yielded sediment accumulation rate (SAR) ranging from 26.1cm/ka to 51.5cm/ka. Maximum SARs occurred within the intervals of ~2.6–2.2Ma and after ~0.8Ma, indicating two episodes of erosion, which we relate to pulse tectonic uplift of the NE Tibetan Plateau with subsequent global cooling. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]