Educational Resources
Earliest Life (Pre-Cambrian)
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Earliest Life (Pre-Cambrian)
- Oldest evidence for life on land unearthed in South Africa. Source: Homann, M., Sansjofre, P., Van Zuilen, M., Heubeck, C., Gong, J., Killingsworth, B., ... & Lalonde, S. V. (2018). Microbial life and biogeochemical cycling on land 3,220 million years ago. Nature Geoscience, 11(9), 665.
- Dodd, MS, Papineau, D, Grenne, T et al. (2017). Evidence for early life in Earth’s oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates. Nature, 543 (7643). pp. 60-64.
- 'World’s oldest fossils’ may just be pretty rocks. Analysis of 3.7-billion-year-old outcrops has reignited controversy over when life on Earth began. National Geographic.
- Original: Nutman, A. P., Bennett, V. C., Friend, C. R., Van Kranendonk, M. J., & Chivas, A. R. (2016). Rapid emergence of life shown by discovery of 3,700-million-year-old microbial structures. Nature, 537(7621), 535.
- Recent: Allwood, A. C. (2016). Geology: Evidence of life in Earth's oldest rocks. Nature, 537(7621), 500.
- Protolife: Green, J. (2011). Academic aspects of lunar water resources and their relevance to lunar protolife. International journal of molecular sciences, 12(9), 6051-6076.
- NASA: In Search of Panspermia. Early Earth, like early Mars and no doubt many other planets, was bombarded by meteorites and comets. Could they have arrived with “living” microbes inside them?
- Altwegg, K., Balsiger, H., Bar-Nun, A., Berthelier, J. J., Bieler, A., Bochsler, P., ... & De Keyser, J. (2016). Prebiotic chemicals—amino acid and phosphorus—in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Science Advances, 2(5), e1600285.
- Looking for LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor
- Joyce, G. F. (2002). The antiquity of RNA-based evolution. Nature, 418(6894), 214.
- Meredith, R. W., Janečka, J. E., Gatesy, J., Ryder, O. A., Fisher, C. A., Teeling, E. C., ... & Rabosky, D. L. (2011). Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg extinction on mammal diversification. Science, 334(6055), 521-524.
- Harvati, K., & Ackermann, R. R. (2022). Merging morphological and genetic evidence to assess hybridization in Western Eurasian late Pleistocene hominins. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6(10), 1573-1585.
- Wheeler, Q., & Meier, R. (Eds.). (2000). Species concepts and phylogenetic theory: a debate. Columbia University Press.
- Martin, N. H., & Willis, J. H. (2007). Ecological divergence associated with mating system causes nearly complete reproductive isolation between sympatric Mimulus species. Evolution, 61(1), 68-82.
- Ring Species: Unusual Demonstrations of Speciation
- Johnson, N. (2008) Hybrid incompatibility and speciation. Nature Education 1(1):20
- Arora, N., Nater, A., van Schaik, C. P., Willems, E. P., van Noordwijk, M. A., Goossens, B., ... & Kuze, N. (2010). Effects of Pleistocene glaciations and rivers on the population structure of Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(50), 21376-21381.
- Feder, Jeffrey L., and Patrik Nosil. The efficacy of divergence hitchhiking in generating genomic islands during ecological speciation. Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution 64.6 (2010): 1729-1747.
- Wolf, J. B., & Ellegren, H. (2017). Making sense of genomic islands of differentiation in light of speciation. Nature Reviews Genetics, 18(2), 87.
- Charlesworth, B. (2009). Effective population size and patterns of molecular evolution and variation. Nature Reviews Genetics, 10(3), 195.
- Whitney, K. D., & Garland Jr, T. (2010). Did genetic drift drive increases in genome complexity?. PLoS genet, 6(8), e1001080.
- Alcaide, M. (2010). On the relative roles of selection and genetic drift in shaping MHC variation. Molecular Ecology, 19(18), 3842-3844.
- Kliman, R., Sheehy, B. & Schultz, J. (2008) Genetic Drift and Effective Population Size. Nature Education 1(3):3
- Theorists Debate How ‘Neutral’ Evolution Really Is
- Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution
- Lynch, M., Ackerman, M. S., Gout, J. F., Long, H., Sung, W., Thomas, W. K., & Foster, P. L. (2016). Genetic drift, selection and the evolution of the mutation rate. Nature Reviews Genetics, 17(11), 704.
- Yi, S. (2013) Neutrality and Molecular Clocks. Nature Education Knowledge 4(2):3
- Reading phylogenetic trees
- Evolutionary Uniqueness (Tuatara Phylogenetic software)
- Simões, T. R., Vernygora, O., Caldwell, M. W., & Pierce, S. E. (2020). Megaevolutionary dynamics and the timing of evolutionary innovation in reptiles. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-14.
- Yonezawa, T., Segawa, T., Mori, H., Campos, P. F., Hongoh, Y., Endo, H., ... & Jin, H. (2017). Phylogenomics and morphology of extinct paleognaths reveal the origin and evolution of the ratites. Current Biology, 27(1), 68-77.
- Island biogeography: Taking the long view of nature’s laboratories
- Comparative phylogeography of oceanic archipelagos: Hotspots for inferences of evolutionary process
- Lehman, S. M., & Fleagle, J. G. (2006). Biogeography and primates: a review. In Primate biogeography (pp. 1-58). Springer, Boston, MA.
- O’Dea, A., Lessios, H. A., Coates, A. G., Eytan, R. I., Restrepo-Moreno, S. A., Cione, A. L., ... & Stallard, R. F. (2016). Formation of the Isthmus of Panama. Science advances, 2(8), e1600883.
- Müller, G. B. (2007). Evo–devo: extending the evolutionary synthesis. Nature reviews genetics, 8(12), 943.
- Zhang, J. (2003). Evolution by gene duplication: an update. Trends in ecology & evolution, 18(6), 292-298.
- Blount, Z. D., Borland, C. Z., & Lenski, R. E. (2008). Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105: 7899-7906.
- Spribille, T., Tuovinen, V., Resl, P., Vanderpool, D., Wolinski, H., Aime, M. C., ... & Mayrhofer, H. (2016). Basidiomycete yeasts in the cortex of ascomycete macrolichens. Science, 353(6298), 488-492.
- Schultz, T. R., & Brady, S. G. (2008). Major evolutionary transitions in ant agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(14), 5435-5440.
- Jandér, K. C., & Herre, E. A. (2010). Host sanctions and pollinator cheating in the fig tree–fig wasp mutualism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1687), 1481-1488.
- Kawakita, Atsushi, and Makoto Kato. Assessment of the diversity and species specificity of the mutualistic association between Epicephala moths and Glochidion trees. Molecular Ecology 15.12 (2006): 3567-3581.
- Hembry, David H., Jeremy B. Yoder, and Kari Roesch Goodman. Coevolution and the diversification of life. The American Naturalist 184.4 (2014): 425-438.
- Gerardo, N. M., Mueller, U. G., & Currie, C. R. (2006). Complex host-pathogen coevolution in the Apterostigma fungus-growing ant-microbe symbiosis . BMC Evolutionary Biology, 6(1), 88.
- Alizon, S., Hurford, A., Mideo, N., & Van Baalen, M. (2009). Virulence evolution and the trade‐off hypothesis: history, current state of affairs and the future. Journal of evolutionary biology, 22(2), 245-259.
- Ashby, B., & Boots, M. (2015). Coevolution of parasite virulence and host mating strategies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(43), 13290-13295.
- Cressler, C. E., McLEOD, D. V., Rozins, C., Van Den Hoogen, J., & Day, T. (2016). The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests. Parasitology, 143(7), 915-930.
- Decaestecker, E., Gaba, S., Raeymaekers, J. A., Stoks, R., Van Kerckhoven, L., Ebert, D., & De Meester, L. (2007). Host–parasite ‘Red Queen’dynamics archived in pond sediment. Nature, 450(7171), 870.
- A Cretaceous terrestrial snake with robust hindlimbs and sacrum
- A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan
- The mammal-like reptiles: a study of transitional fossils
- The origin of whales and the power of independent evidence
- Four-winged dinosaurs from China
- Almécija, S., Hammond, A. S., Thompson, N. E., Pugh, K. D., Moyà-Solà, S., & Alba, D. M. (2021). Fossil apes and human evolution. Science, 372(6542), eabb4363.
- Slicox, M. T. (2014) Primate Origins and the Plesiadapiforms. Nature Education Knowledge 5(3):1.
- Williams, Blythe A., Richard F. Kay, and E. Christopher Kirk. (2010) New perspectives on anthropoid origins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107.11: 4797-4804.
- Analysis of human sequence data reveals two pulses of archaic Denisovan admixture
- Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 through recombination and strong purifying selection
- Origin and Evolution of Pathogenic Coronaviruses
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