Literary Insights

BOOK LINK:

Here is a summary of The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins:

The Ancestor’s Tale is a book that traces human evolution backwards in time, meeting humanity’s ancestors at various points along the evolutionary tree. The narrative frame is a pilgrimage, with modern humans traveling back through time and converging with other species at “rendezvous points,” representing common ancestors that we share with those species.

The book begins with modern Homo sapiens meeting up with ancestors like Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Further back, humanity joins with ancestors shared with other apes like chimpanzees and gorillas. Still further back, mammals, reptiles, fish, and other major animal groups join the pilgrimage as we approach early single-celled life.

Throughout the journey, Dawkins explores details about many species and their evolutionary tales. The overall message is showing the unity of life through our shared ancestry. Dawkins also uses the journey to explain principles of evolution, common misconceptions, and the evidence that supports conclusions about evolutionary relationships. The book ultimately arrives at the origins of life itself before reflecting back on the epic pilgrimage through the history of life on Earth.

Some see the fine-tuning of the universe for life as evidence of a premeditating creator. But this just regresses to explaining the fine-tuned creator.
Others think the laws of physics may turn out to have fewer degrees of freedom than we think, undermining the appearance of fine-tuning.
Lee Smolin proposed a Darwinian model where universes mutate and reproduce, favoring universes good at producing black holes. This provides a mechanism for apparent fine-tuning without a premeditating creator.
In biology, evolution has no set endpoint or privileged line of descent. Progress is not the same as progress towards humanity. We must avoid hindsight bias that strings events into leading inevitably to humans.
A backward chronology, starting from humans and tracing ancestry back, can provide a unifying narrative ending in a single origin of life. A forward narrative emphasizes increasing diversity. Both approaches are useful for different purposes.
The passage describes a “backward chronology” tracing the evolutionary history of life back to a single common ancestor.
It frames this as a “pilgrimage” back through time, starting with humans and progressively joining with other species’ lineages at various “rendezvous points.”
There are about 40 such rendezvous points before reaching the origin of life itself. At each one, we meet a “Concestor,” a most recent common ancestor shared with the newly joining species.
The final Concestor is the universal common ancestor of all life. Earlier ones represent ancestors shared with progressively more inclusive groups of species.
This “backward” pilgrimage structure is compared to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with different species joining the pilgrimage to the “Canterbury” of life’s origin, and having tales to tell along the way.
Extinct species like dodos can join as “honorary pilgrims” since we have their DNA. The tales of these pilgrims form the substance of the book.
The passage explains conventions for words like “before” and “after” in the backward chronology.

Overall, it sets up a literary frame of a “pilgrimage” back through evolutionary time to life’s origins, picking up fellow travelers along the way.

There are three main methods for studying the past: archaeology (studying physical relics like fossils), records (like DNA sequences), and triangulation (comparing descendants to reconstruct ancestors).
The hardest physical relics are fossils made when bones, teeth, shells etc get preserved in stone over millions of years. Fossils give a bonus confirmation of evolution, but evolution would still be overwhelmingly supported even without them.
Fossils were originally only ranked by age using the Law of Superposition where younger strata lie atop older ones. But a global jigsaw is needed to create the full sequence as fossil beds are discontinuous.
DNA acts like a written record copied from the past, allowing relationships between organisms to be studied. Triangulation uses comparisons of living descendants to reconstruct extinct ancestors.
Together these methods allow the scenes and players of the distant evolutionary past to be reconstructed, just like archaeology reveals human history.

Here is a simplified summary of the key points:

Fossils are direct relics of the past, like archaeological specimens.
Written records are an example of ‘renewed relics’, information copied down through successive generations. This allows details to be preserved more accurately than oral tradition alone.
Writing represents a great advance over oral tradition in preserving information accurately over time. It has the potential for near-perfect accuracy if an agreed alphabet is used, because letters are discrete units that can be precisely copied.
In practice copying by scribes involves some errors and omissions, but writing still preserves information far better than oral transmission over generations.
For studying evolution there are no written records, only fossil relics. But fossils can be dated absolutely using radiometric techniques, providing a timeline for the history of life.
There are three main methods for reconstructing history: written records, renewed relics, and triangulation.
Written records only go back around 5,000 years. earlier history must be reconstructed using other methods.
DNA can be seen as a self-renewing ‘text’ that preserves information over millions of years as it is copied from generation to generation. It acts like a historical record written in the four-letter alphabet of DNA bases.
DNA information far outlasts the actual molecules, which are continually replaced. As long as life continues, the coded messages are preserved through copying.
DNA changes slowly so it contains a record of ancestral history that can be read by studying modern organisms. It is a ‘Genetic Book of the Dead’ documenting past environments and adaptation.
However, interpreting this DNA record requires informed analysis as it is not a literal chronicle. It must be combined with other methods.
Triangulation is one such method, where modern forms are compared to trace lineages and reconstruct common ancestors. This is commonly done with languages, grouping them into families of shared descent.
Used together, these three reconstruction methods allow historians to peer far back into the past beyond the limits of written records. DNA, properly interpreted, is an especially rich gift to the historian.
The book takes the form of a pilgrimage back in time to meet our ancestors. For the first tens of thousands of years, these ancestors would look much like modern humans, just more diverse.
The main changes we would see in the early stages would be cultural evolution, which is much faster than biological evolution.
Cultural evolution includes changes in language, technology, art, architecture, music, politics, etc.
Biological evolution is slow, taking hundreds or thousands of millennia to produce noticeable changes. Cultural evolution can transform societies dramatically in just decades or centuries.
The early parts of the journey will be dominated by observing cultural evolution through things like language, technology, politics and art. Only much further back will we start to see major biological changes in our ancestors.
To reflect this, the ‘tales’ in the early parts of the book focus on topics related to cultural evolution like language and technology, before moving on to biological tales later.
The tales aim to introduce important concepts about evolution in an engaging way through storytelling.

Here is a summary of the key points about the Agricultural Revolution and the transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers:

The Agricultural Revolution began around 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and led to the Neolithic or New Stone Age. It also emerged independently in other parts of the world like China and the Americas.
It involved a transition from a wandering hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled lifestyle based on farming and agriculture. This was a major change as hunter-gatherers did not have a concept of a fixed home.
The switch to agriculture supported larger populations but did not clearly improve health or happiness. Agriculture led to more diseases and ecological problems from overexploitation.
Hunter-gatherers likely also caused extinctions of large animals, so the idea they were ‘in balance’ with nature may be mistaken. Both groups used their knowledge to exploit the environment.
The domestication of animals was a gradual evolutionary process, not a sudden revolution. Without intentional breeding, domesticated animals became tamer and less self-sufficient over generations.
Similar accidental genetic changes happened with domesticated crops. Early farmers did not intentionally breed for desired traits.
The Agricultural Revolution led to specialization of labor - potters, weavers etc. traded with farmers. Food was no longer gathered from common land but cultivated on owned land.
Overall, the Agricultural Revolution brought major changes to human societies and ways of life, even if it did not clearly improve standards of living.
The transition from hunting/gathering to herding/farming likely happened gradually and inadvertently over time, as humans noticed some animals or plants were easier to domesticate.
Domestication led to genetic changes in animals like dogs and cattle, making them tamer, more useful to humans.
Humans also evolved genetically to adapt to agricultural life, like developing lactose tolerance in some populations that herded milk-producing animals.
Staple grains like wheat and maize have been bred over millennia to be more useful for humans, while humans may have evolved better tolerance for cereals that weren’t big parts of pre-agricultural diets.
Co-evolution between humans and domesticated species has likely shaped both genomes, increasing mutualistic benefits. The transition to agriculture set humanity on a new evolutionary trajectory.
Around 40,000 years ago, there was a sudden flourishing of human culture known as the ‘Great Leap Forward’, marked by the emergence of cave art, musical instruments, figurines, and other artifacts. This suggests a rapid development in human consciousness and creativity.
It’s debated whether the Great Leap Forward coincided with the origin of language itself. Some think language predated it, while others suggest the Leap could have been enabled by new advances in grammar, referential language, or representational art.
In any case, the Great Leap Forward represents a dramatic shift from the crude stone tools of earlier eras to more sophisticated artifacts and forms of expression. It inaugurated the Upper Paleolithic cultural revolution.
As we trace human ancestry backwards in time, there is a point where all of our ancestors converge. If you go back far enough, say 100 million years, any one of my ancestors at that time must also be an ancestor of yours. We all share common ancestors if you go back far enough.
The reductio ad absurdum argument proves this: if any ancestor of mine was not also an ancestor of yours that far back, it would imply our lineages marched side by side yet never interbred across evolution, which is absurd. We must have common ancestors.
The human family tree is extremely interconnected, with lots of interbreeding within and some migration between continents over time.
There must have been a point in history where two individuals from the same species had descendants that became the exclusive ancestors of modern humans and another species (like aardvarks), respectively.
Using mathematical models and assumptions, we can estimate when the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all living humans existed.
One model suggests the MRCA (called Concestor 0) lived around 12-13 generations or less than 4 centuries ago.
Before Concestor 0, there was a point (Chang Two) where all individuals were either common ancestors to all living humans or had no surviving descendants.
At Chang Two, around 80% of individuals theoretically became universal ancestors to all future humans. This point was estimated to be around 5-6 centuries ago.
So between Chang Two and Concestor 0, some individuals were ancestors to some but not all living humans. Before Chang Two, all individuals likely were ancestors to all living humans.
These mathematical models rely on simplifying assumptions and may not perfectly reflect real-world human ancestry. But they provide insight into the interconnectedness of the human family tree over time.
The calculated dates for everyone alive today to share a common ancestor (Concestor 0 or Rendezvous 0) are astonishingly recent - just tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago.
The calculations depend on assumptions like random mating that don’t hold perfectly in real populations. But even small amounts of migration between populations mean most people end up ancestral to everyone.
Concestor 0 may have lived outside Africa despite Africa having the most genetic diversity. This is because Concestor 0 is the most recent common ancestor that links even isolated populations like Tasmania to everyone else.
It seems paradoxical that under the model 80% of people become ‘universal ancestors’ with maximum ‘fitness’. This is resolved by realizing individuals are vehicles for gene survival.
An individual can be ancestral to everyone in the future even if none of their genes survive. Their contribution gets diluted over generations so their genes may not make it to distant descendants.
Genes have ‘gene trees’ tracing their ancestry back through parents, unlike people who have multiple ancestors. Each gene has a single parent, grandparent etc.
Gene trees are less mixed up than people trees. A gene takes a single path back, whereas people have multiple criss-crossing ancestral routes.
Some royal families had the haemophilia gene mutation, allowing the ancestral path of that gene to be traced. It originated with Queen Victoria, who was the first carrier.
The backwards tracing of a gene’s ancestry is called the ‘coalescent’. Gene copies coalesce back to a most recent common ancestral gene.
The coalescence point for a gene in different individuals doesn’t have to be the same as their most recent common ancestor person. It depends on the particular gene.
The key difference from people trees is that each gene has a single ancestral lineage back through parents, whereas people have multiple ancestral routes mixing at each generation. So gene trees are simpler to trace back.
DNA contains a genealogical history that can be traced in parallel to records of births, marriages, and deaths.
Any two alleles (gene variants) in an individual or population must have a most recent common ancestor (MRCA) at some point in the past. This applies to alleles at the same or different gene loci.
Closely related individuals share more gene trees than distant relatives. Kinship can be seen as a majority vote among genes.
Genes close together on a chromosome are more likely to be co-inherited due to infrequent recombination during meiosis. This can skew their ‘vote.’
The non-recombining Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA pass intact through male or female lines only. They are useful for studying ancestry.
‘Mitochondrial Eve’ and ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ represent MRCAs along strict female and male lineages. They were not a couple and lived tens of thousands of years apart.
MRCAs like Eve and Adam are moving honorifics, not fixed individuals. As lineages die out, MRCAs shift forward in time.
Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam were not lonely individuals, but were among many contemporaries. They are singled out only because they happen to be ancestors of all modern humans through female and male lines respectively.
Relying on a single gene like mitochondrial DNA can be misleading about ancestry. The full combination of genes gives a more complete picture.
Coalescent gene trees and molecular clocks can reveal information about past population sizes, bottlenecks, migrations etc.
The “Out of Africa” and “Multiregional” theories disagree on whether modern non-Africans descend from a single recent African exodus or from separate ancient lineages.
Different genes tell different stories - some support recent African origin, others more ancient regional separation.
Alan Templeton’s “Out of Africa Again and Again” synthesizes evidence from many genes and concludes there were three major waves of migration out of Africa, not just one.
There have been several major human migrations out of Africa over the past hundreds of thousands of years. The oldest, occurring 840,000-420,000 years ago, is dubbed ‘MOOA’ (middle migration out of Africa).
More recently, there was a migration out of Africa 50,000-60,000 years ago (YOOA - recent/young migration out of Africa) supported by genetic evidence.
Other migrations discussed include from Southern to Northern Europe, Southern to Northern Asia, across the Pacific, and from Northeast Asia to the Americas around 14,000 years ago.
Genes reveal histories of migrations for humans and other species (e.g. cheetahs, maize). Analysing genetic relationships shows humans are more closely related to some chimps than some other humans for some genes.
Fossils from Herto, Ethiopia 160,000 years ago represent ‘archaic Homo sapiens’ - almost anatomically modern humans transitional between earlier Homo erectus and modern Homo sapiens.
Archaic humans persisted alongside modern humans until around 100,000 years ago. They had large brains like modern humans but more robust bodies and different skull features. Taxonomy debated - may be Homo sapiens or separate Homo species.

Here is a summary of the key points about Homo erectus/ergaster (“Ergasts”):

Lived around 1 million years ago, persisting from about 1.8 million to 250,000 years ago.
Considered the immediate predecessors and partial contemporaries of Homo heidelbergensis/rhodesiensis (“Archaics”), who were in turn predecessors of modern humans.
Found in Africa (H. ergaster) and parts of Eurasia (H. erectus). Represent an ancient migration out of Africa.
Had smaller brains (900-1100 cc) than modern humans, housed in lower, less domed, more sloped skulls with pronounced brow ridges. Receding chins.
Probably hairier than modern humans but hard to know for sure.
Evidence they may have used fire, a major step for human evolution. This is suggested but not definitively proven by subtle traces of repeatedly used hearths.
Walked upright but were not necessarily more “erect” than predecessors or successors.
Considered by many to be direct ancestors of modern humans based on fossil evidence, though genetic relationships are unclear.
Persisted for a long time but eventually went extinct/evolved into successor species. An important transitional form.
Evidence from burnt-out tree stumps suggests Ergasts in Africa and Asia had campfires nearly 1.5 million years ago. This doesn’t necessarily mean they knew how to light fires, but may have kept naturally occurring fires alive.
Ergasts likely used fire for light, heat, scaring animals, and as a social focus, before using it for cooking.
Ergasts shaped stone tools and probably wooden and bone tools too. It is unclear if they could speak.
Fossil evidence provides clues but is not definitive on whether Ergasts could speak. Some features suggest possible speech capability, others suggest limitations. Opinions differ among experts.
Genetic evidence related to the FOXP2 gene suggests human speech capability evolved relatively recently, after the Ergast period. This gene differs between humans and other primates in ways that may be connected to speech.
Overall, the evidence seems to suggest Ergasts probably could not speak as modern humans do. But the question remains open to debate given the limitations of the available evidence. Advances in science may eventually help solve this unresolved question about when humans developed language.
Rocks are made up of tiny crystals, often too small to see. Common rock crystals include quartz, feldspars, and calcite.
Igneous rocks like granite form when molten material cools and crystallizes. Sedimentary rocks like sandstone and limestone form from fragments of other rocks compacted together.
Fossils are often preserved when minerals replace or fill the pores in bones and shells. Complete soft tissues are rarely preserved.
Fossils provide evidence of evolution and allow dating of rocks. But fossilization is rare, so the fossil record has many gaps.
Homo habilis fossils dating back around 2 million years ago are some of the earliest human ancestors found. They had a mix of primitive ape-like and more advanced human-like traits.
Homo ergaster fossils dating back around 1.5 million years ago show more human-like body proportions and brain size. This species spread out of Africa into Eurasia.
Both habilines and ergasts display evidence of increasing brain size and stone tool use compared to earlier hominins, marking important steps in human evolution.
Homo habilis had a larger brain than Australopithecus, but smaller and less robust than Homo ergaster. This expansion of brain size is a key distinction between habilis and earlier hominids.
There was likely no sudden transition or ‘rubicon’ between habilis and earlier hominids. Evolution proceeds gradually, so habilis would have been similar to its immediate ancestors.
We want to measure habilis’ brain size relative to its body size, to see if it was unusually large. This involves plotting brain mass against body mass for many mammals on a logarithmic scale.
Log scales allow vastly different body sizes to be compared, and let us easily calculate multiplicative differences (e.g. a brain 6 times larger than expected).
Volume scales as the cube of length, area as the square. So when plotting log brain mass vs log body mass, the slope indicates how brain size scales relative to body size.
Habilis had a larger brain than expected for its body size compared to other apes, marking an important expansion in hominid brain evolution. But there was unlikely to be a sudden jump between it and previous hominids.
If you plot mass vs. dissolving rate for sugar lumps on logarithmic axes, you get a straight line with slope 2/3. This shows a precise relationship between volume (proportional to mass) and surface area (proportional to dissolving rate).
Log-log plots like this are informative because the slope reveals intuitive relationships between things like volume and surface area, which are very important in biology.
The same principle applies to shapes of animal bodies. If shape is constant, volume scales as the cube of length while surface area scales as the square.
But shape often evolves differently with size, as seen in the limb proportions of elephants vs shrews. This is because surface-related needs like heat loss often scale differently than volume-related needs like strength.
We can quantify brain size relative to body size using log-log plots. The slope is typically 3/4, not 1/1 or 2/3. This ‘expected’ slope allows defining an encephalization quotient (EQ) showing how big a brain is relative to expectations.
Humans have EQ about 6 times higher than the typical mammal. Mammals as a group have higher EQ than typical vertebrates. So human brain size is large even relative to other primates.
There were likely multiple species of ape-men (hominids) coexisting in Africa at various times during human evolution. Many fossils we previously thought were direct human ancestors may actually be human cousins or collateral relatives.
‘Robust’ ape-men like Australopithecus robustus and Australopithecus boisei evolved from more ‘gracile’ (slender) ape ancestors. Early humans (Homo) also emerged from gracile australopithecine stock.
Well-known gracile australopithecine fossils include Mrs Ples, Mr Ples, and Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis). Lucy lived around 3.2 million years ago and her species is a candidate for a direct human ancestor.
It’s difficult to definitively identify direct human ancestors versus evolutionary cousins. The desire to find the “earliest human ancestor” has led to overhyping of fossil discoveries that may be human relatives but not direct ancestors.
Overall, the fossil record shows a diverse array of hominids in Africa, with robust and gracile forms coexisting and eventually leading to the emergence of the Homo lineage that includes modern humans.
Early human ancestors from East Africa (Australopithecus afarensis like Lucy) and South Africa (Australopithecus africanus like Mrs Ples) had slightly different brain sizes, but the difference was minor - their brains were more similar than different.
Over time, human ancestors evolved to be more different from early forms. Lucy’s species was slightly different from earlier Australopithecus anamensis which lived around 4 million years ago.
An exciting find called Little Foot, dating to over 4 million years ago, was discovered in South Africa. It rivals the completeness of Lucy’s skeleton but is older and more ape-like, with divergent big toes suited for grasping branches. This suggests it was bipedal but still climbed trees.
Walking upright on two legs separates humans dramatically from other mammals. There was no obvious advantage in efficiency or speed over four-legged walking.
One theory suggests bipedalism allowed display of genitals. More accepted is that it freed hands for carrying food and tools, though it’s unclear why only human ancestors developed this and not other apes.
The story will continue by looking further back to Ardipithecus ramidus, a possible human ancestor over 4.4 million years ago that was more chimp-like but may have been bipedal. Little Foot will then explain theories on the origins of bipedality.
Savannah grassland foods like roots and tubers are spread out, requiring continuous grazing. Other foods like meat and tubers are harder to find but worth carrying back in quantity.
Leopards drag kills up trees to protect them from scavengers and eat them over multiple meals. Our ancestors’ smaller jaws wouldn’t allow this.
Bipedalism may have evolved to free hands for carrying food back to mates/children or for trading favors (e.g. sharing meat for future return favors). This exchange of favors was a precursor to money.
The “carrying food home” theory is elaborated in Owen Lovejoy’s idea that males provisioned nursing females to accelerate weaning and bring them back into fertility sooner. This allowed the provisioning male to gain a reproductive advantage.
Other theories suggest bipedalism helped see over grass, keep the head above water while wading, or minimize sun exposure.
Jonathan Kingdon proposes bipedalism arose gradually from anatomical changes related to “squat-feeding” on the forest floor, not an immediate adaptation.
The author suggests sexual selection could also have played a role in bipedalism, which he elaborates later.
Enlarged brain previously thought to precede bipedalism, but fossils like Lucy indicate bipedalism came first. Freed hands may have then driven brain enlargement.
Senut and Pickford suggested orrorins are ancestral to later hominids, not Lucy’s species. They argue Ardipithecus could be ancestral to chimpanzees, not humans.
The skull Toumai, discovered by Brunet’s team, is very old (6-7 million years) and human-like but with some ape-like features. Its discoverers claim it was bipedal.
If Toumai and Orrorin were bipedal so soon after the human/chimp split, it poses problems for a tidy view of human evolution.
Possible explanations:

Orrorin/Toumai weren’t bipedal.
Evolution of bipedality was extremely rapid after the split.
Bipedality evolved more than once.
Chimps descended from more human-like ancestors and reverted to quadrupedalism.

There is no strong reason to favor one explanation over the others without more evidence. Some doubt the dating or bipedality of Orrorin/Toumai.
In Rendezvous 1, human ancestors encounter the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos around 5-7 million years ago in Africa.
The common ancestor, Concestor 1, was likely more chimpanzee-like, hairy, walked on knuckles, had a chimp-sized brain, used tools, was omnivorous but preferred fruit.
Chimpanzees and bonobos show evidence of local cultures and traditions in tool use and social behaviors, suggesting Concestor 1 also had some cultural behaviors.
Current theory is that the Congo River provided a geographic barrier that led to the divergence of chimpanzee and bonobo species. The Rift Valley may have separated human ancestors from chimpanzee ancestors.
There is debate over the “East Side Story” theory that the Rift Valley provided the key barrier, given fossils like Sahelanthropus from far west in Chad.
More fossils will shed light, but for now the evidence suggests Concestor 1 was more chimp-like than human-like. Chimpanzees and bonobos provide clues about the capabilities of this shared ancestor.
Bonobos use sex to resolve social issues and power struggles within their groups. They are very promiscuous and use sex for bonding, appeasement, and asserting dominance among all troop members.
Humans are equally closely related to bonobos and chimpanzees, despite the misconception that we resemble bonobos more due to their more peaceful nature. We share a common ancestor with both species.
Gorillas are entirely vegetarian and live in harems led by a dominant male. It is hard to speculate on the breeding system of our shared ancestor with gorillas, Concestor 2.
Apes, especially gorillas, have long been potent generators of myths and polarized attitudes. Early explorers often confused them with humans, particularly black humans.
The scientific discovery of gorillas lagged behind other apes due to confusion between apes, monkeys, and humans. Gorillas were the last great ape discovered by science.
Attitudes have shifted and scientists now emphasize the close evolutionary relationship between apes, including humans. We are apes rather than distinct from them.
The article traces the history of scientific understanding and naming of the gorilla, from early exaggerated tales of its ferocity to its formal scientific description by Savage and Wyman in 1847.
Early explorers often portrayed African peoples as closer to apes than Europeans, violating the principle that all humans are equally evolutionarily close. Racism and speciesism have shaped attitudes to both apes and other groups of humans.
The Great Ape Project proposes granting great apes similar moral status to humans where practical.
Molecular evidence dates the divergence of orangutans from other apes to around 14 million years ago in the Miocene. Where the common ancestor lived is debated - Africa or Asia?
Fossils like Sivapithecus suggest Asia, but after the African ape affinity was established, Africa was favored. The ‘Out of Africa’ theory proposes an ancestral ape line migrated from Africa to Asia and back.
The Orangutan’s Tale argues this theory neatly explains the evidence via ‘parsimony’ - avoiding extra assumptions. It suggests Concestor 3 lived in Asia.

Here are the key points from the passage:

Rendezvous 4 occurs around 18 million years ago, probably in Asia, when gibbons join the pilgrimage.
There are up to 12 modern gibbon species, all living in South East Asia. They are small apes and expert brachiators, swinging through trees using their arms.
In the Miocene there were many small apes like gibbons. Getting smaller is an easy evolutionary change.
Brachiation means swinging by the arms rather than walking on legs. Gibbons are spectacular brachiators, using their long arms and grasp.
Gibbons are second only to humans in walking upright among apes. Concestor 4 was likely a small, tree-dwelling ape with some brachiation skill.
It’s speculated vestiges of gibbon-like abilities could have persisted in human brains, reemerging in Africa, but this is unconfirmed.
The main point is gibbons joined around 18 million years ago, were small, highly arboreal apes adept at brachiation, and may have passed remnants of their skills to human ancestors.

Here is a summary of the key points about Concestor 4:

It was probably more arboreal and smaller than Concestor 3.
If it hung and swung from its arms, its arms were probably not as specialized for brachiation as modern gibbons, and not as long.
It likely had a gibbon-like face with a short snout.
It didn’t have a tail, or had a short internal tail (coccyx).
The reason apes lost their tails is unclear, but some possibilities are that tails can be a nuisance for vertical brachiators like gibbons and bipedal walkers.
Zoologists need to further examine why apes lost their tails.
The a posteriori counterfactual of how a tail would have interacted with human habits like wearing trousers raises interesting questions.
When classifying species, some characteristics may be counted multiple times if we are not careful. For example, leg color in millipedes could be counted 100 times if each leg is considered separately, rather than just once.
Visible features reflect underlying DNA differences. DNA provides a wealth of comparison data, though some regions show similarities between distant relatives for unknown reasons.
Duplicated DNA sequences can also lead to multiple counting and must be identified. Despite this, DNA analysis is very useful for constructing evolutionary trees.
Researchers use the same techniques to study the evolution of literary texts, like different manuscript versions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Differences are identified and texts grouped based on similarity. Parsimony methods aim to construct trees that minimize evolutionary changes. Some differences are uninformative for this.
With the Canterbury Tales texts, some differences support contradictory groupings, so the best tree requires some changes to occur more than once. DNA analysis faces the same challenges. Caution is still needed when interpreting trees.
The text discusses using phylogenetic methods to determine the relationships between different manuscript versions of the first lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Parsimony analysis aims to find the tree topology that minimizes the number of changes required. However, it can be misled by convergent changes, especially when branches are long.
Likelihood methods consider both tree topology and branch lengths, and assess which tree makes the observed data most probable. They are less affected by long branch attraction.
Bayesian approaches consider the relative probabilities of all possible trees, rather than seeking a single best tree.
Measures like bootstrapping assess the robustness of parts of the tree topology.
For real organisms, parsimony was used to construct a morphology-based gibbon cladogram, but relationships were not fully resolved. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA gave a more resolved gibbon phylogeny.
For very distantly related species, even likelihood methods struggle. Alternative rare genomic changes may then be needed to reconstruct deep phylogenies.
The rendezvous point with Concestor 5 is around 25 million years ago in the Oligocene epoch. This marks the transition from the Neogene to the earlier Palaeogene period.
At this rendezvous, the old world monkeys join the ape ancestors. There are around 100 species of old world monkeys today.
The last common ancestor of living old world monkeys was around 14 million years ago. Fossils like Victoriapithecus help illuminate this period.
Concestor 5 likely had some catarrhine features like narrow nostrils and a tail. It was probably similar to fossils like Aegyptopithecus that lived earlier.
The loss of the tail in apes happened after this rendezvous point, not at it. Concestor 5 likely had a tail.
Africa was isolated as a gigantic island at this time, separated from the nearest land in Spain. The old world monkeys originated on this isolated African continent before later migrating.
Rendezvous 6 occurred around 40 million years ago when the New World monkeys diverged from the line leading to apes and Old World monkeys.
The ancestral New World monkeys likely originated in Africa and reached South America by rafting across the Atlantic, probably aided by ocean currents and island chains. This only had to happen once for a founding population to become established.
All New World monkeys are more closely related to each other than to any Old World primates, suggesting they descended from a single migration event, though the evidence is not definitive.
New World monkeys probably reached South America between 40 and 25 million years ago based on molecular evidence and the fossil record.
New World monkeys display a range of locomotor behaviors including quadrupedal walking, brachiation, and spectacular leaping. They also include the only nocturnal anthropoids, the owl monkeys.
The prehensile tail found in spider, woolly, and howler monkeys is used like an extra limb. The tail allows impressive aerial acrobatics.
Tiny pygmy marmosets are the smallest anthropoids, while owl monkeys have the largest eyes.

Here is a summary of the key points about howler monkey color vision:

Most mammals have poor color vision compared to other vertebrates, likely due to their nocturnal ancestry. Primates are an exception.
Old World monkeys and apes have trichromatic color vision based on three cone types: red, green, and blue. This was rediscovered after early mammals lost it.
New World monkeys are different - most have dichromatic vision. An exception is the howler monkey, which evolved trichromatic vision independently from Old World primates.
Trichromatic vision is thought to be advantageous for finding fruit amongst green foliage. It also helps detect young reddish leaves.
Color vision works by comparing signals from different cone types with overlapping sensitivity ranges. The brain interprets ratios of cone activation as color.
Howler monkeys serve as an example of how new genes can arise by duplication and divergence of old genes, providing evidence for evolution. Their color vision evolved independently but resembles Old World primates.
Opsins are light-sensitive proteins that sit in cone cells in the retina. When hit by a photon of light, they trigger a signal to the brain about color.
There are different opsins that are sensitive to different colors of light (red, green, blue). This is determined by differences in the opsin genes.
Most New World monkeys have a dichromatic system where males have either a red or green opsin, plus blue. Females can be dichromatic or trichromatic.
This red/green opsin polymorphism is maintained likely due to frequency-dependent selection or heterozygote advantage.
Howler monkeys became trichromatic via a translocation event that put the red and green opsins together on one X chromosome.
Humans/Old World monkeys gradually evolved trichromatic vision through gene duplication and divergence of the opsins.
The evolutionary history of opsin genes can be traced through neighboring genes that get moved together during chromosomal reorganizations like translocations.
Alu is a ‘transposable element’, a short piece of parasitic DNA that can replicate itself around the genome.
Alu elements are found at both ends of the duplicated opsin gene region, suggesting Alu may have been responsible for the duplication that led to trichromatic vision in primates.
The duplication was likely an accidental byproduct of Alu reproducing itself, not an intentional or beneficial change.
Similar mistakes in chromosome alignment during meiosis can still cause colorblindness in humans today.
Gene duplication, through mechanisms like Alu transposition or whole genome duplication, is a major source of new genes over evolutionary time.
The brain likely ‘learns’ to associate firing patterns from different opsin-expressing cone cells with different colors, allowing it to accommodate genetic changes in opsin genes.
Accidental duplications like the opsin duplication can have momentous evolutionary consequences, even though they are not ‘intentional’ or ‘trying’ to bring about change.
Rendezvous 8 is when lemurs, bushbabies, lorises, and pottos join the ancestral primate lineage. The timing is debated, with estimates ranging from 63 to 83 million years ago.
These primates are called strepsirhines, meaning “split nostril.” They have dog-like nostrils compared to haplorhines like monkeys, apes, and humans which have simple nostril holes.
Most strepsirhines are lemurs, found only in Madagascar. Others are bushbabies and galagos in Africa, and lorises and pottos in Asia.
Bushbabies are agile leapers that hunt insects in the forest canopy. Pottos eat fruit in the canopy. Lorises and pottos creep slowly along branches to hunt.
Fossils like plesiadapiforms give clues about the ancestral strepsirhine primate. It likely had some lemur-like and some loris/bushbaby-like features.
The ancestral strepsirhine probably lived in trees eating fruit, insects and other small prey. Its descendants specialized for different forest levels and lifestyles.
The aye-aye is a bizarre-looking nocturnal lemur found only in Madagascar. It has huge eyes, long spindly fingers, and a very long, thin middle finger used to tap on wood to find insects and pull them out.
Madagascar split off from Africa 165 million years ago and India 90 million years ago. Its unique fauna and flora are mostly descended from ancient Gondwanan species or rare immigrants that rafted across the sea.
Madagascar lacks many typical African species but has unique primates, carnivores, rodents, baobab trees, palms, and chameleons. Lemurs likely rafted over after the island split off.
Lemurs range from tiny mouse lemurs to the giant extinct Archaeoindris. Other notable lemurs are the ring-tailed lemur, indri, and sifaka.
The isolation of Madagascar allowed lemurs to diversify and fill ecological niches in the absence of monkeys and apes.
Madagascar is a biological treasure trove, home to many unique species found nowhere else. Though it constitutes only 0.1% of the world’s land area, it contains 4% of all animal and plant species.
For biologists, Madagascar is like an earthly paradise due to its isolation and high degree of endemic species. It serves as an excellent case study for how isolation shapes evolution.
Madagascar is the first in a series of large, isolated islands that have radically structured mammal evolution over time. The others are the ancient northern continent Laurasia, South America, Africa, and Australia.
These isolated landmasses allowed unique faunas to develop before subsequent continental collisions and migrations mixed things up. Each made its own special contribution to mammalian diversity.
The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) extinction 65 million years ago, likely caused by a huge meteorite impact, wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species. This mass extinction was a major turning point that allowed mammals to flourish and diversify.
Though catastrophic for most life at the time, the K/T extinction opened up ecological space for the mammalian survivors. Freed from the dominance of the dinosaurs, early mammals evolved rapidly to exploit new niches.
The K/T extinction shows how random catastrophic events can shape evolutionary history. Humans should consider developing technologies to defend against another such impact, which could come at any time.
There are three main models proposed to explain the evolution of mammals after the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs: the Big Bang Model, the Delayed Explosion Model, and the Non-explosive Model.
The Big Bang Model posits that one mammal species survived the extinction event, proliferated and diversified immediately afterwards, with most lineages rapidly splitting near the K/T boundary.
The Delayed Explosion Model agrees an explosion of mammal diversity happened after the K/T boundary, but contends the mammals were not descended from a single ancestor. Instead, multiple shrew-like lineages survived and diversified when dinosaurs disappeared. Their ancestors diverged deep in the past.
The Non-explosive Model sees no sharp discontinuity in mammal evolution at the K/T boundary - diversification occurred gradually before and after.
Evidence currently favors the Delayed Explosion Model, with major mammal splits occurring deep in the past, but most lineages remaining similar until after the K/T extinction removed dinosaurs and allowed rapid diversification.
Rendezvous 9 is with colugos and tree shrews 70 million years ago. Their reproductive systems differ - colugos resemble marsupials, while tree shrew mothers provide minimal care. Phylogeny here is disputed, underscoring uncertainties in the sequence of concestors.
Rendezvous 10 is where our ancestral pilgrims meet the vast horde of rodents and rabbits. Rabbits were once classified as rodents but are now in their own order Lagomorpha. However, genetic studies show rabbits and rodents are closely related in the cohort Glires.
Rodents make up over 40% of mammal species and there are more individual rodents than all other mammals combined. They have prospered alongside human agricultural development.
Rodents are highly successful due to their ever-growing gnawing incisors which allow them to eat almost anything. Different rodent species have adapted to diverse environments worldwide.
Most rodents are small but some species can reach sheep-size, like the capybara. Giant extinct South American rodents were even larger.
Rodents would likely survive a nuclear apocalypse and could emerge as the dominant scavenging survivors, spreading from cities back into the countryside after consuming spilled food supplies and corpses. Their populations would boom and crash repeatedly.
The mouse genome has been extensively studied and sequenced, revealing that mammal genomes are surprisingly small (around 30,000 genes) and very similar to each other.
The genome should not be thought of as a blueprint, but more like a recipe or instruction manual using genes as subroutines. The difference between species comes from how genes are deployed and ordered, not the genes themselves.
Genes are like toolbox routines that perform standard functions and get reused in different combinations, not unique sentences. Different cell types string together different orders of genes like programs calling toolbox routines.
Mouse and human bone cells are more similar to each other than to other cell types in their species, because they need the same toolbox routines. Mammal genomes are all about the same size because they need the same genetic toolbox.
Differences between mice and humans stem from how the toolbox routines are called and ordered, not from differences in most of the genes themselves.
The “phenotype” refers to the observable characteristics of an organism produced by the interaction of its genes (genotype) and environment. Natural selection acts on the phenotype.

Here is a summary of the key points about the expense of rival types of organism:

Darwin used the term “favoured races” to refer to possessors of favoured genes, not races in the normal sense.
Selection drives evolution by favoring genes whose phenotypic expression helps organisms survive and reproduce.
Genes survive over generations by collaborating with other genes to produce beneficial phenotypes for that organism’s lifestyle.
Beaver genes produce phenotypes like flat tails and strong teeth that are useful for the beaver’s aquatic lifestyle. Other gene collectives produce phenotypes suited for tigers, camels, etc.
The extended phenotype is a special kind of phenotype. It includes structures like beaver dams that extend beyond the body but still serve to promote the genes that produce them.
There is no real distinction between a physical phenotype like a tail and an extended phenotype like a dam. Both are produced by gene expression through chains of causation.
Any consequence of a gene, no matter how indirect, can be visible to natural selection and serve to promote that gene’s survival.
Beaver dam building behavior is an extended phenotype, produced by genetic programming in the brain. It evolved because the lakes created by dams help beavers survive and reproduce.
85 million years ago, the rodents and rabbits were joined by a much more diverse group of mammals called the laurasiatheres. This group consists of 7 different orders, including pangolins, carnivores, horses/tapirs/rhinos, antelopes/cattle/camels/pigs/hippos, bats, and moles/hedgehogs.
The order Carnivora contains cats, dogs, bears, seals, etc. They all descended from a common ancestor that would have been classified as a carnivore. Carnivores and their prey evolved long legs for running by modifying hand and foot bones.
Ungulates are animals that walk on hooves, like horses, cattle, and antelopes. They evolved this way of walking independently several times via different modifications of toe bones. Some extinct South American ungulates resembled horses and cattle so closely they fooled taxonomists.
The surprising Cetartiodactyla member mentioned is whales/dolphins - their ancestry traces back to even-toed ungulates like hippos. Molecular evidence indicates whales are closely related to hippos.
Convergent evolution produced striking similarities between placental and marsupial mammals in Australia. Placentals later invaded and dominated marsupials everywhere except Australia.
Ameghino believed litopterns, an extinct group of South American mammals, were early relatives of horses, showing potential national pride in his country being the origin of horses.
Bats are the only mammals besides birds capable of true flight. With nearly 1,000 species, they are highly diverse and have sophisticated echolocation.
Insectivores like shrews, moles, and hedgehogs are a major group of small laurasiatheres that eat insects and invertebrates.
Molecular evidence shockingly suggests whales’ closest living relatives are hippos, forming the group Cetartiodactyla. This diverges before other even-toed ungulates like pigs.
Whales evolved from land mammals that returned to the water, likely carnivorous or omnivorous ones. Possible ancestral groups include mesonychids, ancient hoofed carnivores.
The fossil record shows whale ancestors like Pakicetus and Basilosaurus emerging in the Eocene after the rise of early even-toed ungulates in the Paleocene following the extinction of dinosaurs.
The discovery that whales are closely related to hippos based on molecular evidence was surprising because it went against traditional zoological groupings.
It undermined the assumption that you could pick any species from a group (like artiodactyls) and it would represent the whole group in genetic comparisons.
This whale-hippo connection suggests you can’t always trust that taxonomic groups will stick together genetically.
It shakes confidence in making taxonomic generalizations based on limited sampling of species.
The author rationalizes it by noting whales took off evolutionarily by adapting completely to aquatic life, leaving other even-toed ungulates behind.
A similar evolutionary spur occurred when fish ancestors emerged onto land as tetrapods.
The hippo-whale connection shouldn’t be more surprising than the fish-tetrapod transition.
The author was further surprised to learn Ernst Haeckel had proposed in 1866 that hippos were the closest cousins to whales, showing there is nothing new under the sun.

Thank you for the detailed summary. Here is a brief summary of the key points:

R.A. Fisher proposed that natural selection equalizes parental expenditure on rearing sons versus daughters in a population, rather than equalizing the numbers of males and females.
Parental expenditure includes costs like food, time, risk. Economists call this “opportunity cost”.
Extreme polygyny in some species like elephant seals does not violate Fisher’s theory, because a few dominant males still invest heavily in offspring while most males invest little.
Sexual dimorphism (size differences between males and females) tend to be greater in polygynous species where some males monopolize females. This supports Fisher’s theory.
Evidence suggests humans may have an evolutionary history of moderate polygyny based on sexual dimorphism and patterns in modern societies. But monogamy and polygyny both occur.
The main point is that natural selection equalizes parental investment in males versus females, even if the numbers of males and females or their traits differ. Fisher’s theory holds widely across species.
There is a correlation between degree of sexual dimorphism (difference in size between males and females) and polygyny (males having multiple mates) in some species.
In species like elephant seals, the largest males dominate breeding through brute physical force.
In humans, cultural factors like wealth and power can confer breeding advantages over physical size alone. So human evolution may have involved a shift from physical competition to cultural competition between males.
Chimpanzees have large testes compared to their body size, suggesting past sperm competition due to females mating with multiple males.
Humans have testes more similar in size to gorillas and gibbons, suggesting low sperm competition in our past. This indicates our ancestors were probably mildly polygynous rather than promiscuous like chimpanzees.
Evidence of human sexual dimorphism and testis size suggests our recent ancestors were weakly polygynous, with a tendency towards harems, rather than strictly monogamous.
But we should not use evidence of past polygyny to justify moral or political positions today. What happened in evolution does not dictate what is right or wrong now.

Here is a summary of the key points about Rendezvous 13 and the Afrotheres:

The Afrotheres are the last major group of placental mammals to join the pilgrimage. They originated and diversified in Africa.
The group includes elephants, sea cows (manatees and dugongs), hyraxes, aardvarks, golden moles, tenrecs, and elephant shrews.
These diverse mammals were once thought to be only distantly related, but genetic evidence shows they actually share a common ancestor and form a natural grouping - the Afrotheres.
Their ancestry traces back to when Africa was an isolated continent, allowing this unique group of mammals to evolve independently from other placental mammal lineages.
Relationships within the Afrotheres are still being resolved. The elephants, sea cows, and hyraxes form one branch; the position of the aardvark is debated; and the tenrecs, golden moles, and elephant shrews form another branch.
Despite their diverse appearances today, the Afrotheres represent an ancient African mammalian radiation stemming from a common ancestor that lived in isolation on the African continent.

Here’s a summary of the key points:

Elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than to shrews, despite their name. They are members of the ancient African mammalian group Afrotheria.
Elephants and their extinct relatives like mammoths and mastodons are also Afrotherians. Their most distinctive feature is the proboscis or trunk, which evolved to help them drink. Tusks evolved from enlarged incisors.
Elephants were once thought most closely related to hyraxes, but genetic evidence now shows their closest living relatives are actually manatees and dugongs (sea cows). Hyraxes are the next closest relatives.
Manatees and dugongs are fully aquatic and resemble mythical sirens, giving rise to their name Sirenia. They never come on land. The enormous Steller’s sea cow was hunted to extinction just 27 years after its discovery.
The Afrotherians are the most ancient African mammalian group, representing the continent’s “old timers” compared to more recent arrivals like antelopes. Molecular evidence continues to reveal surprising relationships between these ancient African mammals.

Here is a summary of the passage about marsupials and the marsupial mole:

Marsupials are one of the three major groups of mammals, along with monotremes and placentals. They are distinguished by giving birth to very undeveloped young that complete their development in a pouch (marsupium).
Marsupials are most diverse and abundant in Australinea (Australia and New Guinea), after going extinct in other continents like North America. It’s thought they reached Australinea from South America via Antarctica.
In isolation, Australinea’s marsupials radiated to fill ecological niches occupied by placental mammals elsewhere, evolving into around 200 species.
The marsupial mole is an example, convergently evolving a burrowing lifestyle like the placental moles of Eurasia and Africa to fill that niche underground. Despite similarities, marsupial moles are more closely related to other Australinean marsupials than placental moles.
This demonstrates how Australinea’s isolated marsupials adapted to open niches, evolving remarkable diversity and convergent similarity to placentals filling the same roles elsewhere.

Here is a summary of the key points about monotremes in the passage:

Monotremes (platypus and echidnas) join the pilgrimage of mammals at Rendezvous 15 around 180 million years ago. They represent the only surviving members of an ancient southern group of mammals called the australosphenidans.
The australosphenidans evolved in the ancient southern continent Gondwana. All other mammals, the therians, including marsupials, evolved in the northern continent Laurasia and are called boreosphenidans.
Monotremes are unique among mammals in laying eggs rather than giving live birth. They also have a range of primitive features like a reptilian shoulder girdle.
The platypus and echidna are found only in Australia and New Guinea. The platypus is semi-aquatic and has a duck-like bill. Echidnas are specialist termite/ant eaters with a long snout and spikes for protection.
Fossils show that monotremes were once more diverse with some aquatic and marine forms. But only the platypus and echidnas survive today.
Molecular evidence confirms monotremes diverged early from other mammal groups, supporting the idea they represent an ancient southern lineage of mammals.
The monotremes (platypus and echidnas) are an early offshoot of the mammalian family tree, diverging from the therians (marsupials and placentals). The therians that went north became boreosphenidans, while those that went south into Gondwana became afrotheres and marsupials.
Monotremes retain some reptilian features like laying eggs, but also have mammalian traits like milk secretion and a single bone lower jaw. Their limbs sprawl a bit more than typical mammals.
The platypus bill functions as a sophisticated sensory organ, allowing the platypus to hunt with its eyes, ears and nostrils closed. It is richly innervated and controlled by a large part of the brain, like a human hand.
The platypus is not “primitive” just because it retains some ancestral traits. It has had just as much time to evolve as other mammals. The duckbill itself is a highly evolved sensory organ, not primitive at all.
The “platypunculus” brain map shows the platypus brain is dominated by the bill area, like the human brain is dominated by the hand area in Penfield’s homunculus. This reflects the importance of the bill as a sensory organ.
Platypuses have around 40,000 electrical sensors and 60,000 mechanical sensors called push rods distributed over their bill. These map to large areas of the platypunculus (platypus brain map).
Brain cells receive input from both electrical and mechanical sensors, suggesting the platypus combines this information to locate prey.
The platypus may use the time lag between electrical discharges from prey muscles (lightning) and disturbance waves in water from prey movement (thunder) to calculate distance to prey, similar to how we use thunder and lightning.
Scanning movements of the bill help pinpoint direction, like radar. The platypus forms a 3D electrical image of prey.
The paddlefish uses a similar electrosensory system with even more sensors along its elongated paddle. Juveniles rely more on this than adults.
An ancient trilobite called Reedocalymene likely also used its elongated rostrum for electrical sensing of prey.
Other fish generate their own strong electrical fields and sense distortions to navigate and find prey. Weakly electric fish use lower voltages for similar purposes.
The platypus has a bill that contains electroreceptors allowing it to sense electric fields and locate prey. This is analogous to the electric sense of the electric fish Gymnotus.
The platypus swims by waving its tail rather than its body, similar to electric fish, in order to not distort its electric sense.
The male platypus has venomous spurs on its hind legs used against rivals, unlike other venomous vertebrates that use venom for predation or defense. This venom acts directly on pain receptors.
The star-nosed mole has a ring of 22 fleshy tentacles on its nose that act as a remarkably sensitive touch organ, with the central tentacle being the most sensitive.
The mole’s brain maps of the nose star indicate it lives in a tactile world, similar to how bats use sound to construct models of their surroundings.
The platypus and mole have specialized sensory organs suited to their ecological niches, indicating animals evolve adaptations to serve their particular lifestyles and needs.
The timespan between the mammal-like reptiles and Concestor 16 (the ancestor that unites mammals with reptiles/birds) covers about 130 million years, with no living ‘rendezvous’ species representing milestones.
This timespan includes the Triassic, Permian, and late Carboniferous periods, which saw major extinction events like the Permo-Triassic mass extinction that wiped out 90% of species.
The mammal-like reptiles are important ‘shadow pilgrims’ bridging the gap between our mammalian ancestors and reptilian ancestors, occupying ecological niches later filled by dinosaurs and then mammals.
There is debate over terminology like ‘reptile’ and ‘mammal’ as grades versus clades. Strict cladistics would group birds with reptiles and require calling very similar mammal/reptile ancestors by different names.
Three major successive waves of mammal-like reptiles are recognized as ‘shadowy milestones’ between the shrew-like Concestor 15 and the lizard-like Concestor 16.
At Rendezvous 16, around 310 million years ago, the sauropsids (reptiles and birds) join the mammal ancestors. This brings a huge influx of new pilgrim species - around 17,000 modern species comprising birds, crocodiles, snakes, lizards, tuataras, and turtles.
Sauropsids dominate the planet for most of the time since Concestor 16, especially the dinosaurs. Even today sauropsids outnumber mammal species.
Sauropsids consist of two major groups - lizard-like reptiles (snakes, chameleons, iguanas, etc.) and archosaurs (pterodactyls, crocodiles, birds).
Birds are specially close relatives of the saurischian dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and sauropods. Feathered dinosaur fossils from China confirm this link.
Ornithischian dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Triceratops are more distantly related to birds, despite their name meaning ‘bird-hipped’.
Aquatic reptiles like ichthyosaurs are likely more closely related to lizard-like reptiles than dinosaurs.
Pterodactyls also have a weaker claim to be true dinosaurs compared to birds.
The huge influx of sauropsid species marks an important milestone in the evolution of land vertebrates. Their dominance for most of history makes this a major rendezvous point.

Unfortunately I am unable to provide a full summary of the excerpt, as it seems to be an incomplete passage. However, I can summarize the key points:

The passage discusses the vast span of geological time, and how natural selection and evolution can play out over these long timescales.
It mentions the many ancient creatures that once inhabited the Earth, including dinosaurs, pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and more.
The author reflects on the demise of the dinosaurs, but notes that they survive in a way through modern birds.
The passage cites experiments showing how rapid evolutionary change can occur over just dozens of generations in fast-reproducing organisms like fruit flies. This highlights how evolution does not always proceed steadily over geological timescales.
It uses the analogy of a cork bobbing in the ocean to illustrate how short-term fluctuations can obscure long-term evolutionary trends.
The author argues that selection pressures fluctuate dramatically over time, and we shouldn’t extrapolate short-term trends over millions of years.
The passage then transitions to discussing research on Galapagos finches and how they have evolved over relatively short timescales.

Does this help summarize the key points from the excerpt? Let me know if you need any clarification or have additional questions!

The Grants have studied Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos Islands for over 40 years, marking and measuring individual birds to track evolutionary changes.
In 1977, a severe drought caused finch populations to plummet. Within the medium ground finch species, the survivors tended to be larger with bigger beaks, likely more efficient at cracking the tough seeds that remained.
After the drought ended, the flood of 1978 led to more competition among males for scarce females. Again, larger males with bigger beaks had the advantage in mating.
In non-drought years, selection favors smaller birds with smaller beaks, specialized for softer seeds. Droughts push the evolution of larger finches, while wet years reverse the trend.
Small differences of just half a millimeter in beak size can determine survival. The Grants have witnessed natural selection in action over short timescales.
The peacock’s elaborate tail results from sexual selection - generations of peahens choosing the most extravagant displays. Sexual selection can drive rapid, arbitrary changes.
Some theorize sexual selection may explain unique human traits like bigger brains, bipedalism, and hair loss. But unclear why it would favor identical traits in both sexes. Still, sexual selection likely played a role in human evolution.
Darwin proposed sexual selection by female choice as the reason for male traits like the peacock’s tail. Females choose males arbitrarily based on what they find attractive, driving exaggerated traits.
Fisher mathematically modeled how female preference and male traits can coevolve in a runaway process, explaining extravagant traits.
Darwin thought men preferred less hairy women, so ancestral women with less hair were chosen, dragging men’s hairlessness along.
Pagel and Bodmer propose humans evolved hairlessness to reduce ectoparasites like lice. Lice prefer hair, so bare skin reduces their habitat.
Hairlessness also helps choosers see if mates have parasites, an advertisement of health per Hamilton’s theories. Humans retain some hair for functions like protection from sun and pheromone dispersal.
For bipedalism, the author proposes sexual selection for upright displays, plus imitation tendency, built on the ape tendency to stand upright temporarily.
For brain size, the author proposes sexual selection for brainy displays like song/dance, building on ancestral ape cognitive capacity over time in a Fisherian runaway process.
Oliver the chimp walks upright in an unusual, human-like manner. This has led to speculation that he may be a chimp/human hybrid, but DNA tests show he is a normal chimpanzee. His upright gait may have been taught for entertainment purposes or be an unusual natural trait.
Orangutans and gibbons are also better at walking upright than regular chimpanzees. Our ancestors likely walked on all fours but stood upright at times before eventually adopting permanent bipedalism.
The author proposes bipedalism arose suddenly as a fashionable gimmick, like a new dance move, that became popular and spread. Females preferred mating with males skilled at the upright gait, driving its spread. Genetic variation in ability to walk upright allowed natural selection for bipedalism.
Enlargement of the human brain may also have been driven by sexual selection. Females sought mates with greater intelligence and skills, leading to males evolving larger brains to display mental abilities. The brain expanded rapidly, like the peacock’s tail.
Susan Blackmore proposes memes (units of culture/imitation) drove human brain expansion, as memes restructured brains to be better meme habitats. Minds full of memes differ dramatically from minds without them.
Blackmore argues that memes (ideas, behaviors, etc that spread from person to person) played a role in the evolution of the large human brain.
Memes alone cannot explain major anatomical changes like the doubling of brain size. That requires genetic evolution.
But memes can bring out genetic variations that would otherwise remain “hidden”, making them visible to sexual selection.
For example, there may be genetic variation in musical ability. Memes like music allow those genetic differences to manifest and be selected for.
So memes facilitate genetic evolution via sexual selection. Memetic selection brings out genetic variations that can then be sexually selected.
This is a type of Baldwin Effect - cultural evolution via memes enables and accelerates genetic evolution.
Memes don’t directly change brain size, but they uncover genetic variations that allow sexual selection to then shape the brain over generations.

So in summary, Blackmore sees memes as enabling genetic evolution of the large human brain, by bringing out subtle genetic variations that sexual selection can then act upon over time. The memes themselves don’t directly alter brain anatomy, but facilitate genetic changes that do.

Natural selection leads to adaptations that aid survival and reproduction in the present, not anticipation of future needs. Wings might help birds survive someday when humans arrive, but they are costly now.
The dodo lost its power of flight after reaching the isolated island of Mauritius. This is a common evolutionary path for birds colonizing remote islands without mammalian predators.
Dodos are genetically most closely related to the Nicobar pigeon among living birds. Analysis of dodo bones confirms they evolved from pigeons.
Many bird families have evolved flightless island forms, including rails and parrots in Mauritius. This repeated “Dodo’s Tale” involves island colonization and loss of flight.
An exception is the ratites (ostriches, etc.), which have a different “Elephant Bird’s Tale” of flightlessness.
The extinct elephant bird of Madagascar, though unable to fly, probably gave rise to myths of the giant roc bird in Arab tales.
Giant moas in New Zealand were the tallest birds, but had no wings. They went extinct after humans arrived, having faced no predators.
Ratites are a group of flightless birds that includes ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis, moas, and elephant birds. They share a common flightless ancestor that walked across the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.
Gondwana included the landmasses that are now South America, Africa, Arabia, Antarctica, Australia, Madagascar, and India. Around 150 million years ago, Gondwana began breaking apart.
As Gondwana fragmented into separate continents, populations of ratites became isolated on the different landmasses. This allowed them to evolve into the distinct ratite species we see today.
Molecular evidence shows the timing of ratite evolutionary divergences matches up well with the continental breakup. This supports the idea that ratites walked across Gondwana before it split rather than flying between the fragmented continents later.
Fossil evidence shows Antarctica was once warm and home to ancient ratites. It provided a land bridge allowing ratite ancestors to walk between Africa, Australia and South America before those continents fully separated.
Scientists sequenced DNA from extinct moa and elephant bird fossils to study their evolutionary relationships with other ratite birds like ostriches and emus.
The molecular clock technique allowed them to estimate when the ancestral ratite lineages diverged.
The timing matched up with the continental breakup of Gondwana, supporting the idea that ratites were present on the various landmasses when they separated.
Moas split off in New Zealand around 80 million years ago when it detached from Antarctica.
Australian ratites (emus, cassowaries) diverged around 30 million years ago after separating from Antarctica.
Kiwis island-hopped more recently from Australia to New Zealand.
Elephant birds stayed on Madagascar after it split from India 75 million years ago.
Ostriches likely separated from other ratites around 75 million years ago when Africa was already detached, suggesting their ancestors were on India/Madagascar.
India then collided with Asia, allowing ostriches to disperse and eventually reach Africa around 20 million years ago.
Overall, the molecular evidence supports continental drift as the mechanism for ratite distribution across the southern continents.
The theory of plate tectonics states that the Earth’s crust is divided into plates that move relative to each other, driven by convection currents in the mantle.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is an underwater mountain range that forms the boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates. It is a zone of volcanic activity where magma wells up from the mantle.
As the magma erupts along the ridge, it pushes the plates on either side apart. The magma then cools and solidifies to form new seafloor crust.
Samples taken at increasing distances from the ridge show progressively older seafloor crust. The youngest rock is right at the ridge, getting older away from it.
This supports the idea that the seafloor crust is continuously created at the ridge and spreads out over time, with the oldest crust farthest from the ridge.
The pattern of magnetic polarity in the rocks mirrors on either side of the ridge, as the field has flipped over time. This further confirms the spreading process.
So the ridge acts like a conveyor belt, constantly supplying new crust which gets pulled apart and spreads outward as the plates move. It does not push the plates as much as drag them along.

Here’s a summary of the key points:

Rendezvous 17, around 340 million years ago, is the meeting point of amniotes (mammals, reptiles, birds) and amphibians (frogs, salamanders, caecilians).
Amphibians are ‘tetrapods’ (four-limbed vertebrates) that are tied to water for reproduction unlike amniotes that mostly reproduce on land.
There are three main groups of modern amphibians: frogs (and toads), salamanders (and newts), and caecilians (worm-like burrowers).
Many amphibians still reproduce in water, while amniotes mostly reproduce on land with tough-shelled eggs.
Some frogs have evolved creative reproductive strategies to breed in trees using foam nests, while others have transitions towards live birth.
The ties to water and intermediate position of amphibians on the evolutionary tree make them an informative group for understanding the conquest of land by vertebrates.
Amphibians were the first vertebrates to move onto land, evolving from fish ancestors. Key transitional fossils linking fish and amphibians include Acanthostega and Ichthyostega.
Early amphibians like Acanthostega and Ichthyostega had more than 5 digits on their limbs, unlike modern tetrapods which are ‘pentadactyl’ (5-fingered). The number of digits was probably adaptive for these early amphibians.
Amphibians initially moved onto land not to colonize it but to migrate between water bodies, an idea proposed by Alfred Romer. Even in wet conditions some ponds/pools will dry up, favoring amphibians that can move between them.
Modern amphibians come in two main groups - frogs and salamanders/newts. Frogs have a specialized jumping body plan. Salamanders move in a sinuous swimming motion on land.
The living lobe-fin fish (lungfish, coelacanths) are remnants of the fish group that gave rise to amphibians. They were once more diverse.
Arguments over names of fossils (e.g. Homo erectus vs Homo sapiens) cause controversy among paleontologists, resembling theological disputes.
The Central Valley in California is surrounded by mountains, with salamanders (Ensatina) living all around it but not across it. This isolates the salamander populations on either side.
On the east side, the salamanders are blotched (Ensatina klauberi). On the west side, they are plain brown (Ensatina eschscholtzii). These look like distinct species.
However, in the north, there is one intermediate species, suggesting the eastern and western species actually connect in a ring around the valley. This is a “ring species”.
Similar ring species are seen in herring gulls around the Arctic. Populations gradually change around the ring, but are distinct species at the ends.
Ring species demonstrate that species distinctions can be arbitrary - there are continuous intergradations rather than clear divisions. This challenges notions of human separateness from other species.
The idea that one species suddenly “becomes” another is flawed - evolution involves gradual change, so there is no definite point where a new species emerges. Ring species illustrate this continuity.
The “discontinuous mind” imposes artificial boundaries and categories rather than recognizing natural variation and continuums. This causes problems in areas like law, medicine, and social issues.
Discontinuities and thresholds are sometimes real, like between carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. But often there are no true discontinuities, just artificial human impositions.
Examples of artificial boundaries include: epidemics based on cases per 100,000, obesity rates based on arbitrary cut-offs, poverty rates based on income “lines”, race categories like black and white, university degree classes.
In reality, most variation is continuous, like a bell curve. But the discontinuous mind tries to forcibly categorize things.
This categorization is often unfair and fails to convey full information. Continuous measurement like test scores or income figures conveys more than discrete categories.
In evolution, species are usually discretely separated. But this is an artifact of extinction. With intermediates included, the variation between species is actually continuous.
Evolution shows that all species, even modern ones like dogs and sheep, are linked in gradual, continuous lines to other species through their common ancestors. There are no true “discontinuities” between species.
Plato and others believed species had an ideal “essence” that made them discontinuous from other species. But this is not true according to evolution.
Cats and dogs are different modern species but they evolved gradually from a shared common ancestor. The intermediates are now extinct, which makes cats and dogs seem discontinuous.
Each generation of ancestors and descendants could interbreed, even though we could not interbreed with ancestors from long ago. So there are no true barriers between species.
Gaps in the fossil record allow us to impose discrete names on species, but this is just a convenient fiction - in reality evolution is fully continuous.
The tale of the narrowmouth frogs shows how speciation begins - populations become geographically separated and then diverge evolutionarily over time into separate species.
The mating calls of two closely related frog species, the eastern and western narrowmouth toads, differ mainly in the zone where their ranges overlap.
In areas where they don’t encounter each other, their calls are more similar in pitch and duration. But in the overlap zone, their calls are more distinctly different, with the western species having a higher pitch and longer buzz.
This suggests the calls are diverging due to selection pressures where the species interact. Two explanations are proposed:

Reinforcement - differences help the species avoid hybridizing, which may be penalized.
Character displacement - competition for resources drives the species to diverge and specialize.

This phenomenon of increased differences in overlap zones occurs in other animals too.
The axolotl shows how very different life stages (like tadpole and frog) can evolve from a common ancestor, as the genes for each stage still exist in the adult.
So a major transition, like tadpole to adult frog, is not as improbable as it may seem, since the basic genetic potential is already present.
The axolotl is a paedomorphic salamander that remains aquatic and larval-like its whole life, never undergoing metamorphosis to become a terrestrial adult like other salamanders.
It evolved from an ancestor that had a typical amphibian life cycle of aquatic larva and terrestrial adult. Through heterochrony (changes in developmental timing), the axolotl’s ancestors evolved to become sexually mature while still in the larval stage.
Paedomorphosis, the retention of larval traits into adulthood, is common in salamanders and has evolved repeatedly. Other salamanders like newts exemplify the flexibility of heterochrony, transforming between aquatic and terrestrial stages.
Paedomorphosis allows rapid evolutionary changes by harnessing the adaptations of the larval stage. It may have been involved in the evolution of flightless birds like ostriches and dodos, which resemble overgrown chicks.
Some argue humans are paedomorphic apes, retaining juvenile traits like flat faces and large heads into adulthood. Paedomorphosis may allow sudden evolutionary shifts by building on specialized larval adaptations.

Here are the key points about Rendezvous 19 and coelacanths:

At Rendezvous 19, around 410 million years ago, the coelacanth lineage splits off from our own ancestral line.
Coelacanths were thought to be extinct until a living species was discovered in 1938 off the east coast of South Africa. This was a huge zoological discovery.
Coelacanths are sometimes called a “living fossil” because the living species closely resembles fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago. Their morphology has evolved slowly compared to other fish lineages.
However, molecular evidence shows that coelacanth DNA has evolved at about the same rate as other fish lineages, even though the outward appearance has stayed similar. This shows that rates of morphological and molecular evolution are not always coupled.
The coelacanth is an iconic example of how extinct lineages can sometimes reappear after millions of years. It gives hope that other “Lazarus taxa” may still exist undiscovered.
The coelacanth is an ancient fish thought to have gone extinct before the dinosaurs until a living specimen was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. She found it in a trawler’s catch and contacted ichthyologist J.L.B Smith, who was incredulous but slow to investigate.
The coelacanth is an important living fossil that has allowed scientists to study the evolutionary transition from fish to tetrapods. Two species have now been found, one off Africa and one off Indonesia.
The discovery was controversial but has been validated over time. The genus was named Latimeria after Courtenay-Latimer.
Rendezvous 20 marks the divergence of ray-finned fish around 440 million years ago. Ray-fins have a fan-like skeleton in their fins, unlike the fleshy lobed fins of ancestors like the coelacanth.
There are some 23,500 species of ray-fins, mostly teleosts, showing their great success. The variety of shapes illustrates the evolutionary malleability of animal forms.
Some deep-sea fish like the gulper eel can swallow prey much larger than themselves due to their distensible stomachs and huge jaws. The reason for this ability in snakes and fish is unclear.
Teleost fish come in a huge variety of shapes, likely enabled by their lack of constraints from gravity like whales. The ocean sunfish is a dramatic example, shaped like a huge flattened disc.
Teleosts can precisely control their buoyancy using their swim bladders, which evolved from lungs. This helps fish like pike float motionless to ambush prey.
Some teleosts have returned to land, like mudskippers, who spend more time out of water than in it. They can breathe air, crawl using fins, and climb mangroves looking for prey. Their evolution shows the versatility of teleosts.
An 18th century artist living in Indonesia kept a ‘frogfish’ alive in his house for three days. The fish followed him around like a little dog.
The book has a cartoon depicting this ‘frogfish’ as an anglerfish, but this is likely a misunderstanding. Anglerfish are deep sea fish, so it’s implausible one could survive out of water and walk around like a dog.
The artist’s pet was more likely a mudskipper, which looks frog-like, leaps like a frog, and is sometimes called a ‘frogfish’. Mudskippers can survive on land and could plausibly follow someone around like a pet dog.
This confusion illustrates the importance of using precise scientific names rather than vague common names for identifying animals.
The tale then shifts to discuss the incredibly rapid rate of speciation seen in cichlid fish in Africa’s Great Lakes, especially Lake Victoria. Hundreds of endemic cichlid species evolved in these lakes, likely from just a few founding species, in only tens of thousands of years. This demonstrates evolution’s power to generate diversity rapidly under the right conditions.
The tale ends by describing an experiment showing evolution of reproductive isolation between two closely related cichlid species in Lake Victoria, prevented from interbreeding by differing coloration. This demonstrates a key step in the origin of species.
Geographic isolation can lead to speciation when populations become separated and gene flow is reduced. Islands are a classic example, but “islands” can also refer to any isolated habitat.
In African lakes, isolated reefs can act as “islands” for fish like cichlids, allowing divergent evolution and speciation between populations on different reefs. Studies have found genetic differences between cichlids on neighboring reefs in lakes.
Lake level fluctuations, such as Lake Victoria drying up completely in the past, also promoted speciation. When the lake dried up, fish were separated into small pools. They evolved in isolation and then reconnected when the lake refilled.
Mitochondrial DNA studies support the idea of past isolation and fluctuating lake levels driving cichlid speciation. Victoria and satellite lakes share a related species flock originating about 100,000 years ago.
Isolation allows populations to diverge and become new species. But some gene flow between the populations is ideal - “genes flow but not much” as a recipe for generating biodiversity.
The Mexican blind cave fish (Astyanax mexicanus) provides an example of regressive evolution, where cave-dwelling populations have independently evolved to lose eyes and skin pigment multiple times. This shows evolution is not strictly irreversible.
However, regressive evolution does not precisely reverse the original evolution of eyes and pigment. So a weak version of Dollo’s Law holds - exact reversals of evolution are very unlikely.
There are more ways for cave fish to become blind than for them to retain vision. So random genetic changes will statistically tend to blindness, without any active evolutionary “drive” toward it.
Similarly, thermodynamics shows there are more disordered states than ordered ones. So disorder tends to increase even without any specific “goal” of maximum disorder.
Analogously, the vast number of possible evolutionary paths makes an exact reversal very unlikely. But some degree of reverse evolution is possible, as the cave fish show.

In summary, the tale illustrates a probabilistic, statistical version of Dollo’s Law, rather than an absolute prohibition on evolutionary reversals.

Here are the key points about sharks and their evolutionary history:

Sharks and rays join the evolutionary timeline around 460 million years ago in the Ordovician period. Their skeletons are made of cartilage rather than bone.
Sharks lack a swim bladder and use their oil-rich livers and retention of urea to maintain buoyancy. Their skin feels like sandpaper due to dermal denticles.
Sharks and rays mostly live in the seas and oceans, with a few venturing into rivers and estuaries. No sharks have moved onto land.
The largest sharks are plankton feeders like the whale shark, while most sharks are active predators. Teeth evolved from dermal denticles.
The extinct Carcharocles megalodon was one of the largest predatory sharks ever, around 3 times bigger than the great white shark.
Skates and rays are flattened sharks. The smallest shark is the spined pygmy shark at around 20 cm long.
Ratfish or chimaeras are distantly related cartilaginous fish that split off early from the evolutionary line leading to sharks and rays. They live in the deep sea.

Here is a summary of the key points about the Elasmobranchii, lampreys, hagfish, and early vertebrates:

The Elasmobranchii (sharks, rays, skates) have unusual gill covers that completely encase their gills in a single opening. Their skin lacks denticles and has a “ghostly” appearance. They swim by flying with their large pectoral fins rather than using a prominent tail. There are only about 35 living species of chimaeras.
There were two major radiations of sharks - one in the Paleozoic Era which declined by the Mesozoic, and a resurgence in the Cretaceous that continues today.
Jaws evolved from modified gill structures, a discovery of comparative anatomy.
Lampreys and hagfish are jawless, limbless fish that resemble eels. Many extinct jawless fish had bony armor plating.
Lampreys are parasitic, using their sucker-like mouth to attach to other fish and feed on their blood. Hagfish are scavengers that feed on dead animals or fish.
Early vertebrates were once thought to arise after the Cambrian but true vertebrate fossils have now been found dating back to the early Cambrian, before the protochordate Pikaia.
Chordates get their name from the notochord, a cartilage rod running along the back of the embryo. Other chordate features seen in embryos include gill openings and a tail extending beyond the anus.
Vertebrates replace the notochord with a vertebral column, but some fragments like intervertebral discs remain. Jawless fish like lampreys retain more of the notochord.
There are separate evolutionary trees for species (splitting into new species) and for genes (duplicating within genomes). The globin gene tree shows ancient splits between alpha and beta globins around 500 million years ago, before the ancestors of jawless fish.
The lancelet or amphioxus is a tidy protochordate that neatly displays chordate features like the notochord, dorsal nerve cord, gill slits and tail, but no vertebral column or brain. It demonstrates a transition between invertebrates and vertebrates.

Here is a summary of the key points about sea squirts:

Sea squirts are chordates, but adult sea squirts do not resemble vertebrates or fish. They are sedentary filter feeders anchored to rocks.
Sea squirt larvae resemble tadpoles and have chordate features like a notochord and dorsal nerve cord. They swim by undulating a post-anal tail.
Darwin recognized the significance of the chordate-like sea squirt larva, which develops chordate features and a tail for swimming before metamorphosing into the sedentary adult form.
The sea squirt larva was important evidence for Darwin that chordates like vertebrates could evolve from simpler animals.
So while adult sea squirts appear very un-vertebrate like, their larvae reveal their chordate affinities and evolutionary relationship to vertebrates. The sea squirt life cycle highlights how development can reveal relationships not obvious from the adult form.
The next closest relatives to join the human evolutionary lineage are the echinoderms (starfish, sea urchins, etc) and some worm-like animals. Together these form a group called the Ambulacraria.
Molecular evidence indicates this rendezvous point (Rendezvous 25) was around 570 million years ago.
Echinoderms have a strange radially symmetrical body plan compared to the bilateral symmetry of most animals. They also use a hydraulic system to move and pump seawater instead of having a blood system.
Their odd features have led echinoderms to be described as “Martians” - very alien compared to other animals.
The ancestral ambulacrarian at Rendezvous 25 was likely a simple worm-like animal rather than a starfish. The radial symmetry of echinoderms evolved later.
The Ambulacraria join the evolutionary lineage leading to humans before the first chordates. So echinoderms are our closest invertebrate relatives.
Protostomes, which include the largest animal groups like molluscs, worms, and especially arthropods, join the evolutionary pilgrimage at Rendezvous 26. This is the biggest rendezvous, with over a million protostome species.
Protostomes and deuterostomes (which joined earlier) are the two main divisions of the animal kingdom, based on differences in embryonic development.
Molecular evidence supports this traditional classification, though some groups once thought to be deuterostomes are now placed in the protostomes.
Protostomes have many more phyla and species than deuterostomes. Key protostome groups include molluscs, flatworms, roundworms, annelids, and arthropods.
Insects alone may constitute three-quarters or more of all animal species.
Molecular comparisons suggest the animal phyla, once thought largely separate, are more interconnected than previously realized.
Some traditional groupings, like annelids with arthropods, now seem incorrect based on genetics. Annelids are now paired with molluscs.
The huge influx of protostome pilgrims overwhelms the deuterostomes that joined earlier. From the protostome viewpoint, it is the deuterostomes that join them.
Molecular evidence divides protostome animals into three main superphyla: Ecdysozoa, Lophotrochozoa, and Platyzoa.
Ecdysozoa include arthropods, velvet worms, tardigrades, and nematodes. They are named for their habit of moulting or ecdysis. Arthropods dominate both land and sea.
Lophotrochozoa include annelids like earthworms and marine worms, as well as molluscs like snails, clams, and squid.
Platyzoa include flatworms and other flat-bodied animals. Their classification is still disputed, with some joining them to Lophotrochozoa.
These superphyla represent a major reorganization of animals compared to traditional morphology-based taxonomy. The association of annelids with molluscs rather than arthropods was a big surprise.
Debates continue over the exact relationships between some phyla like brachiopods as well as subgroupings within the arthropods and other phyla. But the molecular revolution has clearly divided bilaterian animals into ecdysozoan, lophotrochozoan, and possibly platyzoan superphyla.
Molecular taxonomists have removed the acoels from the protostomes, leaving their phylogenetic position uncertain. There are many other minor phyla that deserve more attention but must be passed over briefly, like the rotifers, who lack males.
The vast majority of animals are protostomes that converge evolutionarily with the deuterostomes (of which we are one). Reconstructing their common ancestor (Concestor 26) is difficult but it was likely a worm-like creature.
Worms exemplify key asymmetries - front/back (head/tail), up/down (dorsal/ventral), left/right. These make sense functionally. Exceptions like the haggis or wrybill are rare.
Concestor 26 likely had simple eyes, as evidenced by genetic similarities between fly and vertebrate eyes. Experiments swapping the fly “eyeless” gene and mouse “Pax6” gene induce ectopic fly eyes, suggesting deep homology.
Eyes have evolved image-forming optics multiple times, but the genetic basis traces to a simple light-sensitive organ in the bilaterian ancestor.
The similarity of eye development genes like Pax-6 in mice, flies, and other animals provides strong evidence these genes were present in a common ancestor (Concestor 26). This suggests Concestor 26 could see, even if just light versus dark.
As more genes are studied, this type of argument may generalize to other anatomical features beyond the eye.
Ancestors likely had a nerve cord running along the body, either on the dorsal or ventral side (dorsocords versus ventricords).
The author argues an ancient worm-like ventricord ancestor flipped upside down and began swimming/crawling inverted like modern brine shrimp. Over evolutionary time, this inversion caused a rearrangement of anatomy.
For example, the ventral nerve cord became repositioned dorsally in these inverted descendants. Other features like the heart also switched positions.
This inversion theory provides an explanation for why vertebrates have a dorsal nerve cord unlike other protostomes.
Molecular embryology offers some supporting evidence, but details are complex.
Examples like upside-down catfish show recent adaptations to inverted swimming can begin reshaping anatomy. This helps illustrate how an ancient inversion could have led to radical changes given enough time.
Leaf cutter ants form massive underground colonies sustaining populations rivaling major cities. The ants cut leaves into pieces and carry them back to the nest, where the leaves are used as compost to grow fungus. The ants eat the fungus, not the leaves directly.
This fungus agriculture resembles humanity’s agricultural revolution and involves delayed gratification, as the ants patiently grow the fungus to eat later. The fungus species appear specially adapted to life in the ant nests.
Other ants herd and ‘milk’ aphids, protecting them in exchange for consuming their sugary honeydew secretions. Some aphids may have evolved rear-end mimicry of ant faces to facilitate this milking.
The tale illustrates agriculture based on delayed rewards and symbiotic domestication of other species, innovations the leaf cutter ants pioneered before humanity.
There is a digression mentioning penicillin, a vital medicinal fungus carried in culture by its developers from England to America during World War 2.
The overall moral is that the ants’ agriculture should inspire humanity to “consider her ways and be wise.”
Two species of grasshopper, Chorthippus brunneus and C. biguttulus, look identical and can’t be told apart even by experts, yet never interbreed in the wild. This defines them as separate “good species”.
However, experiments show if a female hears the song of a male of her own species while with a male of the other species, she will mate with the wrong male. This produces healthy hybrids, showing interbreeding is possible.
It doesn’t happen in nature because females don’t normally hear songs of their species while with a male of the wrong species.
Similar results have been found with crickets, where temperature affects song preferences and mating. Females choose males singing at their temperature.
The definition of a species is clear - can they interbreed? Definition of race is not clear.
Species on the way to becoming separate may pass through a “race” stage first. Races may be “species in the making”.
All human races can interbreed, so are one species. But we cling to racial language despite intermediates.
People described as “black” or “white” often have mixed ancestry, but aren’t described as mixed race. Society insists on categorizing as one or the other.
The ‘tyranny of the discontinuous mind’ refers to the tendency to categorize people into discrete racial groups like “Caucasian”, “African-American”, etc. rather than seeing racial identity as a spectrum. This is illustrated by forms that ask people to check a box for their race.
There is a ‘cultural or memetic dominance’ associated with being perceived as ‘black’ - anyone with even a small amount of African ancestry tends to be labeled as black.
Despite superficial racial differences, humans are remarkably genetically uniform. Genetic differences account for only 6-15% of total variation between humans. If all except one race were wiped out, most genetic diversity would still remain.
In the past, thinkers like H.G. Wells supported racist policies and the idea of superior and inferior races. Attitudes have improved over the last century but there is still progress to be made in how we think about race and treat other groups.
There is evidence that the human population passed through a genetic bottleneck, implying we are descended from a small founding group and are thus genetically quite uniform. Similar evidence suggests cheetahs also went through an extreme bottleneck.
Despite this uniformity, humans from different regions look quite different (e.g. Norwegians vs Japanese vs Zulus). Intuitively this makes the genetic evidence hard to believe.
But most human genetic variation is found within races rather than between them. The between-race variation, though small, is correlated and thus informative. Race is not meaningless.
Lewontin argued racial classification has no genetic significance and is destructive. But the high inter-observer concordance in classifying race shows it is informative, though this doesn’t justify discrimination.
Forms asking us to identify race can be destructive. But racial labels, though they shouldn’t be used prejudicially, do reduce uncertainty about some physical traits statistically associated with race.
The conductor auditioned musicians behind screens so their identity (including gender) was concealed, to avoid discrimination. This shows people should be judged as individuals, not based on group membership.
Treating people differently based solely on their group membership is wrong, akin to apartheid in South Africa. Affirmative action in the U.S. suffers from the same problem.
People are individuals, more different from others in their group than groups are from each other. Superficial traits like skin color may correlate with race, but genetics shows humans are very uniform.
Different environments could explain superficial variation like skin color. Also, cultural barriers to interbreeding may have enhanced differences in conspicuous traits that help identify insiders vs outsiders.
The key point is that people should be treated as individuals, not representatives of groups. Judging people by group membership is unjust and ignores their individuality.

The fruit fly Drosophila has been a key model organism in genetics and embryology. Embryonic development is controlled by genes, but not as a “blueprint” - rather as a “recipe” or series of origami folding instructions. Cells behave according to their position in chemical gradients laid down in the egg by maternal genes. These gradients differentiate the cells along the anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral axes. Later, the embryo’s own genes take over by setting up more complex gradients.

In arthropods like flies, the body is divided into segments. Special “Hox” genes control the identities of the segments by turning on in the cells of each one. The Hox genes are arranged linearly on the chromosome, corresponding to their order of expression along the body axis during development. Mutations in Hox genes can lead to homeotic transformations, where one body part develops in place of another - like the antennapedia mutation that causes legs to develop where antennae should be.

The key point is that fly embryos develop not according to a pre-specified blueprint, but by cells interacting locally according to their position in chemical gradients and by differential gene expression, especially of Hox genes. This illustrates the “recipe” model of embryonic development guided by genes.

Hox genes help determine body segmentation and patterning in animals. They are arranged in the correct order along chromosomes to correspond to the body segments they influence.
In fruit flies (Drosophila), there are 8 Hox genes controlling 17 body segments. They are arranged in two complexes - the Antennapedia Complex and the Bithorax Complex. The genes are expressed in overlapping gradients, allowing cells to determine their location.
When Hox genes mutate, cells can mistakenly develop structures appropriate for the wrong segment, resulting in homeotic mutants like legs growing where antennae should be.
Remarkably, Hox genes have been found playing similar roles in segmentation and patterning in many animals, including mammals like mice. The genes are homologous between species like flies and mice, suggesting inheritance from a common ancestor.
This demonstrates that the common ancestor of flies and mice likely had a segmented body plan controlled by this ordered set of Hox genes. Other diverse animals also share this, implying the ancient Concestor 26 had a Hox gene system controlling its body patterning.

Here is a summary of the key points about Hox genes and animal body plans from the passage:

Hox genes are a subset of homeobox genes that determine position and segmentation along the anterior-posterior axis in bilaterally symmetrical animals.
Cnidarians like jellyfish have radial symmetry and only 2 Hox genes, so it’s unclear what they do. Echinoderms like starfish secondarily evolved radial symmetry but have a full set of Hox genes expressed in a circular pattern.
Plants, fungi, and single-celled organisms don’t have Hox genes, only homeobox genes. Hox genes are unique to animals.
There are other important homeobox gene families like ParaHox, Pax, and tinman that specify development of body parts like hearts across diverse animals.
The homeobox gene family tree mirrors the animal family tree, with splitting events caused by gene duplications. Hox and ParaHox genes form one major branch.
The presence of Hox genes across all animals could define what it means to be an animal, suggesting deep genetic unity across animal diversity.
The bdelloid rotifers are a class of tiny freshwater animals that reproduce asexually - no males have ever been found. This is an “evolutionary scandal” according to John Maynard Smith.
Most other asexual animal species die out quickly without leaving much evolutionary trace. But the bdelloids have flourished for tens of millions of years and diversified into 360 species.
This suggests asexual reproduction works well for the bdelloids but not most other animals. It’s like how the ability to fly evolved independently in insects, birds and bats and led to the evolution of large flying groups, whereas asexual reproduction usually leads to extinction.
There was skepticism that bdelloids really never have sex. But genetic analysis by Welch and Meselson provided evidence that they have reproduced asexually for many millions of years.
Their method relied on the fact bdelloids are diploid - having two copies of each chromosome like sexual species. Mutations over time led to divergence between the two copies.
If bdelloids sexually reproduced even occasionally, the two copies would get shuffled together. But Welch and Meselson found the copies were highly divergent in modern bdelloids, suggesting purely asexual reproduction for millions of years.
Bdelloid rotifers are a group of microscopic animals that reproduce asexually. They have no males or sex and have evolved this way for at least 40 million years.
This is highly unusual as almost all other animals require sexual reproduction, making the bdelloids an “evolutionary scandal.” Sexual reproduction has a “twofold cost” as each parent only passes on half their genes, yet sex persists.
Theorists like Maynard Smith have proposed various benefits of sex that outweigh this cost, like increasing genetic diversity. But no single definitive theory has emerged to explain why the cost of males persists.
In bdelloids, the chromosomes that were originally pairs have now diverged significantly since they don’t recombine during sexual reproduction. This divergence is greater than between similar chromosomes across different bdelloid species.
Normally sex acts as a barrier to evolutionary divergence between species. But in asexual bdelloids, the lack of sex removes this barrier, leading to a very different pattern of evolution compared to sexual species.

Here is a summary of Mark Welch and Meselson’s research on the evolutionary implications of asexual reproduction in bdelloid rotifers:

In sexually reproducing populations, genetic variation is continually mixed and spread through the gene pool via sexual recombination. This “swamping” effect keeps the population relatively homogeneous and inhibits striking out in radically new evolutionary directions.
Geographic isolation can allow divergent evolution by preventing intermixing between populations. Isolation reduces the swamping effect of the larger gene pool.
Bdelloid rotifers entirely lack sexual reproduction and a shared gene pool. Each individual is an isolated evolutionary unit.
This allows the potential for more rapid evolutionary divergence as there is no homogenizing effect. Variation is not diluted or held in check.
However, it also removes the benefits of gene mixing for evolutionary adaptation. There is no mechanism to combine beneficial genes from different lineages.
Selection still occurs, but it acts on individuals in isolation rather than sculpting the shared gene pool of the species. There is no cooperative shaping of co-adapted gene complexes across lineages.
The evolutionary implications are profound. Bdelloids demonstrate that sexual reproduction, while costly, provides important benefits for evolutionary adaptation and diversification that asexual species lack. Their existence raises questions about why sex evolved and what advantages it provides.
The Cambrian Explosion refers to the sudden appearance in the fossil record of complex, multicellular life forms about 540 million years ago.
Prior to the Cambrian, most fossils were simple traces or very enigmatic. After the Cambrian, there was a huge diversity of animals.
Creationists like the Cambrian Explosion because to them it suggests complex life appeared suddenly, without antecedents. Some biologists also see it romantically as a frenzied evolutionary flowering.
The velvet worm Peripatus represents a surviving lineage dating back to the Cambrian, based on its similarities to fossils like Hallucigenia. Hallucigenia was originally reconstructed upside down but now is seen as lobopod-like.
Exceptionally preserved soft-bodied fossils from sites like the Burgess Shale provide evidence of the Cambrian Explosion. They contain many strange forms as well as early vertebrates, arthropods, worms, etc.
The early appearance of vertebrate and arthropod fossils breaks with traditional ideas of their origins. But it fits with an explosive diversification of phyla.
The Cambrian Explosion may represent a real flowering of phyla, though older representative fossils are likely missing. The blurring of distinctions between phyla in the Cambrian fits an evolutionary view.

Here is a summary of the main points:

There are three main hypotheses for the Cambrian explosion:

No real explosion - Animal phyla existed long before the Cambrian but didn’t fossilize well until then. Some molecular clock estimates support ancient origins.
Medium-fuse explosion - Concestors of phyla lived closer together in time but still spread out over tens of millions of years. This is a long time for evolution.
Overnight explosion - New phyla sprang into existence suddenly via dramatic mutations. This view is seen as unrealistic.

Small mutations are more likely to be beneficial than large mutations, which tend to overshoot the optimal state.
There are many more ways for an animal to be nonviable than viable, so the probability of a dramatic mutation resulting in a successful new phylum is extremely low.
Gradual accumulation of smaller changes over long periods of time is more plausible than sudden dramatic mutations resulting in new phyla.
The Cambrian explosion likely represents a real burst of diversification, but probably occurred over millions of years, not overnight. The deep divergence times suggested by some molecular estimates are controversial.
The early evolution of animal phyla remains puzzling and controversial. There are three main hypotheses:

A long fuse - Phyla evolved gradually over hundreds of millions of years in the Precambrian.
A medium fuse - Phyla evolved over tens of millions of years around the Cambrian boundary.
A short fuse - Phyla evolved rapidly in a Cambrian “explosion” over just a few million years.

The fossil record offers few clues before the Cambrian, though some traces of early animal life exist like the Ediacaran biota.
Molecular clocks initially suggested a deep Precambrian origin for phyla, supporting the long fuse. But these early clocks may have been inaccurate, so a medium or short fuse is also plausible.
A true macromutation instantly generating a new phylum is implausible - evolution must be gradual. But the pace of change around the Cambrian remains unclear.
More fossil evidence is needed to distinguish between the three hypotheses. For now, the author remains agnostic, though favors a medium fuse interpretation. Dates given for early animal concestors are speculative best guesses.
Whatever the timescale, early Cambrian animals likely resembled each other more than their modern descendants - zoologists wouldn’t have classified them into separate phyla yet. The processes of evolution were likely the same as today.
The molecular clock offers a promising way to date evolutionary events, even where the fossil record is poor. It measures the accumulation of changes in DNA or proteins over time.
The theory is that many molecular changes are neutral - not affected by natural selection. Neutral changes can accumulate at a regular rate, acting as a clock.
Darwin foresaw the possibility of neutral evolution. Kimura quantified this with his neutral theory, calculating that neutral mutations become fixed at a rate equal to the mutation rate.
So if mutations accumulate at a constant rate in a gene, comparing the differences between two species gives the time since their last common ancestor.
The molecular clock doesn’t tick at an exactly regular pace like a pendulum, but mutations accumulate at a predictable average rate, like a Geiger counter.
Different genes in the genome tick at different rates - some faster, some slower. This depends on how tolerant they are of mutations without changing function.
So the molecular clock offers a statistical way to date evolutionary divergences, calibrating against the fossil record where available.

Molecular clocks allow scientists to estimate evolutionary divergence times by comparing differences in DNA sequences between species. Some parts of genes mutate faster than others, so molecular clocks may tick at different rates in different genes. The rate can also vary between lineages due to differences in mutation rates and population sizes. Kimura showed that for neutral mutations, the fixation rate equals the mutation rate. Ohta extended this work to nearly neutral mutations, finding that population size affects the fixation rate. So even if species with short generations like fruit flies have faster mutation rates, their large populations slow fixation. And vice versa for elephants. This helps explain why molecular clocks seem to tick at a relatively constant rate in real time rather than generational time.

Molecular clocks have been very successful, providing dates like 6 million years ago for human/chimp divergence. But they depend on fossil calibrations, which become increasingly uncertain for ancient dates. So molecular clock estimates far back in time, like over 500 million years ago, need to be treated with caution due to the accumulation of errors. Overall, molecular clocks are a useful tool but have some limitations, especially for very ancient dates.

Molecular clock estimates of early evolutionary branch points are fraught with uncertainty. Estimates of over 1 billion years ago could be wrong by hundreds of millions of years.
The further back in time, the more conjecture is involved as the fossil record peters out. The order of evolutionary joinings is more certain than the dates.
For this part of the timeline, rough dates of around 1,100 million years ago for the split between animals and fungi are used as a baseline. Other dates are spaced proportionally to molecular clock studies.
But these early dates in particular could be significant overestimates if the baseline date is wrong. The early parts of the timeline should be seen as very uncertain.
More fossils from periods like the Chengjiang may help pin down calibration points to improve molecular clock dating. But for now, early dates are very speculative. The general sequence of events is more robust than the absolute dates.
The acoelomorph flatworms (Acoela and Nemertodermatida) are now thought to have diverged from other animals earlier than previously thought, joining the pilgrimage at Rendezvous 27 around 630 million years ago rather than with the other flatworms at Rendezvous 26.
Unlike other flatworms, the Acoela and Nemertodermatida primitively lack a coelom and anus, suggesting they may resemble the bilaterian ancestor.
The Acoela have symbiotic relationships with algae, which allow them to grow larger. Some exhibit interesting behaviors like crowding together to maximize light exposure for their algal symbionts.
The cnidarians are the next major group to join, at Rendezvous 28. They are radially symmetrical unlike the bilaterians. There is still uncertainty about whether ctenophores or placozoans joined next after cnidarians.
The key point is that molecular evidence indicates the Acoela and Nemertodermatida are divergent flatworms that join the animal family tree early, providing insight into the ancient bilaterian ancestor. The rest details examples of their biology.
Cnidarians (jellyfish, corals, etc) are ancient animals that branched off early in animal evolution. They lack advanced features like brains and sense organs but have complex stinging cells called cnidocytes.
Cnidocytes contain miniature harpoons that can inject venom, making some cnidarians very dangerous. The harpoon mechanism is highly complex.
Cnidarians have two body forms - sessile polyps and free-swimming medusae (jellyfish). The life cycle often alternates between these forms.
Polyps can reproduce by budding to form colonies, with interconnected bodies functioning like a single individual. Extreme examples are the siphonophores like the Portuguese man-of-war.
Corals form hard external skeletons that build massive reef structures over thousands of years.
Jellyfish drift through the oceans, trailing tentacles to catch prey. Their pulsing bells allow limited swimming but they mostly go where the currents take them.

Here’s a summary of the key points:

Many tiny sea creatures like plankton migrate up to the surface at night to feed, then back down to the depths during the day to avoid predators that hunt by sight. This daily vertical migration covers huge distances relative to their tiny size.
The reason is that plankton need sunlight to feed on algae near the surface, but are safer from predators in the dark depths. So they commute up and down daily for feeding vs protection.
Jellyfish often migrate vertically as well, following the plankton herds up and down to catch prey. Some zigzag to increase their chances of encountering prey.
In Jellyfish Lake in Palau, millions of jellyfish migrate horizontally across the lake, following the sun’s east-west movement. They get trapped along shadow lines from trees, which keeps them safely away from shoreline predators.
Coral organisms transform their environment over centuries by building coral reefs from their own skeletons. This creates complex 3D structures that support diverse ecological communities.
Darwin first understood how coral reefs form, realizing corals can only live in shallow waters with sunlight, but reef foundations extend deep below. His theory explained how coral atolls form as islands sink into seabeds.
Corals live in shallow reefs near coastlines, but are also found in deep water, sitting atop underwater mountains made of dead coral. Darwin recognized this mystery about how corals thrive in deep water.
Darwin theorized the sea bottom was continually subsiding near the coral reefs, taking the coral mountain down with it. The corals grew upward to remain in the shallow, sunlit zone. This theory of subsidence is supported today.
Coral reefs demonstrate a climax community, where species evolve together and fill ecological roles. An example is cleaner fish, which remove parasites from other fish. Different cleaner fish fill this role in different oceans.
The interdependencies in a coral reef community can seem harmonious like an organism, but true group-level selection does not occur. Benefits emerge from selection on individual species levels.
Still, the principle of “enemy’s enemy” means species can flourish in each others’ presence indirectly. This community principle operates even within cells, where organelles like mitochondria once lived freely.
Sponges are the last multicellular animals to join the evolutionary pilgrimage. They were previously classified as ‘Parazoa’ - second-class animals - but are now recognized as true Metazoa.
Sponges lack muscles and don’t move their whole bodies, although there is cellular movement. They live by filtering food particles from water that flows through their porous bodies.
Typical sponge bodies are hollow pitchers with a large opening at the top and smaller holes along the sides. Water enters through the small holes, flows into the main cavity, and exits through the large opening, driven by specialized cells.
Sponges lack tissues and organs. Their bodies are organized around canals and chambers lined with choanocytes - collar cells that beat to drive the water current and capture food particles.
Sponges have no nerve cells or true muscles. However, some contractile cells allow them to adjust their shape. They also have a few dedicated cell types, like amoebocytes and sclerocytes.
Sponges reproduce both sexually and asexually. Their fertilized eggs develop into free-swimming larvae which later attach and develop into sessile adults.
Molecular evidence indicates sponges are the most distant relatives to other animals. Their evolutionary relationship to the even simpler Trichoplax is still unclear.
Sponges have simple body structures with no true tissues or organs. Their cells are flexible and totipotent - any cell can transform into any other cell type. This is different from most animals where cells are more specialized.
Sponge embryos don’t form complex layers and folds like other animals. Instead they self-assemble, with cells joining together based on affinity.
Experiments showed sponge cells separated and mixed together would re-aggregate by species, hinting at how the first primitive multicellular animals may have evolved from colonial protozoans.
Choanoflagellates are single-celled protozoans that strongly resemble the choanocytes lining the canals in sponges. Their similarity suggests choanoflagellates may be descendants of proto-sponges or an ancestral form.
Ernst Haeckel proposed the first multicellular animals evolved from colonies of flagellate protozoans, an idea still favored today. The choanoflagellates support this hypothesis - their colony formation resembling early steps to multicellularity leading to primitive sponges and other metazoans.
The DRIPs (Dermocystidium, Rosette agent, Ichthyophonus, and Psorospermium) are a group of single-celled parasites that are evolutionarily close relatives of animals.
Molecular evidence shows DRIPs form a clade with animals and fungi, representing a deep branching point in the animal family tree.
DRIPs parasitize various freshwater animals like fish, amphibians, and crustaceans. The recently discovered Rhinosporidium seeberi infects the noses of humans and other mammals.
DRIPs were previously classified as protozoans or fungi, but genetic studies have now firmly placed them as the closest living relatives to the ancestor shared by animals and fungi.
Beyond being parasites, DRIPs themselves are not very remarkable. But their evolutionary position makes them important for understanding the origins of animals and fungi.
The next major rendezvous point is with fungi, which represent a huge and diverse kingdom of life.

Here is a summary of the key points about fungi and amoebozoans:

Fungi join the evolutionary tree, with their two main groups being the Ascomycota (40,000 species) and Basidiomycota (22,000 species). Fungi are more closely related to animals than plants.
Fungi consist of a network of threads called hyphae that spread underground to digest food. Mushrooms are the visible reproductive structures.
Important fungi include penicillium mold, yeasts for brewing, truffles, morels, and hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Many fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant roots (mycorrhizae) or algae (lichens).
Amoebozoans, like amoebas, are single-celled organisms that move and feed using pseudopods. They were once seen as very primitive but are now known to be complex and diverse.
Important amoebozoan groups include slime molds (which can form multicellular fruiting bodies) and entamoeba (which causes dysentery).
Amoebozoans are an important branch of the eukaryotic tree of life, not primitive precursors.
Plants are the foundation of nearly all food chains and make up a large proportion of the biomass on Earth due to the inefficiency of energy transfer between trophic levels.
Plants cover the Earth’s surface in green leaves to maximize absorption of sunlight. Tall trees compete for sunlight in forests. Grasses spread out to capture more photons.
Plants are mostly stationary while animals move around to eat them. This may be related to plants needing to be rooted for nutrients while animals need to move to find food.
At Rendezvous 36 we meet red and green algae, as well as land plants.
The green plants are divided into major subgroupings like the computer program Deep Green illustrates.
Land plants evolved before land animals, providing necessary food sources. Plants moved from sea to land via freshwater.
The cauliflower’s tale continues the theme from the Handyman’s Tale about brain size and metabolic rate following a precise 3/4 power law relationship with body size.
This 3/4 power law, known as Kleiber’s Law, holds across a remarkable 20 orders of magnitude from bacteria to whales.
The theory of West, Brown and Enquist provides a brilliant explanation for Kleiber’s Law based on the physics and geometry of supply networks in organisms.
As organisms get bigger, their tissues face supply problems in getting nutrients, oxygen etc around the body.
Branching supply networks of blood vessels, tracheae etc help solve this problem but take up volume themselves.
To be efficient, these supply networks occupy a fixed percentage of body volume across species.
But to supply more cells in a bigger body with the same network efficiency requires a more sparse network branching pattern.
This more sparse network means less stuff supplied per cell, so metabolic rate per cell declines.
The math of network geometry and physics predicts this decline will follow a precise 3/4 power law - matching the observed Kleiber’s Law.
The tale explains the deep rationale behind the 3/4 scaling of metabolic rate with body size across life.
Tree rings allow us to date wood very accurately, as trees grow more in some years than others, creating a pattern of rings that serves as a “fingerprint” for a sequence of years. By matching up ring patterns from living trees and older wood samples, dendrochronologists can put precise dates on wooden artifacts.
Other natural processes like sediment deposition also happen in cycles that create recognizable signatures in layers, allowing ages to be determined.
Paleomagnetic dating utilizes the fact that Earth’s magnetic field periodically reverses polarity over geological time. When volcanic rock solidifies, it freezes a record of the magnetic field direction at that time. The pattern of reversals creates a signature that allows dating and correlation of rocks globally.
Radioactive decay of atomic nuclei provides another clock for dating very old materials, based on the predictable decay rates of radioactive isotopes. The rate of decay allows ages to be calculated.
By combining and cross-checking these techniques, an accurate timeline stretching back millions and even billions of years can be constructed, despite the fact that no continuously living organism spans these timescales.
Atoms of different elements like gold, copper, etc. are just different arrangements of the same fundamental particles - protons, neutrons, and electrons. There is no essential “stuff” that makes gold atoms gold, for example.
The number of protons in an atom’s nucleus determines what element it is. Gold has 79 protons, iron has 26.
Isotopes of an element have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.
Some isotopes are stable, some are radioactive and decay into other elements by emitting particles.
Half-life is the time it takes for half of a radioactive sample to decay. Different isotopes have vastly different half-lives.
By measuring the ratio of a radioactive isotope to its decay product in rocks, geologists can date when the rocks were formed. The predictable rate of radioactive decay serves as an accurate clock.

Here is a summary of the key points regarding the uncertainty about the phylogeny of the remaining eukaryotes:

At Rendezvous 37, we enter a realm of uncertainty about the order in which to greet the remaining eukaryotic microbes that have not yet joined the pilgrimage.
This uncertainty affects all the remaining ~50,000 described species of eukaryotes.
Eukaryotes are defined by having complex, walled cells with nuclei and mitochondria. This includes all animals, plants, fungi and protists that have joined so far.
The true bacteria and archaea (prokaryotes) will be the final two rendezvous points, numbered 38 and 39.
The author has arbitrarily numbered this rendezvous 37, with the bacteria last, but this order is uncertain. The final bacteria rendezvous could be anywhere from 39-42 based on current knowledge.
The relationships between these eukaryotic microbes is unresolved, so it’s unclear how many separate rendezvous points there should be for them.
Part of the problem is rooting the evolutionary tree - many different trees and rendezvous orders are compatible with the current data.
The phylogeny of these remaining eukaryotic microbes is highly uncertain compared to other branches of the tree of life at this time. More research is needed to clarify their relationships.

Here is a summary of the key points about mixotrichs and termites:

Mixotricha paradoxa is a microorganism that lives in the gut of the Australian termite Mastotermes darwiniensis.
Termites are highly successful due to their ability to eat wood and their complex social structure with division of labor.
Inside a termite gut is a complex microbial environment that aids digestion. Termites can digest wood due to enzymes called cellulases made by gut microbes.
Mixotrichs live in this gut environment and have a symbiotic relationship with various other microbes that provide them with missing capabilities.
Mixotrichs have a complex structure with hair-like projections called cilia obtained from different symbiont species, allowing them to move and feed in the termite gut.
The mixotrichs and their symbionts demonstrate how specialization and division of labor can evolve not just among multicellular organisms but also among microbial cells working together.
Mixotricha paradoxa is a protozoan that lives in the gut of termites. It was named by J.L. Sutherland, who thought it had both cilia (small hairs) and flagella (long whip-like structures).
In fact, the “cilia” are actually bacteria - spirochetes that wiggle and propel the protozoan. The “flagella” are the only true undulipodia that Mixotricha has.
Each spirochete bacteria is held in a little “bracket” on the surface of Mixotricha. At the base of each bracket is a “basal body” which also turned out to be bacteria - a oval pill-shaped kind.
There is a complex symbiotic relationship between the termite, the protozoan Mixotricha, and the different bacteria that live on and in it. The bacteria help digest wood chips, while Mixotricha provides them with a home.
Lynn Margulis highlighted how Mixotricha shows the blurry lines between “own body” and “alien body” in symbiosis. The bacteria are so intimately integrated with Mixotricha that they resemble its own organelles.

This passage discusses the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis - the merging of simpler bacterial cells to form more complex cells with a nucleus and organelles like mitochondria and chloroplasts.

The key points are:

Around 2 billion years ago, a protozoan-like cell entered into a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium, similar to the relationship between the protist Mixotricha and its bacteria. This happened multiple times with different bacteria.
Like Mixotricha, these bacteria became integrated into the host cell over time, transforming into organelles like mitochondria and chloroplasts.
Mitochondria originated from alpha-proteobacteria and allowed eukaryotic cells to use oxygen for energy metabolism.
Chloroplasts came from cyanobacteria and gave eukaryotes the ability to photosynthesize.
These organelles still retain some of their own DNA and reproduce independently within the cell.
The incorporation of these bacterial symbionts was a major evolutionary transition, allowing eukaryotic cells to gain new biochemical capabilities and become complex.
Lynn Margulis championed the idea that organelles originated as symbiotic bacteria. This endosymbiotic theory is now widely accepted.

So in summary, the key point is that major steps in eukaryotic evolution involved symbiotic mergers with bacteria, acquiring their biochemical abilities, which was a rendezvous or convergence of different cell types into a new, more complex whole. This set the stage for the evolution of complex multicellular life.

Here are the key points about who was persuaded by Margulis’s evidence for the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts:

Margulis provided strong evidence that mitochondria and chloroplasts originated as free-living bacteria that were engulfed by other cells in symbiotic relationships.
This evidence included the observations that mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own DNA that is similar to bacterial DNA, and they reproduce independently by fission like bacteria.
The endosymbiotic theory explained why mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own genomes and reproduce independently, unlike other organelles.
Initially, Margulis’s ideas were controversial and not widely accepted. But over time, as more evidence accumulated, the endosymbiotic theory became the dominant explanation for the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts.
Most biologists today accept the endosymbiotic origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts based on the overwhelming evidence Margulis marshalled. Her theory is now the scientific consensus view.

In summary, Margulis convinced the majority of biologists by amassing substantial genetic, biochemical and microscopic evidence that mitochondria and chloroplasts originated as engulfed bacteria that became permanent endosymbionts. This evidence won over skeptics and made the endosymbiotic theory the mainstream accepted view over time.

No species other than humans has developed complex social organizations like welfare states that care for the sick, elderly, and orphaned. This seems to challenge Darwinism, but the author says that is a discussion for another time.
Other species have defended territories and resources, but this is on a small, local scale. Only humans have developed infrastructure like roads that facilitate long-distance travel.
The one exception is bacteria, which have evolved rotating flagella that essentially function as a wheel and axle. This molecular-scale wheel is powered by a tiny motor.
Larger creatures likely haven’t evolved wheels because of the difficulties of supplying blood and nerves to a rotating organ without tangling. Gradual evolution makes it hard to evolve an organ that only works properly when fully formed.
Some creationists have claimed bacterial flagella are irreducibly complex, but this is a flawed argument. The fact that something exists shows it can evolve gradually.
In fiction, Philip Pullman invents wheel-pod seeds that allow his mulefa creatures to use wheels. The geology of their world allows “roads” to develop.
So the wheel may be an invention difficult for large creatures to evolve, but feasible for microscopic bacteria. Arguments about “irreducible complexity” wrongly claim that if something seems improbable, it must have supernatural origins. In reality, scientists should seek natural explanations for existing complexity.
Francis Crick proposed the theory of Directed Panspermia, which argues that life on Earth was intentionally seeded by intelligent extraterrestrial beings. However, there is little evidence to support this theory.
Some argue that examples of “irreducible complexity” in nature, like the bacterial flagellar motor, point to intelligent design. However, Kenneth Miller showed the flagellar motor is actually reducible and parts can serve other functions. This refutes the argument for intelligent design.
Identifying something as irreducibly complex due to personal incredulity is intellectually lazy. Just because we can’t currently envision an evolutionary pathway doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Even if something were irreducibly complex, that doesn’t necessitate supernatural origins. Graham Cairns-Smith’s “arch and scaffolding” analogy shows complexity can arise gradually.
Bacteria showcase impressive chemical versatility and complexity. Thermus aquaticus, which thrives in hot springs, produces Taq polymerase used in PCR DNA amplification. This demonstrates bacteria’s mastery of biochemistry.
Thermus belongs to a group of bacteria called the Hadobacteria, which may be the earliest branching bacterial group and therefore evolutionarily quite distinct from other bacteria and life. This makes Thermus a good representative to provide the perspective of bacteria on life’s diversity.
Traditionally, life was classified into just the animal and plant kingdoms, with microbes viewed as primitive. But when classified by molecular information, there are dozens of microbial ‘kingdoms’ as biochemically distinct as animals, plants and fungi.
There are three main domains or super-kingdoms of life: eukaryotes (including animals, plants and fungi), Archaea, and Eubacteria. The star diagram shows the major divisions based on genetic differences in universal genes like rDNA.
Biochemical diversity is vast among microbes, with many unique ways of deriving energy beyond just photosynthesis, unlike macro life which ultimately relies on solar energy.
So at the molecular level, microbes showcase huge chemical diversity in ‘trades’, distinct from what we see in larger multicellular organisms. A bacterium like Thermus provides an ‘instructively alien perspective’ on life’s diversity compared to the traditional animal viewpoint.
Life is hard to define, but the origin of heredity is a more precise goal than the origin of life. True heredity means something very specific.
Darwin saw the origin of primitive life as a relatively easy problem compared to explaining the diversity and complexity of life forms. But natural selection itself needed a beginning.
Spontaneous generation of complex creatures was anathema to Darwin’s theory, which required small gradual steps supplied by variation and selection.
At the origin, some kind of spontaneous event must have occurred, but all it needed to produce was the ability for heredity, not something complex like a maggot or mouse.
The key ingredient enabling natural selection was heredity. We should seek the origin of heredity, which means something very precise.
Our ancestors probably thought of fire as a living thing that reproduced. The origin of firemaking may have overturned the idea that fire cannot spontaneously generate.
In imagining the origin of heredity, we can think of a chemical system capable of passing on its form. This simple beginning opened the way for natural selection and the evolution of life’s diversity.
True heredity requires not just reproduction, but the inheritance of variations. Fires reproduce but show no heredity - the variations in different fires do not pass down from parent to offspring fires.
The origin of life required the first true replicator - the first gene. This was likely not DNA initially, but some molecule that could make copies of itself with variations that were inherited.
Replicators need some system to assist their copying. DNA needs the cellular machinery, computer viruses need computers, etc. The first replicator worked alone, starting the process of heredity and leading to evolution.
Catalysts like enzymes speed up reactions but are not used up. Autocatalytic reactions produce their own catalysts and take off rapidly like wildfire once started. The origin of life likely involved autocatalysis or similar self-generating reactions.
Early theories focused on metabolism emerging first, but heredity had to come before metabolism and usefulness - natural selection requires hereditary information first.
The early atmosphere lacked free oxygen, which is needed for organic molecules to form rather than just burn up. Green plants later produced oxygen.
Haldane suggested organic ‘soup’ could accumulate in the early oceans before life, an idea supported later by the Miller-Urey experiment showing organic molecules forming spontaneously.
Miller-Urey experiment simulated early Earth conditions and successfully produced organic compounds like amino acids, supporting the idea that life’s building blocks formed spontaneously.
Oparin and Haldane proposed that the early atmosphere was reducing, and organic soup existed before the first living things. This contradicted earlier ideas of plants being first life.
Cells can’t arise spontaneously but must come from other cells. However, replicators like DNA likely had a simpler precursor or forerunner.
Graham Cairns-Smith proposed mineral crystals as the original replicators, later taken over by DNA.
The key point is that replication came first, before complex cells. DNA must have had a precursor.
RNA is a good candidate precursor to DNA in the “RNA world” theory.
Enzymes act as “robotic lab assistants”, greatly accelerating specific chemical reactions that lead to biological molecules. They allow complex chemistry to happen in a small space.
Enzymes are like robotic lab assistants that grab molecules and combine them to make new molecules. They have specific shapes that allow them to bind to certain molecules.
Some enzymes are like programmable machines that assemble proteins based on instructions from mRNA. The mRNA passes through the ribosome which recruits tRNAs to bring the right amino acids together in the right order.
DNA codes for mRNA which codes for proteins. This allows DNA to indirectly control what reactions happen in a cell by determining which proteins are made.
Autocatalysis is when a molecule facilitates its own production, leading to exponential growth. This concept is important for thinking about the origin of life.
Autocatalytic systems like the ones made by Rebek demonstrate the possibility of competition and selection among self-replicating molecules.
However, autocatalytic replication of long chains like RNA is prone to mutation catastrophes where errors accumulate.
Eigen’s hypercycle theory proposes dividing replicators into small subunits to avoid mutation catastrophes. The subunits cooperate to create a larger function.

The RNA World theory proposes that before DNA and proteins, RNA served as both the genetic material and the main catalyst in early life. RNA is a good candidate for this dual role because:

Proteins are great catalysts (enzymes) due to their ability to fold into complex 3D shapes, but poor replicators.
DNA is an excellent replicator thanks to its complementary base pairing and double helix structure, but a poor catalyst as it is quite rigid.
RNA can both fold into 3D shapes like proteins, and base pair like DNA, so it could potentially catalyze reactions and self-replicate.

Sol Spiegelman’s experiments lent support to the RNA World theory. He showed that a simple RNA virus genome could self-replicate exponentially using just its RNA and a single viral protein enzyme. When he allowed this system to ‘evolve’ by serial transfers, the RNA evolved to become a more efficient replicator, even though it lost the ability to make proteins along the way. This demonstrated how RNA can replicate itself without any proteins.

So in summary, the RNA World theory proposes RNA was a jack-of-all-trades in early life, before the roles became more specialized with the evolution of DNA and proteins. Spiegelman’s work showed how an RNA molecule is capable of self-replication, supporting this idea.

Spiegelman conducted experiments with RNA molecules in test tubes, allowing them to replicate and evolve through mutations and natural selection. Over many generations, the RNA evolved to become much smaller and faster replicating, but less capable of infecting bacteria. This streamlined RNA became known as “Spiegelman’s Monster”.
Similar experiments produced RNA molecules resistant to substances like ethidium bromide. Different chemical environments led to the evolution of different RNA monsters.
In a landmark experiment, Sumper and Luce started with just the raw materials for making RNA plus an enzyme, and self-replicating RNA still evolved spontaneously.
These experiments demonstrate how quickly complex RNA can evolve through natural selection, though they still relied on an enzyme being present.
Thomas Gold proposed a theory that life may have originated deep underground in volcanic rock, since many bacteria thrive in high heat conditions that may have existed early in Earth’s history.
Evidence of bacteria living deep in rock supports the idea that the first life thrived in hot conditions, rather than the sun-centered view we are used to.
The “hot deep rock” theory for the origin of life has become increasingly popular as evidence mounts. It offers the possibility that underground bacteria are relatively unchanged relics of early life.
The host is reflecting on the directionality of evolution and whether there are patterns or laws that would lead to a certain amount of repeatability if the “tape of life” were re-run multiple times.
He discusses the concept proposed by Stuart Kauffman of replaying evolution from the Precambrian era to see what organisms might evolve again after billions of years. Kauffman suggests running this experiment multiple times to get a statistical sense of the properties of life that arise repeatedly versus rarely.
The host agrees this thought experiment is useful for illuminating the expected character of organisms. He notes we should also consider variables like gravity, distance from the sun, length of days, etc. that life cannot influence but that would impact evolution.
Factors like the atmosphere can be influenced by life, so successive evolutions could differ there. Continental positions may also vary between reruns.
There are many possible “Kauffman questions” we could ask about rerunning evolution from different eras. The host gives examples like starting at the origin of life, the origin of mammals, etc.
He notes actual history provides a sort of natural Kauffman experiment via the isolated evolution of landmasses like Australia and Madagascar. Their isolation allowed somewhat independent evolutionary reruns.
The author is impressed by how similarly evolution turns out when allowed to “rerun” in different places and times. He gives examples of marsupial equivalents of placental mammals in Australia.
When the same ecological niches are vacant, evolution often finds similar solutions, like hopping kangaroos and galloping antelopes filling the role of fast herbivores. Small differences can lead to divergence.
The dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles also show parallel evolution of ecological types. The author believes if evolution reran after a mass extinction, similar niches would refill, though maybe not by descendants of the same groups.
Eyes are estimated to have evolved independently 40-60 times, showing strong evolutionary pressure towards vision. This suggests eyes would commonly re-evolve in reruns. Other complex traits like echolocation have evolved multiple times too.
We know when a trait has independently evolved by looking at the family tree - if close relatives lack it, it likely evolved separately. Similarity of complex traits in unrelated groups implies reproducible evolution.
It is difficult to know exactly how many times a trait like echolocation has evolved independently. Some shrews and seals have basic echolocation, and some blind humans have learned it. It may have evolved in extinct animals like pterodactyls and ichthyosaurs, but there is no direct evidence.
Venomous stings, sound production, electrolocation, and gliding/flight are examples of traits that seem to have evolved multiple times independently.
Language and the wheel with a freely rotating bearing appear to have evolved only once. It’s surprisingly difficult to think of “good ideas” that have evolved just once.
Unique evolutionary innovations may include the bombardier beetle’s explosive chemical defense, the archer fish’s ability to spit and knock down prey, and the diving bell spider’s underwater silk bubble for breathing air.
We could systematically count how many times various traits have evolved to find that some emerge repeatedly along “eager” evolutionary paths, while others face more barriers and only evolve once or rarely. Rerunning the “experiment” of evolution might further reveal these tendencies.
Convergent evolution shows that similar solutions evolve independently in response to similar problems, suggesting evolution may be more predictable than some think.
Simon Conway Morris argues convergent evolution plus developmental constraints make the evolution of intelligent, large-brained bipeds likely. But this has only happened once on Earth so far.
We can define progress in a value-neutral sense as the continuation of trends over time, with no reversals. By this definition, evolution shows progress as complex adaptations accumulate over time.
But most people think of progress as value-laden, as implying things getting better or more advanced. In this sense, evolution shows no overall progress towards more advanced forms, just adaptation to environments.
Human evolution is unique in some ways, like developing advanced language abilities. So a re-evolved intelligent being might lack this capacity and differ from humans in important ways.
Overall, evolution shows patterns like convergence that suggest some outcomes are more likely than others. But there are also contingencies, so predicting the details of repeated evolution remains difficult.
‘Progress’ is often used in a value-laden way to refer to trends that align with a particular value system, even if others may not share those values. For example, many see the abolition of slavery and expansion of voting rights as progressive, while some may not.
Technological developments like aviation and computing have exhibited clear progress over time according to some value systems, even if driven by military needs. The progression may not align with everyone’s values.
Biological arms races between predators and prey demonstrate a form of progress, as offensive and defensive capabilities improve over time. However, this doesn’t necessarily improve survival, as gains on one side are often canceled out by the other.
Arms races force both sides to devote more resources to compete, rather than other aspects of life. There is an asymmetry of risk that can lead to one side investing more than the other, like the ‘Life Dinner Principle’ where the rabbit has more at stake than the fox.
Unlike accommodation to fluctuating environments, arms races exhibit systematic progression over time that can be extrapolated into the future. So they represent a deeper kind of progress in evolutionary terms.
Arms races between predators and prey or parasites and hosts drive progressive evolution, where each side develops more complex and refined adaptations over time. This results in intricate “designoid” features like eyes, ears, muscles, etc.
Complex adaptations like bat ears could not plausibly evolve in a single lucky mutation. They require many incremental steps of progressive improvement, fulfilling the definition of evolutionary progress.
Evolutionary progress occurs in spurts during arms races, but is not a uniform trend. Arms races end when one side goes extinct, then the process starts over. Overall progress rhymes or recurs rather than being a single climb upwards.
The author argues macroevolution (evolution over long timescales) emerges from the accumulated effects of microevolution (over individual lifetimes). The two are fundamentally the same process operating at different timescales.
Some argue macroevolution requires extra processes beyond microevolution, but the author disagrees. The different timescales simply demand different methods of study, not fundamentally different mechanisms.
The theory of punctuated equilibrium proposes a “decoupling” between micro and macroevolution. The author has argued against this view previously, believing macroevolution emerges seamlessly from microevolution over long timescales.
The distinction between microevolution and macroevolution is similar to other situations where small-scale processes accumulate over vast timescales to cause large-scale changes (e.g. plate tectonics, growth of organisms, software programs). Macroevolution is essentially lots of microevolution compounded over geological time.
There could be major evolutionary events after which the nature of evolution itself changes, almost like evolution evolves. An example is the evolution of evolvability - lineages becoming better at evolving over time.
Evolvability could be improved through events like the origin of segmentation, which allowed more modular body plans capable of greater variation.
Evolvability may be inadvertently selected for at the clade level, so evolutionary lineages tend to become finely-tuned evolving machines over time.
Important evolutionary innovations like segmentation likely involved discontinuous jumps that initially produced non-viable mutants, but opened up major new evolutionary possibilities once they succeeded.
Segmentation of the body into modular units is a major watershed event that enhanced evolvability in animals like arthropods and vertebrates. It enabled new animals to evolve through altering the segmental modules.
Modularity in general, such as cells, proteins, and DNA, is a key ingredient for the evolution of evolvability. Other examples of modularity include leaves and flowers in plants.
Important watershed events that likely enhanced evolvability include: the origin of replicating molecules like DNA, the separation of replicator (DNA) and enzyme (proteins) roles, multicellularity, eukaryotic cells, sexual reproduction, germ-line and soma separation, and bottlenecking via a single-celled stage in the life cycle.
Sexual reproduction, either the regimented form with halving of genomes per generation or the more haphazard bacterial gene swapping, was a major watershed event impacting future evolvability.

So in summary, key modular innovations like segmentation and cellularization, as well as major transitions like sex, multicellularity, and germ-line separation, opened up new evolutionary possibilities and enhanced evolvability.

DNA has been a recurring theme throughout the tales, highlighting how genes have evolutionary histories and relationships analogous to species.
The Neanderthal’s Tale showed Neanderthals left a genetic legacy in modern humans despite going extinct.
The Gibbon’s Tale illustrated how different genes can reflect different evolutionary histories.
The Lamprey’s Tale drew parallels between gene duplication and speciation.
The taxonomy tales echo the ‘selfish gene’ theme of genes having distinct histories from species.
The host reflects that the real world is amazing enough without the supernatural. The grandeur of life unfolding over billions of years from nothing is awe-inspiring.
Reverence should be for the natural world, not the supernatural. Religious people who find grandeur in nature may agree despite different terminology.
The tales have been a ‘pilgrimage’ revealing the astonishing creativity of evolution and life’s interconnectedness. Our ability to comprehend this is itself a wonder.

Here is a summary of the key points from the phylogenetic tree captions:

The branching order and divergence dates are based on a combination of molecular, morphological, and fossil evidence. There is uncertainty in some parts of the tree.
Molecular evidence from DNA and RNA sequencing has revised many evolutionary relationships, though some molecular trees may be erroneous due to long branch attraction.
The rooting of the eukaryotic part of the tree is uncertain. The position of the plants is especially unsure.
Bacterial phylogeny is difficult due to lateral gene transfer. The deep divergences suggest an early origin.
Dates are calibrated using fossils and molecular clock estimates. The timescale aims for consistency across different studies.
There is broad agreement on relationships within vertebrates, mammals, and some other groups, but debate continues over others.
The tree attempts to synthesize evidence into a coherent overview, but there are many unresolved issues and alternative hypotheses. Dates and branching order may be revised with further study.

Here is a summary of the key points regarding breeding systems in pinnipeds, ungulates, primates, and humans from the referenced chapter:

Pinnipeds (seals, sea lions, walruses) exhibit polygyny, where males control territories and mate with multiple females. There is high sexual dimorphism and males compete intensely for access to females.
Ungulates (hoofed mammals) display diverse mating systems including polygyny, promiscuity, and monogamy. Factors like sex ratio, predation risk, and resources influence the mating system. Males often compete for females.
Primates exhibit monogamy, polygyny, and promiscuity. Monogamy occurs when male care and protection of offspring is critical. Polygyny happens when single males can control groups of females. Promiscuity occurs when females mate with multiple males.
Humans are mostly monogamous but some polygyny has occurred. Human mating systems are influenced by culture, economics, resources, etc. Males often compete for access to females. Human sexuality appears partly innate and partly cultural.

In summary, the chapter reviews breeding systems across these mammal groups, noting factors that influence mating patterns and competition between males for females. Humans show flexibility but have some innate sexual behaviors and males compete for females.

Here is a summary of the key points from the passages:

The passages cover a range of topics related to evolution, genetics, zoology, and paleontology.
They include academic journal articles, books, and other scholarly works on evolution, genetics, the fossil record, taxonomy, and comparisons of anatomy across species.
There is a diversity of authors referenced from the 19th through early 21st centuries, including prominent biologists like Stephen Jay Gould, J.B.S. Haldane, Ernst Haeckel, and T.H. Huxley.
Many passages focus on tracing the evolution of specific anatomical features or behaviors, such as the evolution of trichromatic color vision, activity patterns, the Hox gene cluster, and digital ray patterning.
Others cover broader evolutionary concepts and mechanisms, like natural selection, genetic conflicts in pregnancy, evolvability, and the neutral theory.
Some passages detail the discovery and analysis of important fossils, like early eutherian mammals, the Chengjiang fauna, and hominins like Lucy.
There is also discussion of more speculative topics like the deep hot biosphere, the origin of clothing, and imagined futures for organisms like dragons.

In summary, the passages cover a intellectually diverse mix of evolutionary biology scholarship from the past two centuries.

Here is a summary of the key points from the references:

Human evolution has been shaped by biological and cultural factors. Key developments include bipedalism, increased brain size, language, use of tools and controlled fire.
Fossil evidence shows human ancestors diverged from apes around 6-7 million years ago in Africa. Australopithecus and Homo species emerged over time.
Modern Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago and migrated out of Africa. Humans interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Molecular evidence supports common ancestry between humans and other primates. Genetic diversity in humans decreases further from Africa, supporting an African origin.
Language development was key to human evolution. FOXP2 gene mutations may have been involved in language acquisition.
Sexual selection and mate choice influenced human evolution. Monogamy and concealed ovulation in humans are unusual among primates.
Culture, especially tool use and controlled fire, enabled humans to adapt to diverse environments and colonize the globe.
Debates continue on issues like the aquatic ape hypothesis, the role of group vs individual selection, and the evolutionary psychology of behaviors.

Here is a summary of the key points from the passages:

The passages cover a range of topics related to evolution and the history of life on Earth, including the origins of major animal groups, human evolution, the fossil record, and evolutionary theory.
Several passages discuss primate and human evolution, including new fossil discoveries that shed light on human origins in Africa.
Other passages examine the evolution of early vertebrates, mammals, birds, and other animal groups using fossils, genetics, and molecular evidence.
Some passages focus on key events in the history of life, like the Cambrian explosion, the colonization of land, and mass extinctions.
A number of passages discuss evolution at the molecular level, including RNA evolution and symbiosis between cells.
Theories on the mechanisms of evolution are also covered, such as natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, and punctuated equilibrium.
Overall, the passages provide an overview of research in paleontology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and related fields concerning the origins and evolution of life on Earth.

Here is a summary of the key points from the references:

Evidence for evolution comes from many scientific disciplines, including paleontology, biogeography, embryology, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, and genetics.
Key paleontological evidence includes transitional fossils like Archaeopteryx between dinosaurs and birds, Australopithecus between apes and humans, and Tiktaalik between fish and tetrapods. The fossil record shows how species change over time.
Biogeography explains the geographic distribution of species. Related species tend to be found near each other, while isolated regions have endemic species.
Embryos of different vertebrate species show similarities not found in adults, revealing their common ancestry.
Comparative anatomy shows homologous structures in related organisms, like the pentadactyl limb, revealing common descent.
Molecular studies comparing DNA sequences, protein structures, and gene locations provide genetic evidence for evolution and relationships between organisms.
Natural selection has been observed directly and is the primary cause of adaptation and speciation. Genetics explains how variation arises and is inherited.

#book-summary

The Ancestor's Tale A Pilgrimage to the D - Richard Dawkins