Articles

Cosmic Evolution

Just as biological evolution is the heart of modern biology, cosmic evolution is the heart of modern cosmology. For instructors to be confident in teaching science, it is helpful for them to appreciate the cur...

Authors: Lawrence M. Krauss

Complete Bibliography of Eugenie C. Scott

Bibliographic references for all works authored by Eugenie C. Scott are provided, including her contributions to the publications of the National Center for Science Education and to other sources. The publicat...

Authors: Adam M. Goldstein and Glenn Branch

Paleontology and Evolution in the News

Authors: Sidney Horenstein

Lessons from the Social Psychology of Evolution Warfare: Good Science Alone is not Enough

American student acceptance of evolution is far from uniform, even when students experience instruction in the relevant scientific methods and data. But, excellent science teaching alone cannot be expected alw...

Authors: Raymond Arthur Eve, Susan Carol Losh and Brandon Nzekwe

How Old is Earth, and How Do We Know?

Earth scientists have devised many complementary and consistent techniques to estimate the ages of geologic events. Annually deposited layers of sediments or ice document hundreds of thousands of years of cont...

Authors: Robert M. Hazen

Editorial

Authors: Niles Eldredge and Gregory Eldredge

Three Wishes for Genie

Authors: Glenn Branch

The Evolution of Creationist Movements

Every discipline has its hazards, and for evolution scientists and educators, a major hazard consists of encounters with creationists, their rhetoric, and their attempts to insert antievolutionism into public ...

Authors: Nicholas J. Matzke

A Bulldog of Your Owen: The Philosophies Behind the Huxley–Owen Debate

Authors: David M. Lovelace

Richard Owen’s “Most Interesting Department of Natural History ... Its Very Soul”

Authors: Adam M. Goldstein

What’s a Nice Midwestern Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

Authors: Andrew J. Petto

Problem Concepts in Evolution Part II: Cause and Chance

In a previous article, we suggested that differences in how the general public and scientists use terms such as purpose and design can lead to confusion, particularly around understanding evolution and mechanisms...

Authors: Louise S. Mead and Eugenie C. Scott

Communicating Evolution as Science

Authors: Anastasia Thanukos

Geology as Theater: The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802–1856, by Ralph O’Connor

Authors: Steven Newton

The Theory of Evolution is Not an Explanation for the Origin of Life

The propagation of misconceptions about the theory of biological evolution must be addressed whenever and wherever they are encountered. The recent article by Paz-y-Mino and Espinoza in this journal contained ...

Authors: Justin W. Rice, Daniel A. Warner, Clint D. Kelly, Michael P. Clough and James T. Colbert

Should Students Be Able to Opt Out of Evolution? Some Philosophical Considerations

One new development in the ongoing creationism/evolution controversy has been the proposal to institute opt-out policies that would allow creationist parents to exempt their children from any instruction invol...

Authors: Robert T. Pennock

From the Classroom to the Courtroom: Intelligent Design and the Constitution

Although the Supreme Court of the United States has never developed a single clear test for determining what kinds of state action violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, schools that attempt ...

Authors: Jay D. Wexler

Apprehension and Pedagogy in Evolution Education

Instructors’ apprehensions and the decisions instructors make about pedagogy are often linked when it comes to teaching evolution. Whether it is the reticence of K-12 teachers that their instruction may affect...

Authors: Brian Alters

Evolution—by the (Text) Book

Textbooks are widely used in American science classrooms and as such have become a focal point of efforts by the anti-evolution movement to eliminate or weaken evolution education in American schools. Because ...

Authors: Kenneth R. Miller

It's Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Intelligent Design Movement's Recycling of Creationist Strategies

The intelligent design (ID) creationist movement is now a quarter of a century old. ID proponents at the Discovery Institute, headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA, insist that ID is not creationism. However, it i...

Authors: Barbara Forrest

Listening to Teachers

The author reflects on how much she has learned about teaching from K-12 teachers, and about the difficulties teachers encounter when they teach about evolution. Misconceptions and preconceptions, especially t...

Authors: Eugenie C. Scott

Not Just for Ornithologists

Authors: Beatrice Kondo

Thirteen Essays on Evolution and Creationism in Modern Debates

Authors: Kim Paffenroth

Evolution and the Media

Journalists have been writing about evolution since Darwin first published the Origin of Species. Today, news about evolution comes in a dizzying diversity of venues. In this paper, I survey this diversity, obser...

Authors: Carl Zimmer

How to Win the Evolution War: Teach Macroevolution!

If the American public understood what is actually known about the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life and how we know about them, uncertainty about evolution would drop precipitously, creati...

Authors: Kevin Padian

Problem Concepts in Evolution Part I: Purpose and Design

In 1999, Scott suggested that evolution has existential repercussions for some students because they confuse methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism: conflating the incapacity of scientific exp...

Authors: Louise S. Mead and Eugenie C. Scott

Editorial

Authors: Greg Eldredge and Niles Eldredge

Paleontology and Evolution in the News

Authors: Sidney Horenstein

The Origin Manuscripts at the “The Darwin Manuscripts Project”

I announce the launch of the Darwin Manuscripts Project (http://​darwin.​amnh.​org) and describe its importance as a source of professional-grade manuscripts by Charl...

Authors: Adam M. Goldstein

How Species Affect Each Other’s Evolution

Authors: Douglas J. Futuyma

Coevolution in the Classroom

Authors: Anastasia Thanukos

If You Want to Defend Evolution, Read this Book

Authors: Randy Moore

Four Central Points About Coevolution

Much of evolution is about the coevolution of species with each other. In recent years, we have learned that coevolution is much more pervasive, dynamic, and relentless than we previously thought. There are fo...

Authors: John N. Thompson

Examining the Interaction of Acceptance and Understanding: How Does the Relationship Change with a Focus on Macroevolution?

The goal of this research was to illuminate the relationship between students’ acceptance and understanding of macroevolution. Our research questions were: (1) Is there a relationship between knowledge of macr...

Authors: Louis S. Nadelson and Sherry A. Southerland

Resource Competition and Coevolution in Sticklebacks

Threespine stickleback in young postglacial lakes provide a compelling example of coevolution between species that compete for resources. Coexisting pairs of stickleback species are highly divergent in habitat...

Authors: Dolph Schluter

Coevolution Between Food-Rewarding Flowers and Their Pollinators

The concept of coevolution was first developed by Darwin, who used it to explain how pollinators and food-rewarding flowers involved in specialized mutualisms could, over time, develop long tongues and deep tu...

Authors: Steven D. Johnson and Bruce Anderson

Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Effectively Communicating to Non-technicians

Given the degree of disbelief in the theory of evolution by the wider public, scientists need to develop a collection of clear explanations and metaphors that demonstrate the working of the theory and the flaw...

Authors: Alexander Schreiber and Steven Gimbel

Selection and Evolution with a Deck of Cards

Imparting a basic understanding of evolutionary principles to students in an active, engaging fashion can be troublesome because the logistics involved in designing experiments where students pose their own qu...

Authors: Frank M. Frey, Curtis M. Lively and Edmund D. Brodie III

Branching Out with Coevolutionary Trees

Coevolution (reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting species) is posited as a major mechanism that creates new species. A challenge has been to understand how coevolution has shaped the patterns of relat...

Authors: Kari A. Segraves

Coevolution and the Web of Life

Authors: John N. Thompson and Rodrigo Medel

Antagonistic Coevolution and Sex

One of the leading hypotheses for the maintenance of sexual reproduction is the Red Queen hypothesis. The underlying premise of the Red Queen hypothesis is that parasites rapidly evolve to infect common host g...

Authors: Curtis M. Lively

Coevolution in Multispecific Interactions among Free-Living Species

Ecological interactions among species are the backbone of biodiversity. Interactions take a tremendous variety of forms in nature and have pervasive consequences for the population dynamics and evolution of sp...

Authors: Pedro Jordano

Teaching "Species"

A clear understanding of the term "species" is fundamental to the subject of evolution. However, introductory textbooks often fail to address this topic until one of the later chapters, after having used the t...

Authors: Mark W. Ellis and Paul G. Wolf

Arms Race Coevolution: The Local and Geographical Structure of a Host–Parasite Interaction

Consideration of complex geographic patterns of reciprocal adaptation has provided insight into new features of the coevolutionary process. In this paper, we provide ecological, historical, and geographical ev...

Authors: Rodrigo Medel, Marco A. Mendez, Carmen G. Ossa and Carezza Botto-Mahan

Diversifying Coevolution between Crossbills and Conifers

Coevolution between granivorous crossbills (Loxia spp.) and conifers has been a prominent process in the diversification of crossbills. A striking example occurs in western North America where coevolution between...

Authors: Craig W. Benkman

Misconceptions About Evolution in Brazilian Freshmen Students

Regarding such an important issue as our origin, as well as the origin of all biological diversity, it is surprising to realize that evolution still faces drawbacks in keeping its deserved notability as a unif...

Authors: Rubens Pazza, Pierre R. Penteado and Karine F. Kavalco

Using Microbial Microcosms to Study Host–parasite Coevolution

Microbial microcosm experiments with bacteria and their viral parasites allow us to observe host–parasite coevolution in action. Laboratory populations of microbes evolve rapidly, thanks to their short generat...

Authors: Michael A. Brockhurst

Biosemantics: An Evolutionary Theory of Thought

Evolutionary theory has an unexpected application in philosophy of mind, where it is used by the so-called biosemantic program—also called the teleosemantic program—to account for the representational capaciti...

Authors: Crystal L’Hôte

Erratum to:Using Avida-ED for Teaching and Learning About Evolution in Undergraduate Introductory Biology Courses

Authors: Elena Bray Speth, Tammy M. Long, Robert T. Pennock and Diane Ebert-May

Darwinian Morality

The paper explores the significance of Darwinian evolution for morality and moral theory. After presenting Darwin’s own views on the evolution of the moral sense and the Victorian spectrum of opinion on the re...

Authors: Catherine Wilson