Evolution: Constant Change and Common Threads

Lecture 4 – From Butterflies to Humans

by Sean B. Carroll, PhD
  1.  1.  Start of Lecture 4
  2.  2.  Welcome by Grants Program Director Dr. Dennis Liu
  3.  3.  Introductory interview with Dr. Sean Carroll
  4.  4.  Darwin's theory helped in understanding new discoveries
  5.  5.  Henry Walter Bates and his trip to the Amazon
  6.  6.  Bates returned with 8,000 new species
  7.  7.  Batesian mimicry in butterfly markings
  8.  8.  Bates's book, The Naturalist on the River Amazons
  9.  9.  Data from butterflies offers insight into our own evolution
  10. 10.  How did fruit flies and butterflies get their spots?
  11. 11.  Video: Fruit fly courtship behavior
  12. 12.  Sexual selection and courtship behavior
  13. 13.  Video: Courtship dance of a different species
  14. 14.  Spots evolved via new use of old toolkit gene
  15. 15.  Butterfly wing spots: An adaptation for survival
  16. 16.  Reuse of a toolkit gene creates the wing spots
  17. 17.  Animation: Toolkit gene expression at center of wing spots
  18. 18.  Much of diversity is due to new uses of existing genes
  19. 19.  Genes are reused in different ways via genetic switches
  20. 20.  Animation: Paintbrush gene switch in the fruit fly
  21. 21.  Evolution acts by gain and loss due to chance mutations
  22. 22.  Q&A: Are the switch regions turned off or deleted?
  23. 23.  Q&A: Spots the only difference between fruit fly species?
  24. 24.  T.H. Huxley in 1863 on human evolution
  25. 25.  First Neanderthal fossil supported Huxley's ideas
  26. 26.  3-million-year-old bipedal hominid: Lucy
  27. 27.  Older evidence of bipedal hominids: Laetoli footprints
  28. 28.  Fossil record of Homo sapiens
  29. 29.  The evolutionary tree of hominids
  30. 30.  Problems with finding hominid fossils
  31. 31.  Homo sapiens are a very new species
  32. 32.  Hominid skull evolution
  33. 33.  Evolution of larger brain size in hominids
  34. 34.  Traits that distinguish humans from other apes
  35. 35.  What can we learn about human evolution?
  36. 36.  Comparing the chimp and human genomes
  37. 37.  Loss of jaw-muscle gene could allow a larger skull
  38. 38.  Modern genetics tries to find key evolutionary changes
  39. 39.  Resistance to the theory of evolution
  40. 40.  Darwin's "endless forms" are endangered
  41. 41.  The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms
  42. 42.  Q&A: Why did some hominids last longer than others?
  43. 43.  Q&A: Could some hominid species just be variants?
  44. 44.  Q&A: Gene control region mutations more likely?
  45. 45.  Closing remarks by HHMI President Dr. Thomas Cech


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