Presents an overview of human evolution and discusses human and animal intelligence, the mechanisms of the brain, memory, sleep, myths and legends about evolution, and the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.
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Humans have long sought to understand the forces that shape the diversity of living creatures on our planet. This work is primarily concerned with examining one such force---the historical action of natural selection---from practical, philosophical, and pedagogical perspectives.…
Many aspects of the evolution and biogeography of land snails remain unexplored for all but the most well studied families in select few areas of the world. The evolutionary history of land snails is further complicated by their poor fossil record especially in extant centers of…
The addition or subtraction of species in a community can alter the ecology and evolution of resident species. As human-mediated introductions and extinctions have become commonplace, understanding the consequences of changing species interactions is more important than ever. He…
Sarcophagidae, commonly known as the flesh flies, comprises one of the more behaviorally diverse families among the insects. In addition to carrion feeding, sarcophagids have evolved life history strategies that include predation, parasitism, and kleptoparasitism. Most kleptopar…
Reconstructing evolutionary trees, also known as phylogenies, from molecular sequence data is a fundamental problem in computational biology. Classically, evolutionary trees have been estimated over a set of species, where leaves correspond to extant species and internal nodes c…
Echinoidea constitutes one of five major clades of living echinoderms, marine animals uniquely characterized by a pentaradial symmetry. Approximately 1,000 living and 10,000 extinct species have been described, including many commonly known as sea urchins, heart urchins and sand…
The open-ocean midwater is the largest habitat for animal life on Earth, and one of the most homogeneous environments in space and time. However, these waters harbor complex food webs involving predatory animals from manifold phyla, presenting unique adaptations to capturing the…
Round goby ( Neogobius melanostomus ) is an invasive fish present in all five Great Lakes and is becoming increasingly common in their tributaries. Johnny darter ( Etheostoma nigrum ) is a native species that often coexists with round goby. Here, I use traditional population gen…
Understanding the reasons why intraspecific diversity arises and how populations adapt to spatial variation in environmental conditions continues to be a major focus of evolutionary biology. Recently, inversion polymorphisms have become an active area of research focused on unde…
As global change disrupts historical patterns of variation in the abiotic and biotic environment, there is an urgent need to not only investigate the ecological impacts of these complex changes, but how these novel environments will affect the evolutionary trajectory of local po…
This dissertation develops a feminist materialist interpretation of the role the neuroendocrine system plays in the development of gender/sex differences in religion. Data emerging from psychology, sociology, and cognitive science have continually indicated that women are more r…
The Trivers-Willard hypothesis posits that maternal investment in offspring is influenced by maternal condition and infant sex, as female offspring are likely to be successful regardless of condition while males are likely to be successful only when high quality. While primarily…
Collectively, this dissertation explores taxonomy, biodiversity studies, natural history collections, ecology, and theory. The first chapter is focused on the genus Prolixandromyces , in which 4 new species are described, representing the first records of this genus in South Ame…
While most demosponge mitochondrial genomes are well-conserved in structure and sequence, the mitochondrial genome of Amphimedon queenslandica displays several unusual features. It is missing the protein-coding gene atp9, has additional non-coding regions, and maintains a repeat…
As invasive species spread around the world, understanding the factors underlying invasion success has become increasingly important. Using an evolutionary perspective to examine biological invasions, I investigated how organisms are able to rapidly adapt to new environments, an…
The present study tested the hypothesis that women dress modestly to signal to other women that they pose no mate poaching threat and are sexually restricted, and that this is especially true for religious women. Participants were 392 Muslim women living in the United States. Th…
In this dissertation, I addressed questions about how maternal ecology affects fetal growth and the hormonal milieu the newborn is exposed to via early postpartum breast milk (colostrum). Drawing on Ramadan fasting as a natural experiment in Rabat, Morocco, I used a biocultural …