Here’s an interesting PLoS article about sexually antagonistic genes.
Now, you’re probably thinking of the preying mantis or the black widow, but this is a battle of the sexes on a genetic level. If conditions are reproductively optimal for the male Drosophila melanogaster, the female suffers and vice versa.
It seems that there is mounting evidence that evolution is a better tool for building complex organisms capable of adapting to their environment than design.
I wonder what creationists think of this.
According to this HarvardScience article, researchers have determined that, many times, when a queen is removed from an ant colony, the remaining ants will be absorbed by a neighboring colony despite their usually antagonistic behavior. The fact that they’ve lost their queen and, with her, any chance of passing on their genes prompts this question in the article which intrigues me: what evolutionary advantage is there for the absorbed colony?
