The Rhythm of the Tide - Issue 19: Illusions
▻http://nautil.us/issue/19/illusions/the-rhythm-of-the-tide
Standing deep inside the archives of the Roman Catholic Church’s Canadian headquarters, it suddenly struck me that this was an odd place to find evidence that people are still evolving. That human evolution has continued into modern times was, until recently, a mostly theoretical idea debated among experts because there simply was no data. But as an evolutionary biologist, I had my own perspective. My research has mostly been on ants, which are common and diverse, making them ideal subjects for understanding evolutionary processes. In some ways ants and humans have a lot in common. Leafcutter ants create enormous underground nests that house millions of individuals, each with specialized tasks—not unlike our cities. They grow their own food in the form of a fungus that they domesticated (...)