linkfest – 04/21/13

Inbred royals show traces of natural selection – “Study suggests the Spanish Habsburgs evolved to mute the effects of inbreeding, but other geneticists are unconvinced.”

Time to get tough on the physiological causes of crime – “[V]iolent criminals are biologically different from the rest of us.” – review of The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime.

Scientists find ethnicity linked to antibodies – “‘[I]t’s early days,’ emphasizes Watson, ‘but these findings could mean that past environmental exposures to certain pathogens caused DNA insertions or deletions in different ethnic groups, which could impact disease risk. Our results demonstrate that antibody studies need to take into account the ethnicity of DNA samples used.’”

Those resistant to ‘love hormone’ may also be easier to hypnotize – “Gene variants linked to social detachment may increase suggestibility.”

One Blessing Of Outbreeding – i didn’t write this, i swear! (you’ll never guess who did…)

The gay germ hypothesis – from peter frost. see also Not Final! from greg cochran.

Another reminder… – “[A] prod to certain of my smart liberal friends to start having children.” – from jayman. see also: The end of paternal investment or, more cads, fewer dads from mr. mangan.

The Strange Case of Dr. Robert Trivers – “[Trivers] has been driven off the campus of Rutgers University! He has been involved in a controversy lately over his accusation that one of his graduate students committed fraud in a scientific paper. Apparently he was banned from campus because a colleague who supports the alleged fraudster claimed Trivers had ‘frightened him in his office’.” – from helian unbound.

Women graduates of elite colleges 1/3rd more likely to be stay-at-home moms – from steve sailer.

Scent of a Man: Women Can Sniff Out a Hot Guy – “Women at their peak fertility prefer the smell of men oozing with testosterone, a new study finds.” – and speaking of testosterone: Testosterone pumps up threats for tough guys – “The higher a man’s testosterone level, the more macho he’s likely to act when his masculinity is threatened, a new study finds.”

The Real ‘Hobbit’ Had Larger Brain Than Thought

Egyptian mummies yield genetic secrets – “The ancient Egyptians could soon be getting their genomes sequenced as a matter of routine.”

Why Menopause?

Stonehenge occupied 5,000 years earlier than thought

The Pattern of Female Nuptiality in Oman – “[M]ore than half (52%) of the total marriages in Oman are consanguineous. First cousin unions are the most common type of consanguineous unions, constituting 39% of all marriages and 75% of all consanguineous marriages. About 11% of the marriages are polygynous…. [P]aternal first-cousin marriages constituted 27.7% of all marriages and 72% (565/786) of all first-cousin marriages, while maternal first-cousin marriages constituted 10.8% of all marriages and 28% (221/786) of all first-cousin marriages.”

The Ancient Greeks & Romans, Beauty and Human Biodiversity – @occam’s razor.

Could Life Be Older Than Earth Itself? – “[T]wo geneticists have applied Moore’s Law to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity — and the results suggest organic life first came into existence long before Earth itself.”

Chimps Communicate Like Passionate Italians – my favorite headline of the week. (^_^)

Live fast, die younger: Actors, singers and sportsman ‘die seven and a half years before other high achievers’

Historic human remains yield epigenetic tags – see also: Epigenetic Inheritance: Fact or Fiction?

Icelandic anti-incest app keeps residents from becoming kissin’ cousins – previously íslendingabók.

‘Real men wear kilts’: The anecdotal evidence that wearing a Scottish kilt has influence on reproductive potential: how much is true? – keep wearin’ yer kilt!

Did this magical little crystal help the Vikings rape and pillage across the world? – “Research suggests crystal salvaged from a shipwreck may be a sunstone”

bonus: What rights should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get and why does it matter? – “The Obama DOJ says it intends to question the Boston bombing suspect ‘extensively’ without first Mirandizing him”

bonus bonus: Applicants wanted for a one-way ticket to Mars – let’s go! (^_^)

bonus bonus bonus: ‘Living fossil’ genome unlocked – “The genes of an ancient fish, the coelacanth, have much to reveal about our distant past.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Chlamydia Is Killing Koalas — Will Genetics Find a Cure?

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linkfest – 03/24/13

extra-long [insert dongle joke here] linkfest this week since there wasn’t one last sunday (sorry, dog ate it…). note that there (probably) won’t be one next sunday either, ’cause i’ll be too busy hunting for easter eggs…. (^_^)

Common DNA Markers Can Account for More Than Half of the Genetic Influence on Cognitive Abilities – “In the same sample of 3,154 pairs of 12-year-old twins, we directly compared twin-study heritability estimates for cognitive abilities (language, verbal, nonverbal, and general) with GCTA estimates captured by 1.7 million DNA markers. We found that DNA markers tagged by the array accounted for .66 of the estimated heritability, reaffirming that cognitive abilities are heritable. Larger sample sizes alone will be sufficient to identify many of the genetic variants that influence cognitive abilities.” – via race/history/evolution notes.

Genotypes over-represented among college students are linked to better cognitive abilities and socioemotional adjustment – “The present study investigated … genotype frequencies of 284 SNPs covering major neurotransmitter genes in a sample of 478 Chinese college students, comparing these frequencies with those of a community sample (the 1000 Genomes dataset)…. Results showed that 24 loci showed Hardy–Weinberg disequilibrium among college students, but only two of these were in disequilibrium in the 1000 Genomes sample. These loci were found to be associated with mathematical abilities, executive functions, motivation, and adjustment-related behaviors such as alcohol use and emotion recognition.” – via … somebody … can’t remember who. sorry!

Genes and Smarts – from the derb.

Why Bacteria Commit Suicide – “[I]nfected individuals self-destructed before they could spread the virus to others.”

Evolution via Roadkill – “Cliff swallows that build nests that dangle precariously from highway overpasses have a lower chance of becoming roadkill than in years past thanks to a shorter wingspan that lets them dodge oncoming traffic. That’s the conclusion of a new study based on 3 decades of data collected on one population of the birds. The results suggest that shorter wingspan has been selected for over this time period because of the evolutionary pressure put on the population by cars.”

‘Out of Africa’ Story Being Rewritten Again – “Our early human ancestors may have left Africa more recently than thought, between 62,000 and 95,000 years ago, suggests a new analysis of genetic material from fossil skeletons.” – see also Mitochondrial DNA tree calibrated with ancient DNA @race/history/evolution notes and Revised timescale of human mtDNA evolution from dienekes.

How Social Darwinism Made Modern China – “A thousand years of meritocracy shaped the Middle Kingdom.” – good stuff from ron unz. see also the derb and peter frost and anatoly.

Does the Clark-Unz model apply to Japan and Korea? – from peter frost.

Did evolution give us inflammatory disease? – “[S]ome variants in our genes that could put a person at risk for inflammatory diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis, have been the target of natural selection over the course of human history.” – original research article.

Genes may be reason some kids are picky about food – “The study looked at 66 pairs of twins between ages 4 and 7 years old, and found that genes explain 72 percent of the variation among children in the tendency to avoid new foods, while the rest was influenced by environment.”

A Tale of Three Maps – from jayman.

Dan Freedman’s babies and National Character – from greg cochran @west hunter (buy the e-book!).

HVGIQ: The Bahamas – from jason malloy.

The Personality of Tribalism – from staffan.

Remembering Stephen Jay Gould: Bully and Boob – from steve sailer.

Depicting reality or escaping from it? – the awesome epigone asks a good question/makes a good point about something in steven pinker’s Better Angels.

Assortative mating and shared life history strategy – from mr. mangan.

Uh-Oh… – malcolm pollack on why there’s not so much “diversity” in silicon valley: “It’s because Silicon Valley … *is* a meritocracy — you just can’t fake being good at writing code, solving complex engineering problems, or designing high-tech gadgetry….”

Was inbreeding common among early humans? 100,000-year-old deformed skull adds evidence to theory of ‘very small’ communities – “The discovery adds to growing evidence that early humans inbred often” – prolly because populations were small. see also Abnormalities in Pleistocene Homo from dienekes.

Moral Matter – the neuroscience of morality.

Crime and punishment: From the neuroscience of freewill to legal reform

Men programmed to avoid sex with best friends’ wives: study – “Researchers suggest guys may have a biological predisposition against hitting on their best friends’ partners…. A University of Missouri study has found that adult males’ testosterone levels dropped when they were interacting with the marital partner of a close friend.”

Downton Abbey: Earl of Grantham maximizes inclusive fitness – @occam’s razor.

Experts Say Food May Contribute To Anger, Violent Behavior – “Pace and other nutritionists say if you eat plenty of fish, eggs, beans, fruits and green leafy vegetables, you should have the nutrients you need. However, people who tend to eat a diet loaded with processed or packaged foods could find themselves more easily irritated.”

Women abused as children likelier to bear autistic child

One of Us – animals are people, too.

Text mining uncovers British reserve and US emotion – “An analysis of the digitized texts of English-language books over the past century concludes that, since the 1980s, words that carry emotional content have become significantly more common in US books than in British ones.”

Evolution and Existentialism, an Intellectual Odd Couple – “On the basis of evolutionary existentialism, I would therefore like to suggest the heretical and admittedly paradoxical notion that, in fact, we need to teach more disobedience. Not only disobedience to political and social authority but especially disobedience to some of our troublesome genetic inclinations.” – hmmmm….

Forbidden City – “The left-wing stranglehold on academia.”

bonus: Life found deep under the sea – “Oceanic-crust microbes survive on hydrogen and carbon dioxide.” in other microbial news: Mariana Trench: Deepest ocean ‘teems with microbes’ – “The deepest place in the ocean is teeming with microscopic life, a study suggests.”

bonus bonus: Palestinian Mother Speaks Out About Daughter’s Honor Killing – “[H]onor killing defendants [are] usually given light sentences. Three years in prison was the stiffest in these cases. Life sentences or execution were never a consideration…. Offenders receive reduced sentences pursuant to Article 18 of Penal Code no. 74 of 1936, which is entitled ‘Necessity.’ The article provides for ‘leniency in punishment for crimes that offenders have committed in order to avert consequences, which could cause irreparable damage to their honor, money, or the honor of those such offenders are obliged to protect.’”

bonus bonus bonus: The Hate List – “[T]he [$]PLC’s site explains that it counts counted ’1,007 active hate groups in the United States in 2012,’ including ‘organizations and their chapters.’ But ‘The Year in Hate and Extremism’ did not make the ‘chapter’ distinction explicit. It is rarely drawn out in the organization’s frequent media appearances, nor was it mentioned in a letter from the SPLC to the Justice Department warning of the growing threat.” – see also What’s hate got to do with it? @bad data, bad!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Amazing photographs reveal the lost world of the Omo tribes of Ethiopia

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A Tiny Village Where Women Chose to Be Single Mothers – “30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules….”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Cannibals of the Past Had Plenty of Reasons to Eat People

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Phallus-shaped fossils identified as new species [insert dongle joke here]

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Global Internet Porn Habits Infographic – ‘sup finnish people?! and romanians and hungarians (“mom and son”?!)?!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: i love the ukrainian parliament. no, i really do! (~_^)

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natural selection

“If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisation, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.”

- Chas. Darwin, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), pgs. 126-27.

nice!

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the middle ages

working hypothesis: that the medieval period was a d*mned interesting time wrt selection pressures on europeans (and by europeans i mostly mean northern europeans, altho interesting stuff undoubtedly happened in the south, too) and a lot of the genes for the characteristics we associate with h. europaeus were selected for during this time period.

i know — it’s a long time period, but that doesn’t make it any the less interesting or remarkable.

you’ve got:

- the ashkenazi jewish iq thing [opens pdf], a la cochran, laurel and hardy, and harpending. (you might quibble that they’re not really europeans — ashkenazi jews, that is, not cochran, et. al. my point is, tho, that their high average iq — the ashkenazis, that is — seems to have been selected for in medieval europe.)

- the middle class traits and general independent spirit of the english (and possibly other northern europeans) prolly being selected for starting in the medieval period.

- the shift from tribes to not-tribes via the changing mating patterns which prolly impacted altruism genes amongst other behavioral traits.

- manoralism. not sure what traits might’ve been selected for due to the manoralism system in europe. for one thing, the manors, along with the church, contributed to the, relatively speaking, genetic unrelatedness within some european populations. that the manor system never really took hold in places like greece and italy (according to mitterauer) might explain a lot about those populations. also, i’m guessing that manoralism — which wasn’t very powerful in england either (feudalism arrived quite late there, no?) — might’ve select for somewhat docile personalities. you know — individuals who will go along with what the masser (whether that be the monastery or the lord of the manor) or the group has to say rather than being fiercely independent? conformists, in other words. think: germans.

- the ostseidlung. the eastward expansion of germans (and others) in many cases within the manor system again. selective pressures?: for hard, efficient workers. again, not too uppity. high-ish iq?

- meanwhile, southern spain and italy had arab/north africa settlement and rule for a time. ireland and other “celtic fringe” areas ignored the church regulations on marriage and didn’t really adopt the manor system, either. eastern europe? who knows? (somebody other than me!)

- the black death.

new year’s resolution for 2012 (is it too early to make resolutions?): think and learn more about the selective pressures on european populations during the middle ages.

previously: and so my next question naturally is… and setting the stage

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which altruism genes?

in biology, altruism is defined as more than just lending the neighbor a cup of sugar. being altruistic means reducing one’s own fitness somehow (although i guess that one cup of sugar might, in some instances, be critical to one’s survival!), maybe passing up on a chance to reproduce or even sacrificing one’s own life for another.

seems like every creature on the planet displays some sort of altruistic behavior. plants put down fewer roots (presumably lowering their fitness) in the presence of related plants; some of the amoebas that live together as slime molds sacrifice their lives for their fellow single-celled family members; and, of course, the classic example of the eusocial insects — ants, bees, etc. — who have whole castes that do not reproduce and simply work their little hearts out raising their sisters (to whom they are more genetically related than they would be to their offspring — it’s complicated — don’t ask! or you can read about it here.). if you’re interested, there’s lots more about altruistic behaviors in animals in wikipedia.

my point is: there must be a whole range of altruism genes out there since all sorts of different creatures display all sorts of different altruistic behaviors. one size does not fit all.

furthermore, i’d be willing to bet the bank (hey — it’s not my money!) that there are different altruism genes in different human populations. or, at least, different frequencies of different altruism genes/alleles in different populations.

i’m sure there’s prolly plenty of overlap ’cause we’re all humans, primates, mammals, vertebrates, tetrapods, laurasians, etc., etc. but the various human populations have had quite unique evolutionary histories, so it shouldn’t be surprising if varying frequencies of/different altruism genes/alleles have been selected for here and there.

think of the fact that different genes for light skin color were selected for in europeans versus east asians and you’ll get my drift.

also think about how different peoples seem to display (at least somewhat) different altruistic behaviors. consider suicide bombers who, perhaps comparable to honey bees or g. sulphureus soldier termites who sacrifice themselves to defend their colonies, seem to be more common in some populations (middle eastern, japanese) than others (although maybe these examples are just artifacts of desperate circumstances).

“genes for suicide missions” won’t just pop up out of the blue, or very easily either i imagine. full hymenopteran sisters share 3/4s of their genes with each other, so it’s not surprising that they’re willing to sacrifice everything for their siblings. but it’s hard to see how such “extreme altruism” genes could arise in humans.

however, it is conceivable that, for example, in arab societies — tribal societies based upon a certain mating pattern (fbd marriage) which creates “bands of brothers” — over one thousand years of tribal warfare might’ve selected for a greater willingness to partake in kamikaze behaviors. remember that inbreeding means the evolution of altruism is easier.

it’s just a thought.

in any case, when we’re talking about genes for altruism, i think we should ask ourselves: which altruism genes?

edit: hamilton got here first, of course (^_^) [pgs. 19-20] -

“I do believe in the existence of considerable genetical differences in altruism, in selfishness, and in many other social attributes in most social animals, and this includes in humans, but this belief is certainly not predicated directly from kin-selection theory. Rather, it is underpinned more by a belief in a complexity of life sufficient to generate genetical variability in a almost everything — the variability we actually see — and also, as will appear in Volume 2 of this compilation, by modern theoretical expectations connected with reciprocation and with disease selection. It certainly does not come from kin selection per se.”

previously: genes for altruism

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linkfest – 10/16/11

E. O. Wilson’s Theory of Everything

Breathing life into an extinct ethnicity – “Participants in the 1000 Genomes project reconstruct the genetic variation of a lost group of Native Americans.” – the tainos.

Children Like Teamwork More Than Chimps Do

Smoking cannabis could make you depressed depending on your genes

The Drive to Be Different

Does the Pill make you choose a boring lover? Scientists find women who take the contraceptive pick caring and reliable men

bonus: What are you doing about HBD-denialism? – from half sigma.

bonus bonus: HBD defined – from mr. a. epigone, esq.

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assortative friendships

do you pick your friends ’cause you like them, or ’cause they have certain genes? (or is that the same thing?):

“Correlated genotypes in friendship networks”

“[K]inship may not be the only basis on which natural selection might possibly operate at the group level. For example, if genetic differences between social networks (or, conversely, genetic similarity within networks) were found at significant levels among humans, it would enhance the opportunity for natural selection to operate at the level of social groups established on a basis other than kinship….

“[N]o work has yet established that, net of such stratification, there are any genes that are correlated (either positively or negatively) between individuals in nonreproductive, friendship unions. To study whether such correlation exists, we analyzed two independent samples with information about respondents’ genes and about respondents’ friendship ties and social networks: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and the Framingham Heart Study Social Network (FHS-Net). Add Health allowed respondents to name up to 10 friends at each of three waves over 6 y (27), and the FHS-Net captured up to two close friends at each of seven waves over 32 y (28).

“In Add Health, subjects were genotyped for one marker each in the DRD2, DRD4, CYP2A6, MAOA, SLC6A3, and SLC6A4 genes (Materials and Methods). Figs. 1 and 2 show how genotypes for two of these genes are distributed in the largest connected component of the friendship network. Notably, significant clusters of similar genotypes for DRD2 suggest the possibility of homophily, but the substantial absence of any connection between individuals with minor alleles of CYP2A6 suggests possible heterophily….

“These results suggest that there is genotypic clustering in social networks that exceeds what might be expected solely from population stratification. People’s friends may not only have similar traits, but actually resemble each other on a genotypic level, even at the level of specific alleles and nucleotides.

“Thus, homophily and heterophily in friendships, expressed at the genetic level, may have notable implications for our understanding both of the way that our genes can shape our environmental exposures and the way that our social environment can influence our behavior (21, 22, 28, 35). A feedback process might emerge whereby a person’s genes lead to the selection of friends with certain genotypes, which in turn facilitates or modifies the expression of a person’s own genes…. Such a process could also play out over longer time scales; the human evolutionary environment is not limited to the physical and biological environment, but also includes the social environment, which may itself be an evolutionary force (37, 38).

“In some sense, humans might be ‘metagenomic’ not just with respect to the microbes within them (39, 40), but also with respect to the humans around them. We could possibly view an individual’s genetic landscape as a summation of the genes within the individual and those around him, just as in certain other organisms (14, 17).”

metagenomic. i like that. i like it a lot!

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french canadians still evolving

(~_^)

i haven’t had a chance to read the research article yet, but here from nicholas wade in the nyt:

“Natural Selection Leaves Fresh Footprints on a Canadian Island”

“From parish records in a French-Canadian island, researchers have uncovered what may be the most recent known instance of human evolution in response to natural selection.

“The island, Île aux Coudres, lies in the St. Lawrence River 50 miles northeast of Quebec. Its church registries hold an unusually complete record of births, marriages and deaths. From this data, a team of researchers led by Emmanuel Milot and Denis Réale of the University of Quebec at Montreal have extracted the histories of women born on the island between 1799 and 1940.

“Over this 140-year period, the age at which a woman had her first child — a trait that is highly heritable — fell to 22 years, from 26. Because of this change, women on average had four more children during their reproductive lifetime, the researchers report.

“The finding ‘supports the idea that humans are still evolving,’ the researchers write in Monday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

cool!

but wait! there’s more:

“Dr. Milot said the genetic changes in his study showed up so clearly because other factors that might cloud them had been held to a minimum by the particular social conditions on Île aux Coudres. The island was granted by royal decree to the priests who managed the Quebec seminary and was settled by 30 families who arrived between 1720 and 1773. The families took up farming, then other professions, like fishing. Throughout the period, considerable equality was maintained, and the population lacked the gradations of wealth that can influence who has how many children.

“Also, because most people married locally, the island’s population became considerably inbred, despite a ban on marrying first or second cousins.

“These two factors, and the homogeneity of the population, left the field open for genetic effects to become prominent, Dr. Milot said.”

inbreeding?! wait, wait, wait. of course this somewhat isolated population could’ve evolved faster ’cause they were homogeneous so the “genetic effects” could more quickly “become prominent.” but couldn’t it be that they just had more babies ’cause they were inbreeding?! (or maybe the two are the same thing….)

i gotta go look at the research article.

(see, françois? a post about french canadians! at least one sub-group of you guys anyway. (^_^) )

see also: amish paradise from greg cochran.

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