Most theories of human mental evolution assume that selection favored higher intelligence and larger brains, which should have reduced genetic variance in both. However, adult human intelligence remains highly heritable, and is genetically correlated with brain size. This conflict might be resolved by estimating the coefficient of additive genetic variance (CVA) in human brain size, since CVAs ...

Are the deteriorative processes associated with mammal aging purposely and actively programmed by the organism’s design or are they merely a passive result of the organism’s inability to better resist damage from fundamental deteriorative processes? This question has now persisted for 150 years. Historically, observational evidence generally favors active aging. However, the nature of the evolu...

The Sociosexual Orientation Inventory (SOI; Simpson & Gangestad 1991) is a self-report measure of individual differences in human mating strategies. Low SOI scores signify that a person is sociosexually restricted, or follows a more monogamous mating strategy. High SOI scores indicate that an individual is unrestricted, or has a more promiscuous mating strategy. As part of the International Sex...

Evolutionary theories have always been treated by legal scholars as a sort of cousin to the legal theoretical family, both in Europe and the United States. They are nice theories, they tell interesting stories, you sometimes listen to what they have to say and when among friends, you may even quote them. However, in the modern mononuclear family, when it is time to tackle important issues and r...

We establish the dynamical attractor behavior in scalar-tensor theories of dark energy, providing a powerful framework to analyze classes of theories, predicting common evolutionary characteristics that can be compared against cosmological constraints. In the Jordan frame the theories are viewed as a coupling between a scalar field, Φ, and the Ricci scalar, R, F (Φ)R. The Jordan frame evolution...

Evolutionary algorithms have been used to tackle many problems over the years. Here we describe a system designed to investigate ecological theories by modelling the population dynamics of evolving plants in a digital environment. The system is called PLANTWORLD.

Evolutionary theories of aging predict that species in low-risk habitats will evolve longer lifespans. A new study comparing lifespan in arboreal and terrestrial mammals provides further support for this prediction. But is the prediction valid?

The two classic theories for the existence of sexual replication are that sex purges deleterious mutations from a population1-7, and that sex allows a population to adapt more rapidly to changing environments8-11. These two theories have often been presented as opposing explanations for the existence of sex. Here, we develop and analyze evolutionary models based on the asexual and sexual replic...

The role of technical innovation in economic growth is both a current matter of keen public policy interest, and active exploration in economic theory. However, formal economic theorizing is often constrained by considerations of mathematical tractability. Evolutionary economic theories which are realized as computerized microsimulation models offer significant promise both for transcending mat...