Mitochondria: A Microcosm of Darwinian Competition

The Janus face of Darwinian competition

Without competition, organisms would not evolve any meaningful physical or cognitive abilities. Competition can thus be understood as the driving force behind Darwinian evolution. But does this imply that more competitive environments necessarily evolve organisms with more sophisticated cognitive abilities than do less competitive environments? Or is there a tipping point at which competition d...

Resource competition and adaptive radiation in a microbial microcosm

R. Craig MacLean,* Alison Dickson and Graham Bell Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Ave. Dr. Penfield, Montreal H3A 1B1, QC, Canada Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, McGill University, 3655 Promenade Sir-William-Osler, Montreal H3G 1Y6, QC, Canada *Corresponding: E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Theory predicts that competition for shared resources in a monomorphic po...

Habitat orientation alters the outcome of interspecific competition: A microcosm study with zooplankton grazers

Habitat orientation has recently been demonstrated to affect the foraging behavior, growth, and production of plankton grazers. Because the orientation effect may vary with species, we hypothesize that habitat orientation may alter interspecific interactions between animal species. We experimentally investigated how habitat orientation (placing cuboid chambers in three orientations with long, m...

“Giants in a Microcosm”

On examination of a breast mass surgically excised in a 69-years-old woman, a pure invasive micropapillary carcinoma (MPC) was diagnosed (Figure 1). At close examination, intensely eosinophilic syncytial-multinucleated giant cells (CD68+) percolating the stromal bands were identified (Figure 1). The breast carcinoma illustrated here shows therefore a combination of 2 rarities, namely, an invasi...

Man Is a Microcosm