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POSITIVE IMPACT OF DEPOPULATION. “With as much as half of the population dead, survivors in the post-plague era had more resources available to them. Historical documentation records an improvement in diet, especially among the poor.” https://lnkd.in/ggGWR4A View in LinkedIn

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE offers an historical snapshot of the rat flea derived bacterial bubonic plague that halved the European, Asian and African population in the mid-fourteenth century. It still exists today, and can be treated with antibiotics, with a 1-15% mortality rate. The Black Death had very profound social and cultural impacts on European society. It also partially protected the surviving population against later outbreaks. View in LinkedIn

GENETIC SELECTION BY PLAGUE. “The identification of the immune pathways and genetic variants that were specifically selected in Europe not only helps us to understand the evolutionary history of European populations, but also contributes to our understanding of the differences in susceptibility between European and other populations to modern human diseases.” https://lnkd.in/gcJ7VHH View in LinkedIn

SPECIATION QUESTIONS. "Models of adaptive speciation are typically concerned with demonstrating that it is possible for ecologically driven disruptive selection to lead to the evolution of assortative mating and hence speciation. However, disruptive selection could also lead to other forms of evolutionary diversification, including ecological sexual dimorphisms."" "DOI: 10.1111/j.0014-3820.2003.tb01489.x View in LinkedIn

IMMUNE STRENGTHENING. “Netea and his colleagues tested the ability of the toll-like receptors to react to Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that caused the Black Death. They found that the strength of the immune response varied depending on the exact sequence of the toll-like receptor genes.” https://lnkd.in/gWy9UtF View in LinkedIn

CHALLENGING. "When species differ in both ecological and sexual characters, it is notoriously difficult to distinguish between character divergence that is a cause or a result of species divergence." https://lnkd.in/ggrcHvH View in LinkedIn

DIFFICULTY OF PLANT SEXING. "In contrast to many animal groups, the sex of an individual cannot usually be determined in plants before flowering without sex-specific genetic markers." https://lnkd.in/ge7JD6J View in LinkedIn

"SEXUAL DIMORPHISM results from the interplay between sex-specific adaptation and the breakdown of genetic correlations that constrain the independent evolution of traits subject to asymmetric (sex-biased) selection in females and males" https://lnkd.in/ge7JD6J View in LinkedIn

NATURAL AND SEXUAL SELECTION. "Such divergence is facilitated by both natural and sexual selection. Indeed, these are the primary evolutionary processes responsible for the evolution and maintenance of sexual dimorphism, and although non-adaptive processes including drift and mutation can affect genetic variability in sexual dimorphism, they cannot by themselves explain its persistence." https://lnkd.in/ge7JD6J View in LinkedIn

NO BARRIER. "Sexual dimorphism can still evolve when such trade-offs exist, and this can involve sex-limited gene expression and the breakdown of strong intersexual genetic correlations.Such divergence is facilitated by both natural and sexual selection." https://lnkd.in/ge7JD6J View in LinkedIn