To see if the spiky fish shares signaling pathways found in other organisms, scientists scooped up specimens during a mating frenzy on the shores of Japan.
Evolution needn’t make improbable leaps to facilitate transitions into uncharted biological territory. Adapting new uses for existing structures works just fine.
A handful of new studies moves the needle toward a consensus on the long-disputed question of whether insect wings evolved from legs or from the body wall, but the devil is in the details.
In the prologue to the book, author Neil Shubin sets the stage for discussing the iterative repurposing that marks several transformational developments throughout evolution.