Articles by Nick Atkinson

RELATED ARTICLE Match 'n' Sniff: The MHC T-Shirt Conundrum © CREASOURCE/CORBIS Fragrance companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars on the assumption that scent is a major factor in attraction. But perfumes mask one's natural odor, and that could be a bad thing when it comes to choosing good genes. Time and again, so-called t-shirt experiments have shown a link between body odor and differences between the major histocompatibility complexes (MHC

FEATURE The Reduction of Seduction © PHOTO ALTO From symmetry to smell to the dance floor groove, how evolution carves our ideas of sexy BY NICK ATKINSON Dorothy Hopcroft got it right. Agreeing to a date at the urging of a meddling friend, she didn't quite know what to make of Frederick Turton. He arrived on a bicycle (her former beau had a car) made at the factory where he worked a tough week with little prospect of promotion, an

Biologists write to Science to defend the theory of sexual selection

Latest findings show that killing badgers causes more cattle tuberculosis than it prevents

from the British Isles finally ended.

) colonies reveal an unexpected mode of reproduction.

Researchers identify first ant species in which both males and females have reverted to asexuality

If you want to win at combative sports, emulate the most aggressive and dominant animals: wear red.

In the estimated 5 million years since humans and chimpanzees began diverging, they've acquired major anatomical and cognitive differences.

In chimp and human genomes, team finds surprising evidence of selection in apoptosis genes

Songbird plumage reflects UV light, but is less obvious to avian predators

Evolutionary biologists, both theoreticians and empiricists, have argued for decades about the relative merits of two speciation scenarios: allopatry and sympatry.

Charles Darwin spotted it.

Brood parasitic black-headed ducks caught in their host's interspecific arms race

Courtesy of CDCUS researchers are looking to otherwise unwanted guests to piece together humans' evolutionary past: lice. They suggest that modern Homo sapiens may have had direct physical contact with Homo erectus in Asia before crossing over to the New World.Florida Museum of Natural History's David Reed and colleagues present evidence that the New World lineage of head and body lice coevolved with H. erectus, but switched hosts to H. sapiens around 25,000 years ago.1 The effective isolation o