The dispute has festered for years, but last week things came to a head. In April E.O. Wilson released his latest book, The Social Conquest of Earth, in which he argued that our social nature is the key to humanity’s successful spread around the planet. >>Read More

The food industry has made a fortune because we retain Stone Age bodies that crave sugar but live in a Space Age world in which sugar is cheap and plentiful. Sip by sip and nibble by nibble, more of us gain weight because we can’t control normal, deeply rooted urges for a valuable, tasty and once limited resource. >>Read More

Social insects are well-known for their willingness to die for their colonies; a number of bees, wasps, and ants succumb after their stings lodge in targets and break off. But until now, these insects were thought to engage in such suicide missions only when enemies were present. >>Read More

They are drawing a tree of life that includes every known species. A tree, in other words, with about two million branches. >>Read More

When might more parasites be a good thing? The results of his research appeared this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. >>Read More

A consortium of plant geneticists from 14 countries has spent nine years decoding the tomato genome in the hope of breeding better ones. >>Read More

Appealing to authority is a risky business in science, as Dawkins appreciates, because scientific progress often involves the few prevailing against the many. Nevertheless, Dawkins’ appeal to authority acknowledges something that everyone should know about group selection, kin selection, and all that... >>Read More