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[2] [3] In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. [4]
The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980) is a collection of 31 essays by the Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.It is the second volume culled from his 27-year monthly column "This View of Life" in Natural History magazine.
In genomics, DNA–DNA hybridization is a molecular biology technique that measures the degree of genetic similarity between DNA sequences. It is used to determine the genetic distance between two organisms and has been used extensively in phylogeny and taxonomy. [1]
Convergent evolution—the repeated evolution of similar traits in multiple lineages which all ancestrally lack the trait—is rife in nature, as illustrated by the examples below. The ultimate cause of convergence is usually a similar evolutionary biome , as similar environments will select for similar traits in any species occupying the same ...
In a review of Daniel Dennett's book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Maynard Smith wrote that Gould "is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory." [92] But Maynard Smith was not consistently negative, writing in a review of The Panda's Thumb that "Stephen Gould is the best writer of popular science now active ...
Similarity measures play a crucial role in many clustering techniques, as they are used to determine how closely related two data points are and whether they should be grouped together in the same cluster. A similarity measure can take many different forms depending on the type of data being clustered and the specific problem being solved.
In biology, phenetics (/ f ɪ ˈ n ɛ t ɪ k s /; from Ancient Greek φαίνειν (phainein) 'to appear'), also known as taximetrics, is an attempt to classify organisms based on overall similarity, usually with respect to morphology or other observable traits, regardless of their phylogeny or evolutionary relation.
When two species share a trait, evolution is defined as parallel if the ancestors are known to have shared that similarity; if not, it is defined as convergent. However, the stated conditions are a matter of degree; all organisms share common ancestors. Scientists differ on whether the distinction is useful. [3] [4]