Evolutionary Anthropology - Science topic

"It is important to know whether Sapiens' taxonomic classification includes Neanderthensis"

TESTABLE:

Also, apart from Figures 3 and 4, if additional genomic data suggest a discontinuity between European pre-140 ka and post-140 ka hominins such as;

Traditional anthropology, imo, is closely connected to the eminent biological works of Charles Darwin. I would say that ethnography via B. Malinowski, E. Durkheim and W. Wundt brought the turn to the socio-cultural perspective, i.e. the interplay of cultural psychology and material conditions of life.

Thanks so much!

Dear  Rajit ,

im not genetic expert .. just astrobiologist .Dont' you think  better to go with paleo habitat . Biogeographical variation can be effected to genetic too. See Two branches of a Homo erectus exodus out of Africa could both have the genetic mutation that resulted in Homo sapiens springing up in two different location, it is probably highly unlikely, but possible. Three or more locations to have the same genetic mutation would be near impossible. Recent DNA testing indicates that Homo Sapiens left Africa, but some of them returned many thousands of years later.

On purely speculation, what could be a more likely scenario is that an early predecessor to Homo sapiens left Africa, developed into Homo habilis or another species, then returned to Africa where they then continued to changed until Homo sapiens developed. Hominidae appear to have developed in what would become southern Europe, southern Asia/India, and eastern Africa. There were Hominids in India knapping Acheulean artifacts during the late middle Pleistocene. Could a species develop in the Ganges River Valley or Yellow River Valley and then return to Africa to further develop while that lineage died out?

The question also is how complete is our fossil record? At this point not very complete at all. Do we find more early fossils in eastern Africa because of better preservation than some other locations, like India or China? I am sure someone has looked into that. Still, we possibly have fossil evidence for only a tenth of the Hominid line, maybe more, maybe less. While paleoanthropologists have sequenced the fossils that we have, it is now looking like there were many hominid species running around Africa at the same time. Who knows how many more branches and dead ends of the family tree there are as yet undiscovered. And why Africa? More biodiversity? More competing species? More competition period? & why high altitude ? 

Titre : Gaston Phébus, Livre de la chasse. — Gace de la Buigne, Déduits de la chasse.

Date d'édition : 1301-1500

Type : manuscrit

Langue : français

Format : Vélin. - Miniatures, lettres ornées

Description : 1° « Livre de la chasce, que fist le conte [GASTON] PHEBUS DE FOYS, seigneur de Beart ». Commençant par : « Ou non et en l'onneur de Dieu, createur et seigneur de toutes choses, et de son benoist filz Jhesu Christ... » et finissant par : «... tant de bien en cest monde et en l'autre comme il meismes vouldroit ».2° « Plusieurs bonnes Oroysons en latin et en françoys » (fol. 122). Commençant par : « Adonay domine deus omnipotens, qui fecisti ex solo verbo tuo... » et finissant par : «... qui vis et regnes puissaument par tout le siecle des siecles. Amen » .3° Les Déduits de la chasse [par GACE DE LA BUIGNE] (fol. 139). Commençant par : « Entens cy qui veulx savoir Des faulcons et les veulx avoir... » et finissant par : « Si s'en vont, à Dieu les command. « A tant je fine mon roman » .

Droits : domaine public

Identifiant : ark:/12148/btv1b52505055c

Source : Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 616

Provenance : Bibliothèque nationale de France

Date de mise en ligne : 23/03/2015

[The link below takes you directly to the page of the illustration copied below, however a PDF of the complete illustrated manuscript, in high-resolution colour, may be downloaded at this same link]:

[see quotation in following post, below, that describes the illustrated activity]

What exactly are you trying to update and why?

This could help: https://www.cog-genomics.org/plink2/data#update_map

--update-map to update bp-positions and --update-name to update ids.

Contacting Professor Els Leye (els.leye@ugent.be) Ghent University, would be a good Place to start.

If I find anything else, I will send to you, please write to me at owolabi.bjalkander@ki,se so that I have your email address.

There are some very well-documented examples of small hearths near larger hearths at the Bugas-Holding site in NW Wyoming. This is a protohistoric site ~500 yrs old with excellent preservation in a very thin cultural deposit (~1-3 cm over most of the site and less than 10 cm in areas where hearth excavation has covered older hearths). There are larger hearths with bison bone processing (some sheep and very few elk) across the excavated area that was the first test of some careful piece plotting. In the southern part of the site are 3 much smaller stone boiling hearths (probably used to extract bone grease from cancellous articular ends of bones). One is covered by backdirt providing some sequencing to their use. Excellent bone refitting work across the site helps show movement of anatomical units between hearth and discard areas. 

Rapson, David J., and Lawrence C. Todd. "Conjoins, contemporaneity, and site structure: distributional analysis of the Bugas-Holding site." BAR INTERNATIONAL SERIES 578 (1992): 238-238.

Its all due to Natural selection or you can say sexual selection.

I'd say above all Alan Dixson (2012. Primate Sexuality). It covers a huge amount of topics, from anatomy to physiology, hormones, and brain areas in a comparative perspective. Another book by him is the 2009 one (Sexual Selection and the Origins of Human Mating Systems), but i found many topics already discussed in "primate sexuality".

Roy Levin wrote a lot on male and female's orgasm and the like. Then, you can check also for "Komisaruk & Whipple (2011). Non-genital orgasms". In Levin you can find references regarding the "upsuck theory" of the female orgasm due to oxytocin which would promote fertilization.

As for the "Value" of orgasm in an evolutionary perspective, I recently came into few people such as Pham and Schackelford, who were involved in why humans perform oral sex and —indeed— the value of it, dealing with mate retention, sperm competition, infidelity detection, and so on.

Good luck!

You have the PHd of Isabelle Villemeur (Université Bordeaux 1) for the hand .(Etude morphologique et biomécanique du squelette de la main des Néandertaliens : comparaison avec la main des hommes actuels)

and the PHd of Anne Hambucken for the Member Sup.  HAMBUCKEN, A. (1993). Variabilité morphologique et metrique de l'Humerus, du Radius et de l'Ulna des Néandertaliens. Comparaison avec l'Homme moderne. Thèse de Doctorat, Université Bordeaux I. 

Dear Hosein, it would be unrealistic to assign a date to these pieces coming from unspecified stratigraphic context. I’m not familiar with this area, but for me both seem to be rejuvenation flakes knapped from Blade/ bladelet cores and the one on the left seems to be retouched into truncated piece. All the best.

I agree with Anek. According to the geological/context findings, there is no indication that they eroded from the ceiling.

For further info, check the link bellow.

Best,

Claudia

Methodology is not normally a term applied to writing a book (as opposed, say, to doing field or laboratory research), or at least not that sort of a book. 

In a sense the book 'Human Universals' is a "review" of the literature.  They are written all the time in many fields (n psychology, sociology, and of course anthropology). But there is no standard methodology for writing a book about cultural or biological universals. Brown did search the term 'universals' to go through various published journal indexes that listed references for further investigation.  

 In particular, aside from the anthropological evidence for cultural and biological universals, Brown paid attention to the evidence in psychology and evolutionary psychology.  

He also drew on his own field experiences in Brunei, Bali, Mexico, and of course the US--hence he relied on the comparative method.  That in turn was much supplemented by a long interest in world ethnography.  He had prepared for field work in Latin America.  He studied with Africanists (Leo Kuper, M.G. Smith, Victor Turner) to learn British Social Anthro, and thereby read a lot of African ethnography.  All this adds up to the comparative method.

 There is a section of my book where Brown discusses how he assessed the universality of problematic cases for universals and he dealt with the quantitative issue of absolute vs near universals. Much of this is not dignified with the term methodology but is standard method across many fields as part of what constitutes objective or scientific writing.

Brown followed in the footsteps of Murdock and others who had focused on the study of universals, but produced a more nuanced account of universals that had been neglected by the majority of anthropologists who tended to focus on cultural differences.  

Of course Brown does not deny tremendous cultural variation and differences throughout the world.   But the neglect of cultural and biological universals often led anthropologists to 'exoticize' humans in various regions of the world, reducing the ability to empathize with the so-called 'other.'   Anthropologists must emphasize both the similarities and differences of people and societies they investigate to produce a more comprehensive understanding of humanity.  

Thank you all so much!

  Let me try to help by one short paragraph summary –Broad based scientific approach to study the concept of EVOLUTION- Comparative Molecular three dimensional –building block- structures of different , close and related species , genomic similarities and differences (the DOMAINS) of related and different species , and most importantly timely Stepwise and smooth uninterrupted change of “speciation” accompanied by simultaneous molecular structure change with time and “The tree of Life” and MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestor) concepts of species origination . You may add Archeological , Paleontological and cyclical facies analysis in paleogeography and stratification studies , as well as universal Radioactive decay fundamentals of elements on the subject of Nuclear Physics for the accurate TIME CONCEPT and ORIGINATION of species on this planet earth stretching back over 3,8 billion years .You may add Astronomy and Astrophysical concepts and observations too , to put the icing on the cake for the “evolution on this planet earth” –so to speak- .

You're correct that various investigators use different SPE cleanup methods for steroids and oxytocin, and indeed it doesn't matter which method you use as long as you verify the results yourself. There are two main things you need to do to check out for a particular method: (1) determine recovery from the SPE column (using known amounts of pure standards, spiking samples with known amounts of a standard, or using radiolabeled materials), and (2) determine whether the clean-up procedure works to give you reliable results. If you have access to a mass spectrometry facility, you can directly check the purity of the column eluate and how well the EIA values compare to values from LC-MS/MS measurement. More commonly, accuracy of an antibody-based assay (e.g., EIA) is assessed by preparing serial dilutions of your unknowns (purified and non-purified) and determining whether the readout from the set of serially diluted samples parallels the readout from your standard curve. One final note is that in my lab we have been happy with using the Phenomenex StrataX cleanup method for salivary oxytocin measurement. Good luck!

Nama--I think you're definitely driving at an important question!

Personal field experience in Uganda, at wild chimpanzee sites, tells me there is activity at  night.  I recall waking up several times throughout the night to pant-hooting chimps.  Zamma (2013) is the only reference I know actually addressing this issue.  In captivity I found interesting behaviors with orangutan sleeping platform construction and night time long calls throughout the sleep cycle.   

The question of how ape sleep affects our evolutionary interpretation of human sleep remains open; so little has been done in describing human sleep ecology outside the context of developed countries and lab conditions.

Dear Khayrullin, 

Your point on the issue of left-right-handedness is quite interesting and a valid point especially; when some stats indicate a very high proportion of British citizens are left-handed. However, if it is a factor, it should also reflect on the passing behaviour of both sexes. It is worth exploring further though.

Thanks

Daro

Hi Louis,

I live in Australia, and so am quite familiar with Bower birds, (although there aren't any on the west coast, where I currently live).

Interestingly, some Bower birds do more than accumulate brightly coloured objects to decorate their love nests.

Many use a sophisticated artistic technique called "forced perspective" and, ranking the objects they collect by size, they create an optical illusion so that to the potential mates observing them, they appear larger, and so (presumably) more attractive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_perspective

The males that do this most effectively appear to be more successful in securing mates.

.

Obviously spending all this time and effort making and decorating a gorgeous display ground, unconsciously incorporating optical illusions, and then dancing and singing in the resulting love-nest, does not contribute to the survival of the male bird's offspring at all.

It just attracts mates that allow him to have offspring in the first place.

It is not necessary for the bird to consciously understand what he is doing. The male birds that make the best use of design, colour and perspective have the most offspring, and selection pressures ensure those birds end up dominating the population. It's a Darwinian basis to art! (But let me say, I don't assume it explains ALL artistic endeavor).

In fact this is a classic example of sexual selection, where males make costly sacrifices to demonstrate their fitness to any females who are prospective mates and who happen to be listening.

Like a peacock's tail, all this effort is most likely an example of Zahavi's "Handicap principle",

( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle).

Male Australian Lyre birds have extravagant tails, and build dancing/display grounds for themselves, and they also imitate other bird songs (or anything else they happen to hear) to impress the lady Lyre birds...

.

In an earlier comment you mentioned dance. I suspect that this sort of movement may have been very significant in human evolution.

Animals frequently expend energy unnecessarily, and typically this is done to signal their fitness to other animals,. Zahavi's famous example was certain species of antelope that jump high in the air, on the spot, (rather than fleeing) when they see or smell a lion or other predator.

The exuberant jumping tells the lion that;

a) this antelope already knows the lion is there, and

b) not to bother chasing this particular antelope, as it obviously has plenty of energy to spare, and could run all day if it wanted.

Animals frequently waste time, energy and other resources to signal messages  to their potential predators, rivals of their own species, or possible mates. 

To anthropomorphise, the message pretty much every time is "Hey, look how fit I am, I can do this for no reason!"

The signal is either, "I am not an easy victim, go and bother someone else ", or else it is "I am a supremely healthy individual, you should mate with me". And the more costly a signal such as this is, the more valid it appears to the target.

If the signal is effective, the apparent "waste" of energy is actually highly adaptive and so it will be selected for and the behaviour will become more common. . 

In a similar fashion, many male animals engage in some form of unnecessary ritualised movement to attract the attention of potential mates. Various species of Birds of Paradise have males that not only display costly and extravagant plumage (just like peacocks and Lyre birds) but that also engage in extremely complex mating dances.

.

Here's a male Bower bird doing his love-dance (apologies for the cheesy voice over);

Louis, I suspect that you have pointed to something crucial in human evolution by mentioning dance.

Raising a human child is a collaborative effort.

The ability to dance fluidly with a partner is not just a demonstration of your personal physical ability, it is also a demonstration of your ability to cooperate and synchronize movements, and more importantly to empathise, to compromise and make allowances, and then to act in concert with your partner.

In early human societies I would suggest that males who could dance well with you were quite possibly damn-good prospective mates. They either cared about you deeply, or were capable of acting as though you were equal partners even if they didn't. 

I can imagine this sort of sexual selection encouraging rapidly and increasingly complex ritual, musical expression, decoration and display.

So (from an evolutionary psychologist's point of view), it might appear that art, ( or aesthetic endeavor of any kind), is just  a ploy (when enacted by us males of the species)  to get laid. Please discuss.

:)

Kind regards,

Paul, (yeah, I got swag) Dessauer.

Dear Manfred

To my knowledge the foreground of a landscape that does not exceed ten meters allows the perception of detail elements or components of this aFront -plan. Beyond this distance and jusu'à a hundred meters is the intermediate level of the landscape, the elements or components of the intermediate plane are perceived by their shape. Against by the elements or components which is in the background that is between 100 to 1000 meters are collected by their volume.

Best regards

FADEL

Johan. The review is very good.

I think you may need to look up von Baer's restatement of Haeckel's Law.

We would need a greater understanding of the morphological plasticity of the calcaneus in response to function. Is the calcaneal twist governed by genetics, functional use, or both? I suspect both. But, the extent to which an early hominine calcaneus differs from the modern twist cannot be the sole piece of evidence to rule in, or out, its place in human ancestry. The early hominine might be a direct human ancestor but used its foot in a different way (arboreality) and therefor lacks the modern calcaneal twist.

Then we need to evaluate calcaneal diversity. What forces (function or genetic) might cause a modern-like calcaneal twist without being part of human ancestry? Oreopithecus comes to mind as showing a lot of "modern human" locomotor features but, because of other features such as teeth, is not very likely to be a direct human ancestor. Thus, we need to guard against evolutionary parallels.

In short, you may have something here, but it needs to be explored and explained a lot more than can be done in a few short paragraph postings. You might want to check out Am J Phys Anth 78(3):369-386

The lack of an r-scale has been a sore spot for some in our research group for some time. I know of no such measure. I would also be careful of mixing proximate psychological processes with less proximate LH outcomes. The Copping et al. (2014) criticism, makes a valid point regarding the relationship between psychometric measures and biometric indicators (I think that the outright dismissal of self-report measures is simply wrong, but I can see how one can have that approach ).

I know that AJ's preferred method is using the MiniK, TIPI, SF36, and HKSS to create a "SuperK" factor, but that doesn't address your question. Unfortunately, most of the research on r/K is done on college student or volunteers, which will tend toward being slower almost by definition. 

I'm kind of rambling, so I'll stop. I do think the question is a great one and someone should definitely get on it (benchmarking it against the K measures).

 As an aside, you can find a recent meta analysis of the Mini-K in the attached link. 

 Raf

Dear Colleague,

Thank you for this interesting question. It shows us that there is still a lot to discover and to describe in anatomy, and that comparative anatomy e.g., primatology, can be of great value in this. In the recent past, e.g., with respect to functional anatomy of primates and their predecessors (like the marsupials that we studied), the Journal of Anatomy papers by the late Professor F.G. Parsons (1863-1943) did help us a lot ! I therefore attach this 1898 paper by Prof. Parsons, with his description of the levator claviculae muscle from p. 449 on, plus some sketches. Remarkably, he calls this muscle also "omo-trachelian". 

I  think that his explanations make sense, be they quite short. Unfortunately, I could not figure out right now, where his second lecture on head & neck anatomy was published.

Anyway, I still hope that this paper will give you some of the wanted information.

Wishing you success, with kind regards,

Koos Jaap van Zwieten

Dear Steven, I think different topics might be slightly muddled in this question: 1) the heterozygote advantage in cases where the effect of a single gene on the phenotype is well known and has strong phenotypic effects, with 2) heterozygosity advantage as one of the mechanisms underlying inbreeding depression. The first case you mention, is not central to the final question you pose. In the second case, molecular ecologists tend to use heterozygosity measured in neutral markers to infer inbreeding levels in natural populations, or to reveal the strength of the associations between heterozygosity and fitness-related traits. Most often this refers to complex traits (affected by many genes) normally distributed and hence that are amenable of study using quantitative genetics techniques. Thus, when looking at empirical studies it is important to find-out what genes (coding, non-coding), the strength of their effects, the number of genes/markers and what type of trait (simple or complex) the researchers are dealing with.

First, sickle cell anemia is an example of heterozygote advantage, one of the mechanisms that allow the maintenance of genetic polymorphism through balancing selection. The other well-known mechanism is frequency-dependent selection (as in the peppered moth phenotypic change to melanic forms during the industrial revolution). Thus the heterozygote advantage of the sickle-cell gene is context-dependent and depends on the frequency of the protozoan parasite in the population; outside malaria infested areas there is no such heterozygote advantage. So for answering your first question “how common — across the genome and across taxa is heterozygote superiority?” you would have to first account as well for the context-dependency and reformulate your question as follows: “how common — across the genome, taxa, and environmental contexts (phenotype by environment interactions) is heterozygote superiority?”. But there is more to this, because the answer won't be the same for complex traits (dozens of genes) and simple traits (1 gene).

Second, and importantly, regarding your second point: inbreeding depression does exclusively imply a homozygote disadvantage; there are other potential mechanisms such as overdominance (with neutral markers you can also have associative overdominance). Inbreeding depression is just the reduction in fitness that happens with the increase in frequency of mating between related individuals (recognized by Darwin in 1868 and formally defined by Morton 1956). Roff’s 2002 empirical study supported the partial dominance hypothesis, which had been previously highlighted as the main underlying mechanism by the Charlesworth’s. It overall seems that the overdominance hypothesis has received significantly less support than the others (recessives, or mild recessives). 

I am unsure of at what level you want to explore this question further. If you want to dive more in the theory of quantitative genetics behind it go for the Charlesworth work, recent chapters by Bruce Walsh ( I think they are available online), Patrice David... If you are interested on heterozygosity-fitness correlations in wild populations (using neutral markers) you should start looking at Chapman 2011 (recent review in Mol Ecol), work from Amos, Aparicio, Balloux, Coltman, Coulson, Hansson, Keller, Ortego, Pemberton, Slate, etc… (these authors have also worked on the power of different heterozygosity-based measures). For papers showing heterozygosity on coding loci or allozymes on fitness traits such as growth or metabolic efficiency you should look at 70s-80s work on invertebrates. Mitton and Grant 1984 gives a good overview. Hope this helps.

The Human Genome Project has shown that people of different races/nationalities can have more similarities in DNA than 2 people of the same race/nationality. Appearance is 0.01% of DNA. So, from an academic perspective it's not useful to divide humans into races. The same holds for race-based nationalism, which is simply unfounded in the scientific view. It comes into play with social concepts and processes.

BTW. I had to fill out a form the other day, where I was asked for my race. I left this empty because I really don't know - and as a German post war child I think in the categories of humans and non-humans.

Before the advent of easy genotyping, phenotypic distances (such as you suggest) have been used to estimate relatedness between populations. However, a 1997 paper by Burstin and Charcosset (see link) showed that there exists a triangular relationship between genetic and phenotypic distances: Short genetic distances are associated with short phenotypic distances, but long genetic distances are associated with a wide range of phenotypic distance. In other words: Phenotypic distances are not all that predictive of genetic distances.

I agree with @Pedro: If possible use some type of genetic markers to infer relatedness or genetic distance.

Dear Marie

I have been studied the medical and cosmetical uses of various minerals (see my papers on academia.edu) .

For the MnO2 (pyrolusite, ) I documented rather accidential use of it.

The by-product of the cave art was probably the intoxication and altered states of consciousness due to inhalation of MnO2 in suspension (the MnO2 is the only mineral that causes this kind of biological reaction - see works of M. Lorblanchet (e.g. 1995 Les grottes ornees de la prehistoire) and various works on intoxication in the manganeese mines in 19th and 20th centuries, e.g. Hine, Ch. H. & A. Pasi. 1975. Manganese intoxication. Western Journal of Medicine 123(2): 101-107; Dietz, M. C., A. Ihrig, W. Wrazidlo, M. Bader, O. Jansen & G. Triebig. 2001. Results of magnetic resonance imaging in long-term manganese dioxide-exposed workers. Environmental Research 85: 37-40; and some Polish if you want :)

Another use (external) is for antiseptic reasons - it is the mineral of negligible toxicity for humans.

From Neolithic pyrolusite (in various minerlogical forms) was used for pottery and angoba decoration.

Iternal use of MnO2 in the treatment of anemia was discredited at the beginning of 20th century and even claimed as dangerous due to iron absorbtion disorder caused by it.

In 20th century for steel production, as pigments, in pils technology.

Sincerely

Michal Wasilewski PhD

PS. I will be delighted for any articles or informations on medical uses of any minerals.

Each human gene is present once in the Neanderthal genome. Neanderthals were humans, more than 99.9% identical in DNA to modern humans. Svante Paabo has a book out now, that tells all about the sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisova genomes, and what they found in them: http://www.amazon.com/Neanderthal-Man-Search-Lost-Genomes/dp/0465020836

Hello Catherine,

The inner and outer tables (and diploe) of the skull are normal; the superior triangle at the top is the "Superior sagittal sinus" . So you have a normal coronal XR of a child skull!

You can see also the beginning of the "frontal sinus"development. They take their individual anatomical characteristics about 2 years and are visible on XR about 6 or 8 years old. Under the right orbit, sit the maxillary sinus; at 5 years they take a pyramid shape but I only see its foramen!

Best regards. PhiL.

Natural selection requires an advantage for replicators (genes) competing against alternatives; hence selection cannot favor traits that diminish the success of genes, regardless of potential benefits at the species level.

Menopause is a complex, organized physiological process -- evidence against a simple 'breakdown' hypothesis.

Other species with analogous reproductive cessation include pilot whales and elephants. In all cases, species with co-resident maternal kin, multi-generational overlaps, long periods of juvenile development and dependence, and important functions for old females.

The evolutionary logic here is that the reproductive value of additional offspring diminishes as a female ages -- she is increasingly likely to die before the offspring has been successfully raised. Conversely, older females can be useful as helpers for older offspring, and eventually, grandoffspring. So selection favored genes for menopause in hominins (and some whales & elephants) because females that stopped having babies got more genes into future generations than those females who continued to reproduce and were less able to help their existing kin because they died sooner (cost of making additional offspring, who were unlikely to survive to reproduce).

For review see:

Flinn, M.V., Quinlan, R.J., Ward, C.V., & Coe, M.K. (2007). Evolution of the human family: Cooperative males, long social childhoods, smart mothers, and extended kin networks. In: Family relationships, C. Salmon & T. Shackelford (Eds.) Chapter 2, pp. 16-38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Flinn, M.V. (2011a). Evolutionary anthropology of the human family. In Oxford handbook of evolutionary family psychology, C. Salmon & T. Shackleford (Eds.), chapter 2, pp. 12-32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Geary, D.C. & Flinn, M.V. (2001). Evolution of human parental behavior and the human family. Parenting: Science and Practice, 1 (1&2), 5-61.

Muehlenbein, M. & Flinn, M.V. (2011). Pattern and process of human life history evolution. In: Oxford handbook of life history, T. Flatt & A. Heyland (Eds.), chapter 23, pp. 153-168. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

There is a very nice paper by L Excoffier who modelised the admixture between Neandertal and Sapiens. One of the results is to show that we expect different parts of Neandertal genome to have been retained up to now in each non-african individuals. So it would be very difficult to find different homologous Neandertal fragments and do population genetics with them. Else your idea would be very nice. You should also look to a paper by Labuda's team on the X chromosome (Dystrophin gene), I do not remember all the details, but he was able to clearly identify some Nenadertal "fragments".

Best regards

First, what software will you use? SAS, R, Genstat. If you use SAS, there is proc mixed that allows to use autocorrelation structure. THis will be under the repated statement, and you will need AR(1) but you can use an heterogenous structure (i.e. a different error by day or week.

You can specify a correlation that is day to day and time to time, the best way, is to reserve the lower level to the repeated statement, (i.e. hor-to-hour), and the day-to day as a random effect that will simplify the temporal correlation across days usin a compound symmetry.

With respect to the other factors you need a fixed effect. Here, a factor associated with time or week will be usefull unless you want to simplify the model.

In general, it is possible, but you need to work with repeated measures and there are plenty of good books about it. I suggest Littell etl all (1996).

Chees

\

Salvador