{"id":703,"date":"2008-09-04T22:25:21","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T02:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=703"},"modified":"2008-10-31T15:55:36","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T19:55:36","slug":"flightless-bird-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"Flightless bird evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research on evolution is happening right here in Florida’s very own universities. Who could have ever guessed? The University of Florida proudly touted some recent research into the evolution of flightless birds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Large flightless birds of the southern continents \u00e2\u20ac\u201c African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi \u00e2\u20ac\u201c do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed.<\/p>\n

Instead, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly, according to new research conducted in part by University of Florida zoology professor Edward Braun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The conclusions about ratite origin are just a small part of a massive research project aimed to better understand the evolutionary relationships among bird species [early bird<\/a>], which involved five institutions, 18 researchers, $2 million of funding and four years of work. In addition to the University of Florida, researchers came from the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Natural History, Wayne State University and Louisiana State University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research on evolution is happening right here in Florida’s very own universities. Who could have ever guessed? The University of Florida proudly touted some recent research into the evolution of flightless birds. GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Large flightless birds of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-bl","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":624,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=624","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":0},"title":"The Early Bird","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This looks interesting: The Early Bird Project. Some University of Florida folks are partners in an effort to map the evolutionary relationships of birds. No, not just a few birds. A bunch of them. For more than five years, the Early Bird Project has been examining DNA from all major\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":815,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=815","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":1},"title":"Evolution and bad-tasting butterflies","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"December 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"University of Florida research takes a look at the evolution of butterflies. GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Competition for resources can cause animal species in an ecological community to evolve away from each other, becoming less similar \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but University of Florida research shows that sometimes mutual benefit causes just the opposite.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1255,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1255","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":2},"title":"Getting evolution right in museums","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Great story about making sure museums depict evolution correctly, led by Florida Museum of Natural History's Bruce MacFadden: Evolution: A Changing Definition. Based on their original research, Darwin, Marsh and Huxley all believed that the evolution of Equus teeth was evidence for orthogenetic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u201c or straight line \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u201c evolution of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1271,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1271","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":3},"title":"Evolution “caught in the act!” Quick, notify Senator Wise!","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Florida citizens: You have a mission! Senator Wise is very busy, and so he may not be aware of some rebellious researchers lurking in Gainesville. These lab-coat wearing troublemakers are stomping all over Sen. Wise's turf. They are daring to (gasp) conduct research on (gulp) EVOLUTION! We need to let\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11"","block_context":{"text":"\"Critical Analysis\" bills '11","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=29"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2190,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2190","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":4},"title":"This & That 7\/26\/14","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"July 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Review affirms distinguished FSU professor's research \"[Florida State University professor Greg] Erickson, a biologist who is one of the nation's leading paleontologists, had his research challenged last December in a front-page story in the New York Times. The article featured claims by Nathan Myhrvold, an eccentric multimillionaire and former chief\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":900,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=900","url_meta":{"origin":703,"position":5},"title":"Happy Birthday, Mr. Darwin","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"February 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"-- The Miami Herald says happy birthday to Charles Darwin: Biologists know that Darwin is still relevant. His theories regarding natural selection have been proved right in experiments and by scientists all over the world. For example, he couldn't figure out why male peacocks had such extravagant tail feathers, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}