📄 Category

evolutionary biology

389 papers

Evolutionary biology explores the dynamic history of life on Earth, tracing how species change, adapt, and diversify over time. This field investigates the mechanisms driving everything from the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria to the complex social behaviors of primates, revealing the deep connections that bind all living organisms together.

On Gist.Science, we ensure these groundbreaking discoveries remain accessible by processing every new preprint uploaded to bioRxiv in this category. Our team generates both plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries for each paper, bridging the gap between raw research and public understanding without requiring a specialized background.

Below are the latest studies in evolutionary biology, offering fresh insights into the ongoing story of life.

📄 evolutionary biology

A developmental chimera: co-option of appendage, secretory and myogenic programs underlies spider venom gland evolution

This study reveals that the spider venom gland evolved as a developmental chimera through the hierarchical co-option of three ancestral programs: an appendage-patterning gene (*Distal-less*) establishing spatial coordinates, a transcription factor (*sage*) that represses a latent neural program to maintain secretory identity, and a myogenic factor (*sum-1*) that drives muscle-mediated metabolic support, thereby illustrating how complex organs arise by integrating distinct tissue modules.

Zancolli, G., Hassan, A., McGregor, A. P., Moran, Y., Robinson-Rechavi, M.2026-07-16
📄 evolutionary biology

Conserved transcriptional plasticity, not local adaptation, dominates early climate responses across wild and cultivated apple

This study demonstrates that in both wild and cultivated apples, conserved transcriptional plasticity driven by strong purifying selection constitutes the dominant molecular response to climate variation, while local adaptation relies on distinct, population-specific loci and plays a secondary role.

Dadole, R., Chen, X., Sandoval, J., Venon, A., Criado, M., Delpouve, N., Remoue, C., Chollet, S., Hansart, A., Laurens (…)2026-07-12
📄 evolutionary biology

Ancient Rapid Radiation Underlies Persistent Phylogenomic Conflict in Early Collembola Diversification

Through a comprehensive phylogenomic analysis of 145 springtail taxa using 1,127 single-copy orthologues, this study resolves the long-standing conflict in Collembola phylogeny by identifying an ancient rapid radiation in the Early Devonian that resulted in persistent phylogenetic discordance, ultimately favoring Poduromorpha as the earliest-diverging lineage among the four extant orders.

Cucini, C., Moody, E. R., Cicconardi, F., Montgomery, S. H.2026-07-09
📄 evolutionary biology

Ancient pyroptotic machinery via GSDMA/B cleavage by LPS-activated caspase-1 in cartilaginous fish

This study reveals that in cartilaginous fish, LPS-activated caspase-1 cleaves the ancestral GSDMA/B protein into antagonistic fragments (N241 and N288) to drive a non-canonical pyroptosis pathway with inherent bactericidal activity, thereby elucidating the evolutionary origins and dual-fragment regulatory mechanism of the GSDMA-D lineage.

Wei, X., Zhuang, R., Jia, X., Wang, X., Li, S., Huang, Z., Zhou, G., Xu, A., Yuan, S.2026-07-08
📄 evolutionary biology

Can you trust your reconstructed lineage tree? A homoplasy-based approach for irreversible evolution

This paper introduces a scalable, homoplasy-based method that leverages the non-modifiability of Cas9-induced mutations to effectively assess the reliability of inferred cell lineage trees, demonstrating superior performance over traditional parsimony scores in distinguishing accurate reconstructions without ground truth.

Zilber, P., Prillo, S., Neumeier, Y., Yosef, N., Nadler, B.2026-07-05
📄 evolutionary biology

Germline restricted chromosomes in dark winged fungus gnats show dynamic chromosome organisation despite strong purifying selection on genes

This study presents the first male germline chromosome-scale genome assemblies for dark-winged fungus gnats, revealing that their germline-restricted chromosomes exhibit extraordinary structural and content dynamism despite being gene-rich and under strong purifying selection, while also providing evidence for satellite-mediated somatic elimination.

Hodson, C. N., Bliznina, A., Abascal, F., Ebdon, S., Mathers, T. C., Do Amaral, R. V., Pomiankowski, A., Jaron, K. S.2026-07-03
📄 evolutionary biology

Ecological genomics of a novel host-parasitoid arms-race in nature

By integrating population genomics with field surveys, this study reveals how a Hawaiian parasitoid fly rapidly evolved counter-adaptations to a cricket host's protective silence mutation, demonstrating ongoing arms-race coevolution driven by ancient genomic substrates despite severe genetic bottlenecks.

Yusuf, L., Rayner, J. G., Zhang, R., Twyman, K., Paulini, M., Zhang, X., Balenger, S. L., Lee, N., Tinghitella, R. M., G (…)2026-07-03