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.
This study reveals that while global *wMel* Wolbachia frequencies in *Drosophila melanogaster* are primarily shaped by local climatic conditions affecting maternal transmission, the observed genomic variation reflects a recent, incomplete cytoplasmic sweep rather than local adaptation.
This study reveals that a domesticated, four-gene totivirus-like tandem array in *Scheffersomyces* yeasts underwent interspecific transfer and asymmetric evolution, where paralogs escaped strong purifying selection to explore sequence space while maintaining a conserved core fold, thereby violating the expectation that domesticated viral elements evolve more slowly than their exogenous progenitors.
This paper formalizes Darwinian invasion fitness and its phenotypic derivative for group-structured populations under limited dispersal and environmental stochasticity, demonstrating how Hamilton's marginal rule can be derived as an actor-centered inclusive-fitness effect that integrates class-specific fitness differentials, relatedness, and reproductive values.
This study reveals that the 2025/26 emergence of the genetically distinct influenza A/H3N2 K subclade was driven by selection for non-antigenic properties rather than significant antigenic change, and that vaccine-induced immune responses to this strain are age-dependent and shaped by vaccination history.
By combining coevolutionary modeling with large-scale experimental assays in *Drosophila* and sigma virus, this study demonstrates that host-virus genotype-by-genotype interactions overwhelmingly dominate transmission, virulence, and viral load, thereby masking additive genetic variance and maintaining cryptic heritable variation that is only revealed when ecological or evolutionary conditions shift.
Aedes aegypti populations in Zika-prone areas of Lamu County, Kenya, exhibit very high resistance to permethrin and varying resistance to other pyrethroids, driven by the F1534C mutation, which threatens current vector control strategies and necessitates alternative approaches for arbovirus prevention.
This study demonstrates that in the butterfly *Eurema blanda*, pupal colour plasticity serves as a crucial adaptation against desiccation, where browner, melanised pupae induced by off-leaf substrates exhibit higher survival rates under drying conditions through physiological mechanisms rather than reduced water loss.
This study demonstrates that in the butterfly *Mycalesis mineus*, developmental plasticity induced by dry season conditions simultaneously enhances desiccation tolerance and reduces ventral eyespot size, suggesting that these distinct anti-predatory and physiological traits are developmentally linked.
This simulation study demonstrates that substitution rate variation, rather than hidden paralogy, is the primary driver of false hybridization signals in phylogenetic network inference, particularly biasing the find_graphs method and necessitating empirical calibration of statistical thresholds.
This study reveals that the clingfish family (Gobiesocidae) has undergone a root-level loss of canonical immunoglobulin genes and associated B-cell immune components, while retaining key T-cell and RAG genes, indicating a unique evolutionary erosion of the humoral immune axis rather than a complete loss of adaptive immunity.