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.
By analyzing over 63,000 karyotypes across 55 eukaryotic clades, this study reveals that chromosomal evolution rates vary dramatically by up to 844-fold and are governed primarily by life history and population structure rather than deep phylogenetic constraints or kingdom boundaries.
This paper applies posterior simulation-based calibration tests to phylogenetic dating methods in BEAST 2 using both tip-dated and node-dated datasets, confirming that the inference machinery is unbiased and correctly calibrated despite fundamental theoretical limits on the precision of node age estimates.
This study reveals that while horizontal gene transfer from diverse bacterial lineages shaped the nuclear genome of *Paulinella micropora*, the early integration of its chromatophore was primarily driven by the host's vertical inheritance and retargeting of proteins rather than by gene acquisition.
By constructing the largest eukaryotic pangenome to date from over 1,000 *Aspergillus fumigatus* isolates, this study reveals that the pathogen's open pangenome is shaped by slow, structured gene gain and loss driven by mobile elements like Starships, which underpin antifungal resistance evolution beyond simple point mutations.
The paper introduces LAVA, a Bayesian R-based method that improves the detection of local and global adaptation in structured populations by comparing ancestral additive genetic variance estimates to overcome the high false positive rates of traditional Qst-Fst comparisons caused by unequal subpopulation relatedness.
A comprehensive meta-analysis of 86 years of experimental infection data reveals that bats suffer from viral diseases with severity and mortality rates indistinguishable from rodents, challenging the prevailing hypothesis that bats possess a unique, disease-tolerant immunity that makes them exceptional reservoirs for zoonotic viruses.
Through simulations and real data analysis, this paper demonstrates that the Generalized Least Squares (GLS) method outperforms the General Random Walk (GRW) model for inferring directional evolution in sparse fossil data with significant measurement errors, as GRW struggles to reliably estimate step variances and often collapses into deterministic processes.
This study proposes that bacterial strain diversity acts as a barrier to the chromosomal integration of antibiotic resistance genes, allowing plasmid-borne resistance to transiently dominate populations for decades and explaining why mobile resistance remains prevalent despite theoretical predictions favoring stable chromosomal inheritance.
By investigating the cnidarian *Hydra vulgaris*, this study reveals that genome expansion paradoxically preserves ancestral metazoan synteny by creating entangled long-range regulatory contacts that impose functional constraints, thereby decelerating chromosomal rearrangements.
This study reveals that following an ancestral gene duplication, vertebrate DSCAM and DSCAML1 paralogs underwent distinct evolutionary trajectories characterized by differential selective pressures and motif repertoires in their intracellular domains, driving functional divergence that likely shaped molecular mechanisms underlying vertebrate neural development.