📄 Category

evolutionary biology

337 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

Evolutionarily informed gene sets reveal conserved and lineage-modified transcriptional programs during vertebrate forebrain evolution

By developing an evolutionarily informed gene-set framework to analyze single-cell data across eleven vertebrate species, this study reveals that forebrain evolution proceeds through lineage-specific tuning of deeply conserved transcriptional programs within stable cellular architectures rather than the emergence of entirely new cell types.

He, H., Streelman, J. T., Qiu, P.2026-03-25
📄 evolutionary biology

Comparison of the Distribution of Fitness Effects Across Primates

By analyzing the distribution of fitness effects across 38 catarrhine primates, this study demonstrates that interspecific differences in deleterious mutations are primarily driven by variation in effective population size rather than clade-specific factors, supporting the nearly neutral theory and confirming the robustness of these findings to demographic history and dominance effects.

Sendrowski, J., Pedersen, B. M., Bergman, J., Pankratov, V., Bataillon, T.2026-03-25
📄 evolutionary biology

Ancient DNA reveals early use of melons in China's Song Dynasty

Ancient DNA analysis of Song Dynasty melon seeds from China reveals that these fruits were introduced from the broader Asian domestication pool rather than independently domesticated locally, and were likely consumed as fresh or culinary fruits with green flesh and jade-green aesthetics rather than as sweet dessert melons.

Walker-Hale, N., Zheng, Y., Verdenaud, M., Pereira, L., Perez-Escobar, O. A., Preick, M., Bendahmane, A., Westbury, M. V (…)2026-03-24
📄 evolutionary biology

Tracing mobility among Eneolithic-Bronze Age Kurgan populations in the North Pontic steppe

This study reconstructs mobility patterns among Eneolithic-Bronze Age populations in the North Pontic steppe by establishing a regional strontium isotope baseline and analyzing human remains to identify individuals who migrated from the eastern or western Caspian steppes or experienced physiological stress.

Nikitin, A. G., Renson, V., Ivanova, S., Neff, N. C., Straioto, H., Svyryd, S.2026-03-24
📄 evolutionary biology

Inferring the multi-host fitness landscape of endive necrotic mosaic virus from cross-inoculation experiments

This paper presents a Bayesian approach that links cross-inoculation assay data to Fisher's geometrical model to infer a multi-host fitness landscape for endive necrotic mosaic virus, revealing host permissiveness heterogeneity and phylogenetic concordance to better understand viral adaptation and establishment barriers.

Roques, L., Papaix, J., Martin, G., Forien, R., Lenormand, T., Soubeyrand, S., Berthier, K., Moury, B.2026-03-23
📄 evolutionary biology

Ineffectual Genomic Error Correction Under Environmental Perturbation Dynamically Regulates Mutational Supply and Robustness

This paper proposes a kinetic proofreading model demonstrating that environmental perturbations dynamically modulate genomic error correction to balance mutational supply and viability, thereby mechanistically explaining punctuated equilibrium and the constraints on evolutionary resilience dictated by the drift-barrier principle.

Barik, S., Sahu, P., Ghosh, K., Subramanian, H.2026-03-22
📄 evolutionary biology

Ancestral state reconstruction with discrete characters using deep learning

This study adapts the deep learning software phyddle to perform ancestral state reconstruction for discrete characters, demonstrating that while it matches Bayesian inference on simple models and small trees, it offers a viable alternative for complex models with intractable likelihoods, as validated by its application to empirical datasets including Liolaemus lizards and the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

Nagel, A. A., Landis, M. J.2026-03-21
📄 evolutionary biology

Meta-analysis reveals the tempo of evolutionary parallelism of local adaptation between native and introduced ranges of plant species

This meta-analysis demonstrates that evolutionary parallelism in local adaptation between native and introduced plant ranges strengthens over time, driven primarily by the alignment of divergence directions as introduced populations transition from initial drift to selection-driven adaptation.

Normand, R., Heckley, A., Hodgins, K. A., Grover, S., Connallon, T., Uesugi, A.2026-03-20