295 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 early SARS-CoV-variant evolution was driven by increasing infectivity, subsequent selective sweeps were primarily fueled by the additive accumulation of mutations enhancing immune escape, allowing successful strains to maintain high infectivity while continuously evolving antigenicity.
By comparing single-cell transcriptomes of the calcareous sponge *Sycon capricorn* with those of demosponges and cnidarians, this study validates Haeckel's hypothesis that sponge body layers (choanoderm and pinacoderm) are homologous to eumetazoan germ layers (endoderm and ectoderm), positioning sponges as an intermediate evolutionary step between protists and complex animals.
This study provides a detailed morphological characterization of the moulting process in the Atlantic horseshoe crab (*Limulus polyphemus*), establishing a non-invasive method for staging development while revealing that its ecdysis patterns reflect both phylogenetic conservation with other chelicerates and evolutionary convergence across arthropods.
Using a mathematical model based on *Drosophila melanogaster*, this study demonstrates that while seminal fluid proteins initially appear to drive sexual conflict by delaying female remating, they ultimately mitigate this conflict by providing females with a flexible range of remating intervals that enhances reproductive resilience and selectivity.
This study reveals that in the polygynous greater spear-nosed bat, males and older individuals mount stronger inflammatory responses with males exhibiting accelerated immunosenescence linked to their higher mortality, while social status appears to have little impact on immune variation.
This study reveals that transposable element diversity in polychaetes is significantly lower in thermally unstable environments like hydrothermal vents, suggesting that natural selection balances thermal stress-induced transposition against the accumulation of deleterious mutations to maintain sustainable genome-wide mutation rates.
This study reveals that industrial melanism in the peppered moth evolved independently in Britain and continental Europe via distinct structural variants at the same *ivory* locus, demonstrating that parallel adaptation can arise from multiple different mutations within a single gene.
By integrating high-resolution geomorphic data with sea-level models, this study reconstructs the millennial-scale evolution of Panama's Bocas del Toro Archipelago to reveal how its unique history of sequential island isolation and habitat fluctuation drives terrestrial biodiversity patterns, while projecting significant future shifts in shallow marine habitats under climate change.
This study demonstrates that convergent evolution of amylase expression in diverse primate lineages arose through independent genomic rearrangements driven by retrotransposon insertions and non-allelic homologous recombination, leading to distinct gene copies with similar functional outcomes.
This study evaluates the performance of three geometric morphometric methods—elliptical Fourier analysis, landmark-based geometric morphometrics, and the ShellShaper growth model—using *Littorina saxatilis* ecotypes to provide evidence-based guidelines for selecting the most appropriate technique based on specific research goals, such as high-throughput screening, clustering power, or detailed anatomical analysis.