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.
This study demonstrates that machine learning models trained on raw genotype data do not outperform traditional summary statistics in inferring the time to fixation of hard selective sweeps, suggesting that few undiscovered signals remain in single-population genomic data for distinguishing sweep timing from sweep age.
TriMouNet is a novel algorithm that infers level-1 phylogenetic networks from multi-locus gene tree distributions by statistically selecting best-fitting trinets to assemble a full network, thereby outperforming concatenation-based methods like TriLoNet in accurately identifying reticulations while minimizing false positives.
This study on wild vervet monkeys reveals that male-female grooming exchanges evolve toward reciprocity over six months through a dynamic where females employ an "all-in" strategy of high initial investment that gradually decreases, while males follow a "raise-the-stakes" approach, ultimately demonstrating that cooperative strategies are shaped by complex life history parameters rather than simple theoretical models.
This study analyzes sex-biased gene expression across six *Drosophila* species over 50 million years, revealing that while body tissues show conserved sex bias, head tissues exhibit rapid turnover driven largely by concordant regulatory changes in both sexes rather than sexual antagonism, with evidence of positive selection acting on these expression differences.
This study utilizes single-cell transcriptomics to construct and compare cell atlases of the *Clytia hemisphaerica* planula and medusa, revealing that while both life stages share broad cell categories, the planula exhibits reduced diversity and possesses unique specialized cell types that reflect stage-specific functions and distinct developmental fates along the oral-aboral axis.
By analyzing whole-genome sequences of *Caenorhabditis elegans* collected over 13 years along a French stream bank, this study quantified spontaneous mutation rates and patterns in natural populations, revealing a substitution rate of 4–5×10⁻⁸ per base pair per year, a higher transition-to-transversion ratio than observed in laboratory lines, and evidence of limited dispersal within the local habitat.
By analyzing genomes from 48 chondrichthyan species, this study reveals conflicting signals regarding shark monophyly depending on the molecular markers used, yet confirms that living shark diversity resulted from rapid ancient diversification during the Middle Mesozoic Era regardless of their precise phylogenetic placement.
This review analyzes historical embryological data across the Panarthropoda clade using ancestral state reconstruction to propose new hypotheses regarding the evolutionary trajectories and underlying mechanisms of germ cell specification.
This study demonstrates that laboratory-maintained strains of *Drosophila sechellia* retain a high degree of similarity to wild populations across various behavioral and anatomical phenotypes, suggesting that laboratory models remain valid for studying the molecular basis of the species' ecological specialization.
The authors developed a Bayesian multilevel framework for longitudinal RB-TnSeq to resolve time-dependent fitness effects in *E. coli*, uncovering how shifting environmental constraints and trade-offs shape genome-wide fitness landscapes and predict long-term evolutionary outcomes.