📄 Category

evolutionary biology

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.

📄 evolutionary biology

Selection mode governs the scaling of genetic load, diversity, and adaptation

Through forward-time simulations, this study demonstrates that the mode of selection (hard vs. soft) fundamentally dictates the scaling relationships between population size, genetic load, and nucleotide diversity, revealing how soft selection decouples neutral diversity from mutational burden and offers a mechanistic explanation for the weak correlation between census size and genetic diversity known as Lewontin's paradox.

Birley, T., Oosterhout, C. v.2026-03-06
📄 evolutionary biology

Remote homology and functional genetics unmask deeply preserved Scm3/HJURP orthologs in metazoans

By integrating remote homology detection, AlphaFold structural modeling, and functional genetics, this study reveals that Scm3/HJURP orthologs are universally conserved across metazoans despite rapid sequence divergence, overturning the previous belief that they were absent in insects, nematodes, and many vertebrates.

Hollis, J. A., Stonick, J. A., Topalidou, I., Young, J. M., Moens, C. B., Lehrbach, N. J., Campbell, M. G., Malik, H. S.2026-03-06
📄 evolutionary biology

STOCHASTIC ECO-EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF MULTIVARIATE TRAITS: A Framework for Modeling Population Processes Illustrated by the Study of Drifting G-Matrices

This paper introduces a novel stochastic framework based on measure-valued processes to model integrated eco-evolutionary dynamics, revealing that genetic drift fundamentally alters the orientation of the G-matrix by driving genetic correlations to extremes, a finding that challenges conventional wisdom and aligns with empirical observations.

Week, B.2026-03-05
📄 evolutionary biology

Gene loss, repression, amplification, and horizontal acquisition shape galactose/melibiose metabolism in fission yeast

This study reveals that natural variation in galactose and melibiose metabolism across *Schizosaccharomyces pombe* isolates is shaped by a dynamic interplay of opposing evolutionary forces, including gene loss, repression, amplification, and horizontal gene transfer, demonstrating that a single eukaryotic species can simultaneously pursue both reductive and expansive evolutionary trajectories to achieve metabolic diversity.

Du, X.-M., Suo, F., Du, L.-L.2026-03-04
📄 evolutionary biology

Early nervous system development in the chaetognath Spadella cephaloptera exhibits conserved bilaterian patterning features

This study establishes a comprehensive expression-based developmental map of early neurogenesis in the chaetognath *Spadella cephaloptera*, revealing that despite its unique nervous system architecture, it exhibits conserved bilaterian molecular patterning features and spatiotemporal deployment of key neurogenic and axial genes.

Ordonez, J. F., Frisinghelli, A., Grijalba, C. C. B., Wollesen, T.2026-03-03
📄 evolutionary biology

A Global Genomic Resource for Outcrossing Arabidopsis lyrata and Arabidopsis arenosa

This paper introduces a comprehensive, publicly accessible genomic database containing over 1,700 sequenced genomes of outcrossing *Arabidopsis lyrata* and *A. arenosa* that integrates population structure, geographic mapping, and genome-wide association study capabilities to facilitate research on local adaptation and comparative genetics.

Glushkevich, A., Steinmann, L., Tikhomirov, N., Vlcek, J., Cheng, Y., Flury, J., Kolesnikova, U., Duchoslav, M., Gerchen (…)2026-03-03