Evolutionary Biology News

November 28, 2024

Top Headlines

Nov. 27, 2024 — Brain size increased gradually within each ancient human species rather than through sudden leaps between ...

'Genetic Time Machine' Reveals Complex Chimpanzee Cultures

Nov. 27, 2024 — Chimpanzees are known for their remarkable intelligence and use of tools, but could their cultures also evolve over time like human cultures? A new, multidisciplinary study suggests that some of their most advanced behaviors may have been passed ...

The Next Evolution of AI Begins With Ours

Nov. 25, 2024 — The genome has space for only a small fraction of the information needed to control complex behaviors. So then how, for example, does a newborn sea turtle instinctually know to follow the moonlight? Neuroscientists have devised a potential ...

What's the Story, Morning Glory?

Nov. 21, 2024 — Morning glory plants that can resist the effects of glyphosate also resist damage from herbivorous insects, according to a new ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:19pm EST

Study on Gene Regulation With Surprising Results

Nov. 22, 2024 — Some sequences in the genome cause genes to be switched on or off. Until now, each of these gene switches, or so-called enhancers, was thought to have its own place on the DNA. Different enhancers ...

Scientists Use Ancient DNA to Shed Light on Adaptation of Early Europeans

Nov. 19, 2024 — Leveraging a unique statistical analysis and applying it to ancient DNA extracted from human skeletal remains, a team of researchers has revealed new insights into how ancient Europeans adapted to ...

Thanksgiving Special: Dinosaur Drumsticks and the Story of the Turkey Trot

Nov. 20, 2024 — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction ...

Secrets of Horse Genetics for Conservation, Breeding

Nov. 19, 2024 — Researchers are helping uncover new information about the Y chromosome in horses, which will help owners identify optimal lineages for breeding and help conservationists preserve breed ...

New Fossil Reveals the Evolution of Flying Reptiles

Nov. 18, 2024 — A newly discovered pterosaur fossil is shedding light on the evolutionary journey of these ancient flying reptiles. This complete specimen, named Skiphosoura bavarica, provides crucial insights into ...

Scientists Recreate Mouse from Gene Older Than Animal Life

Nov. 18, 2024 — An international team of researchers has achieved an unprecedented milestone: the creation of mouse stem cells capable of generating a fully developed mouse using genetic tools from a unicellular ...

Tiny Worm Makes for Big Evolutionary Discovery

Nov. 18, 2024 — The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive -- until now. A team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the ...

Linking Data on Genetics, Traits and Environment Gives Crop Breeders a Wider Lens

Nov. 13, 2024 — The interplay between the genetic makeup of crops and the conditions in which they grow is difficult to untangle. A research team aims to help ...

Bird Brain from the Age of Dinosaurs Reveals Roots of Avian Intelligence

Nov. 13, 2024 — A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate ...

A New Wrinkle in Turtles: Their Genomes Fold in a Unique Way, Researchers Find

Nov. 11, 2024 — A study described the three-dimensional architecture of turtle genomes, which fold in a configuration unlike any other animal observed so ...

Deep-Sea Corals Are Home to Previously Unknown Bacteria With Extremely Small Genomes

Nov. 8, 2024 — A research team has discovered two remarkable species of bacteria in the tissue of two deep-sea corals from the Gulf of Mexico. These previously unknown symbionts of the corals have an extremely ...

New Study Maps Dramatic 100-Million-Year Explosion in Color Signals Used by Animals

Nov. 7, 2024 — A recent study finds that color vision evolved in animals more than 100 million years before the emergence of colorful fruits and flowers. And there has been a dramatic explosion of color signals in ...

Defense or Growth -- How Plants Allocate Resources

Nov. 7, 2024 — The more a plant species invests in defense, the less potential it has for growth, according to a study. Research made possible by open science provides new insights into plant adaptation and ...

How Plants Evolved Multiple Ways to Override Genetic Instructions

Nov. 6, 2024 — Biologists have investigated the inner workings of DNA methylation in plants. Their findings could help engineer crops that are more resilient to environmental changes, like heat or drought ...

The Egg or the Chicken? An Ancient Unicellular Says Egg

Nov. 6, 2024 — Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before ...

Not the Usual Suspects: Novel Genetic Basis of Pest Resistance to Biotech Crops

Nov. 4, 2024 — Researchers used genomics to investigate the genetic changes causing resistance to transgenic crops in field populations of the corn earworm, also known as cotton bollworm or Helicoverpa zea. They ...

Evolutionary Paths Vastly Differ for Birds, Bats

Nov. 1, 2024 — New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as ...

Ancient DNA Brings to Life History of the Iconic Aurochs, Whose Tale Is Intertwined With Climate Change and Human Culture

Oct. 30, 2024 — Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 ...

Oct. 30, 2024 — In common marmosets, the brain regions that process social interactions develop very slowly, extending until early adulthood, like in humans. During this time, all group members are involved in ...

Sinuses Prevented Prehistoric Crocodile Relatives from Deep Diving

Oct. 30, 2024 — Paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales and ...

No Incentive for Older Birds to Make New Friends

Oct. 28, 2024 — Like people, birds have fewer friends as they age, but the reasons why are unclear. New research suggests they may just have no drive ...

Move Along, Moose: Study Reveals the 'Most Canadian' Animals

Oct. 25, 2024 — What is the 'most Canadian' animal? Spoiler: it's not the beaver, or the moose. A new study ranks species of terrestrial vertebrates in Canada by their level of Canadian evolutionary ...

How Mammals Got Their Stride

Oct. 25, 2024 — Researchers reveal new insights into the complex evolutionary history behind the distinctive upright posture of modern placental and marsupial mammals, showing the transition was surprisingly complex ...

Researchers Complete the Largest Compilation of Cancer Prevalence Across Vertebrates

Oct. 25, 2024 — For all its pervasiveness and the efforts to study it, cancer is still somewhat of a mystery. Why do some animals get it at a higher rate than others? This is the question at the heart of Peto's ...

Human Actions Likely Cause Insect Color Change

Oct. 24, 2024 — New Zealand's native stoneflies have changed colour in response to human-driven environmental changes, new research shows. The study provides arguably the world's most clear-cut case of ...

Crustacean With Panda-Like Coloring Confirmed to Be a New Species

Oct. 24, 2024 — Decades after it was first found in Japan, a crustacean species with unique black-and-white coloring resembling a panda has been confirmed to be new to ...

Birth: It's a Tight Squeeze for Chimpanzees, Too

Oct. 23, 2024 — According to a new study, chimpanzees, like humans, must contend with a confined bony birth canal when giving birth. In humans, the problem was exacerbated by our unique form of upright walking since ...

Turtle Genome Provides New Clues on the Evolution of Vertebrates

Oct. 21, 2024 — Scientists have generated the genome assemblies of two hidden-neck turtles, unpublished until now. The results, which revealed a new three-dimensional structure of the genome within the phylogenetic ...

Why Do We Love Carbs? The Origins Predate Agriculture and Maybe Even Our Split from Neanderthals

Oct. 17, 2024 — A new study reveals how the duplication of the salivary amylase gene may not only have helped shape human adaptation to starchy foods, but may have occurred as far back as more than 800,000 years ...

Chickpeas: Sustainable and Climate-Friendly Foods of the Future

Oct. 16, 2024 — Climate change has a negative impact on food security. Researchers have now conducted a study to investigate the natural variation of different chickpea genotypes and their resistance to drought ...