Biological evolution is the heritable change in characteristics of biological populations over successive generations, driven by mechanisms such as mutation, recombination, genetic drift, gene flow, and natural and sexual selection. It operates through changes in allele frequencies within gene pools, constrained and shaped by developmental, physiological, and ecological contexts. Evolutionary processes generate adaptation, diversification, and extinction, producing hierarchical patterns from microevolutionary shifts within populations to macroevolutionary dynamics among lineages. At the molecular level, evolution involves sequence variation, genomic rearrangements, and changes in gene regulation, which collectively underlie phenotypic diversity and the emergence of complex biological organization.
Why do humans keep pets? A new international study suggests that some of the behavioral foundations of human-animal companionship may have much deeper evolutionary roots than previously thought.
Evolution
13 hours ago
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Researchers at Duke University School of Medicine have developed an artificial intelligence framework that can redesign proteins on a scale previously seen only in natural evolution. The tool can create shorter, longer and ...
Cell & Microbiology
17 hours ago
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Remembering the past can help living organisms make better decisions, but memory comes at a cost. Whether it is an animal searching for food or a single cell responding to its surroundings, storing and using information requires ...
Evolution
Jul 29, 2026
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Evolution is a fact of life. So much so that even the theory of evolution is evolving. Lately, a centuries-old discredited idea has been making a strong comeback. It helps us explain scientific observations that, according ...
Evolution
Jul 28, 2026
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Female sweat bees need to make a pivotal life decision: remain in the nest to help their mother raise more offspring or leave to establish nests of their own. New research from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 28, 2026
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A research group led by Tetsuhiro Hatakeyama from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Institute of Science Tokyo has revealed how a seemingly self-destructive survival strategy could persist in yeast for hundreds ...
Evolution
Jul 27, 2026
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A new study by the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Oxford reveals that industrial poultry farming has led to a more than 100-fold increase in the movement of Campylobacter, allowing ...
Veterinary medicine
Jul 27, 2026
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The dangers of antibiotic overuse have become increasingly clear in recent decades. Excessive use accelerates the evolution of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, raising the alarming prospect of infections that no longer ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 27, 2026
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For more than a century, scientists have sought to reconstruct human evolution using diverse lines of evidence, including fossils, genetic variation across populations and ancient DNA. Building on these approaches, researchers ...
Evolution
Jul 24, 2026
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Evolution is all about trade-offs. Traits that may be beneficial in one situation may backfire in another. Over millions of years, species can become specialized for one way of living rather than being equally good at everything. ...
