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.
When most people think about natural selection, they imagine individuals competing with one another: The fastest animal escapes predators, the strongest plant produces more seeds, and the most resistant bacteria better survive ...
Many insects rely on heritable bacterial endosymbionts for essential nutrients that they cannot get through their diet. A new study, published in Nature Communications, indicates that the genomes of these symbiotic bacteria ...
Neanderthals disappeared from the fossil record approximately 40,000 years ago. Their extinction was a gradual process over thousands of years, and theories as to why include competition with modern humans and rapid climate ...
A new study from the School of Neurobiology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics reveals a surprising insight into the operation of the ancestral brain: the visual cortex of turtles is capable of detecting unexpected visual stimuli ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 18, 2026
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For anyone who relies on coffee to start their day, coffee wilt disease may be the most important disease you've never heard of. This fungal disease has repeatedly reshaped the global coffee supply over the past century, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Feb 18, 2026
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Survival of the fittest. Nature red in tooth and claw. The common view of natural selection is based solely on the individual: A trait allows an organism to out-compete its rivals and is thus passed down to its offspring. ...
Evolution
Feb 17, 2026
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Researchers have shed new light on the features that enable tree-dwelling mammals to move effectively through their environments, providing insights into the evolution of the distinct upright postures seen in primates. The ...
Evolution
Feb 17, 2026
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Every living organism has its own genetic "blueprint": the source code for how it grows, functions and reproduces. This blueprint is known as a genome. When scientists sequence a genome, they identify and put in order the ...
Ecology
Feb 17, 2026
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There aren't any native lion or tiger populations living in Japan today, but this was not always the case. Fossil evidence indicates that at least one species of large cat roamed the archipelago during the Late Pleistocene—a ...
One of the greatest mysteries of our planet is how a soup of lifeless chemicals transformed into the first living cell. There are several competing theories about where this happened, from frozen polar ice to superheated ...
