https://phys.org/biology-news/evolution/ en-us The latest science news on evolution Pomacea canaliculata, commonly known as the apple snail, is a pest commonly found in Hong Kong's wetlands and farmlands. It feeds on aquatic plants and produces toxic pink egg masses resembling miniature grapes that adhere to plants or stone bunds. It is listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) among 100 of the World's Worst Invasive Alien Species. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jurassic-viral-gene-apple-snails.html Evolution Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:40:01 EDT news700484088 A research team with the participation of the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) has described a new species of extinct carnivore from fossil remains recovered at the Els Casots site (Subirats, Alt Penedès). The study, published in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution, describes Paludocyon moyasolai, a medium-sized amphicyonid that lived approximately 15.9 million years ago, during the early Middle Miocene. The specific epithet "moyasolai" pays tribute to Salvador Moyà-Solà, a key figure in the development of vertebrate paleontology in the Iberian Peninsula and director of the ICP from its foundation until 2017. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-species-middle-miocene-dog-tribute.html Evolution Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:40:03 EDT news700488121 From snow white and jet black to golden brown, domestic chickens display a wider range of plumage colors than almost any other livestock species. A new international study, with researchers from Leipzig University playing a key role, explains why: A single gene is capable of producing this full spectrum. The study provides an example of how genetic diversity and visible traits can emerge within a short evolutionary period. The findings have now been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-chickens-gene-reveals-evolution.html Plants & Animals Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:01 EDT news700472581 A recent study by Ruibao Li and Jennah Dharamshi published in Nature may help us understand the beginnings of animal evolution billions of years ago. These findings are the result of a collaboration among researchers at Indiana University Bloomington, the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain and Uppsala University in Sweden, and were led by J. P. Gerdt and Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cells-animals-evolved.html Plants & Animals Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:40:01 EDT news700412993 A review article now published in Nature Reviews Genetics brings together evolutionary theory, comparative genomics and large-scale human genetics to explain why we age and why aging rates differ among individuals and species. The two authors—from the Leibniz Institute on Aging—Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena and University College London in London—describe how, because modern humans now routinely survive into old age, we live with the late-life consequences of biological pathways that natural selection optimized for youth and of harmful mutations that act too late in life for selection to clear them efficiently. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-shadow-longer-age-disease.html Evolution Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:00:08 EDT news700409042 A new Yale-led study provides one of the most detailed and comprehensive analyses to date of genetic variation in human populations in Oceania, filling a major gap in representation in genomics research. Despite harboring remarkable diversity, populations in this vast region in the South Pacific historically have been overlooked in global human genetic studies, which have often focused largely on people of European descent, researchers say. The study is published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-genomes-oceania-clues-human-evolution.html Evolution Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:40:05 EDT news700413274 It has taken only a few decades: The wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi) has expanded its range from the Mediterranean region to northern Europe—even as far as southern Finland. In doing so, it has adapted genetically much faster than previously thought possible. This is shown in the results of a new study by researchers at the University of Greifswald. The results offer important indicators for understanding how species react to climate change—and how quickly evolution can actually occur. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-wasp-spider-reveals-rapid-genetic.html Evolution Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:40:02 EDT news700399442 From insects to great apes, by way of birds and fish, animals communicate through an extraordinary variety of sounds. While the pitch or timbre of their vocalizations matters, rhythm may play a more fundamental role. Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the NCCR Evolving Language, the reConnect Institute and the Institut Pasteur analyzed more than 2,000 sound recordings produced by 98 animal species. All of them vocalize at a strikingly similar rate—roughly two to three acoustic events per second—regardless of their size, habitat, species or social complexity. This constraint is likely linked to the brain's capacity to process auditory stimuli, and human language is no exception. The findings are published in PLOS Biology. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-animal-alike-species-common-communication.html Plants & Animals Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:00:06 EDT news700396621 New findings, published in Nature, help answer the riddle of how vertebrates evolved the diverse array of brain cells that distinguishes them from other animals. It appears that a dramatic expansion of the genetic toolkit more than 450 million years ago enabled the emergence of different kinds of brain cells. These cellular innovations are shared across vertebrates—from primitive fish to mammals—and form the basis of the sophisticated brains seen today. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ancient-genome-duplications-laid-foundations.html Evolution Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:00:13 EDT news700216741 The deep sea is a unique "evolutionary engine," with one of the richest and most unexplored sources of genetic diversity on Earth, according to a major new study that assessed its potential to transform biotechnology and DNA sequencing technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-deep-sea-untapped-evolutionary-dataset.html Evolution Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:00:06 EDT news700299481 All cells in animals, plants, fungi, and protists share a fundamental characteristic: they are eukaryotic cells—complex cells with specialized internal compartments. The cells that make up our bodies are no exception. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-microbial-alliances-mitochondria-built-eukaryotic.html Evolution Wed, 10 Jun 2026 11:00:02 EDT news700234236 The time-development of species communities cannot be understood solely through ecological interactions or environmental factors, as evolution can also alter community dynamics. This observation helps to understand, among other things, the consequences of antibiotic resistance. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-mutation-rewired-species-bacterial-community.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:40:01 EDT news700242481 Sloths are the slowest mammals on the planet, but living in dense jungles has made them notoriously difficult to study. For the first time, scientists have now sequenced and analyzed the two-toed sloth genome and revealed the genetics behind its extremely slow metabolism. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sloths-dna.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:03 EDT news700222262 Chimpanzees are the only great apes, apart from humans, that have adapted to living on savannas as well as in forests. However, it is not yet well understood how the harsh ecological conditions of the savanna—compared with those of the forest—affect the foods chimpanzees eat and how they obtain them. Now, a study led by the University of Barcelona and the Jane Goodall Institute Spain (IJGE) reveals for the first time the strategies savanna chimpanzees use to make tools and extract aggressive army ants—also known as marabunta—from their underground nests and eat them in these dry, hot habitats. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-savanna-chimpanzees-tools-capturing-army.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:20:06 EDT news700221962 Ground squirrel droppings, preserved for millennia in the Yukon's deep permafrost, have yielded an enormous amount of environmental DNA from dozens of species of plants, insects, microbes and large mammals, offering detailed genetic information about an environment that no longer exists. It is among the oldest ancient DNA ever recovered and sequenced. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ancient-ground-squirrel-reveal-arctic.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:00:05 EDT news700130381 It's surprising how easy it is to see a koala every day in Australia's major cities. The cute, gray marsupial can be found on T-shirts, hanging off people's bags and pencils, and decorating any decent souvenir shop. But seeing a real koala in the wild has become increasingly tricky in some parts of the country. The iconic marsupial is now listed as endangered in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-koala-australia-years-global-glacial.html Plants & Animals Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:00:01 EDT news700221301 The way that Earth's first animals reproduced held back life's diversity for millions of years, until stress and competition led to the development of sexual reproduction, which in turn accelerated the pace of evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-lack-sex-held-life-diversity.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:00:15 EDT news700126261 A genomic study has reshaped our understanding of the evolutionary history of the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), revealing the iconic Australian marsupial experienced a severe population decline around 100,000 years ago, before the arrival of humans on the continent. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-koala-population-humans-genomic-reveals.html Plants & Animals Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:02 EDT news700128486 Typically, the information encoded in DNA allows organisms to develop, function, and pass traits across generations. Yet DNA alone does not explain how genes are switched on and off in different cells and environments. This regulation is partly controlled by other factors called epigenetics, such as DNA methylation, a chemical modification that can influence gene activity without changing the genetic code itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-epigenetic-inherited-dna-animals.html Evolution Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:00:01 EDT news699634336 European fallow deer have faced a dramatic loss of genetic diversity since the last interglacial period. This was revealed by 120,000-year-old fossils from central Germany's Neumark-Nord site in Saxony-Anhalt, analyzed by researchers from the University of Potsdam, the MONREPOS Research Center and Museum in Neuwied, and Leiden University. Their results have been published in the journal iScience. Modern fallow deer thus represent just a fraction of their Ice Age ancestors' variety. The study highlights how climate and human actions substantially reshaped a once-diverse species and may help inform conservation action. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-year-european-fallow-deer-loss.html Plants & Animals Sat, 06 Jun 2026 17:40:02 EDT news699874805 Many animals, including humans, rely on their eyes to detect changes in their surroundings. The eyes of vertebrates, animals with a backbone or a similar supporting structure, contain a transparent structure (i.e., the lens) that focuses incoming light onto a layer of light-sensitive cells, known as the retina. Cells in the retina then convert light into signals that are sent to the brain. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hagfish-fossils-reveal-stepwise-eye.html Evolution Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:20:01 EDT news699796418 The supergiant bathynomid is a deep-sea isopod famous for surviving more than five years without food. Despite residing in an extremely low-nutrient habitat, these organisms exhibit pronounced body gigantism, a trait that requires substantial energy. This raises an energy paradox: How do these apparently energy-hungry isopods sustain their enormous size given the sporadic availability of food in the deep sea? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-deep-sea-supergiant-isopods-years.html Plants & Animals Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:00:04 EDT news699867498 A new study tracking thousands of B cells across more than 100 germinal centers in mice reveals how the system consistently produces highly effective antibodies. The findings overturn longstanding ideas about how germinal centers function, revealing that they are far more selective than once thought, and challenges the idea that antibody improvement is driven mainly by rare growth "bursts" among the most successful B cells. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-body-reliable-antibodies-biological-chaos.html Evolution Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:00:01 EDT news699781741 An international research team, including Dr. Nancy Mercado Salas from the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB), has described a new family of copepods (Copepoda). The discovery was made at a depth of more than 2,500 meters in the Irminger Basin, southeast of Greenland, and provides new insights into the evolution of a group of animals that has hitherto been poorly understood. The findings are published in the journal PeerJ. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-deep-sea-discovery-uncovers-family.html Evolution Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:00:03 EDT news699804601 A new study by plant biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, challenges a longstanding idea that stems from the large number of flowers in the mountains of Central and South America that have evolved to be pollinated by hummingbirds instead of bees. According to the research team, flowers make this switch—not because bees avoid cool, wet cloud forest conditions at higher elevations—but because hummingbirds are simply more effective pollinators. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pollinators-evolutionary.html Evolution Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:00:04 EDT news699801783 New research shows Cheviot goats are one of the UK's most genetically distinct goat populations. Led by Newcastle University, this is the first genetic study to determine the ancestry and genetic health of a UK feral goat population. It provides a genetic assessment of the Cheviot goats in Northumberland's College Valley, identifying them as a historically significant and genetically distinct population unlike the other European goat breeds. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-rare-wild-goats-northumberland-genetically.html Plants & Animals Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:40:03 EDT news699801481 Leipzig Zoo in central Germany is a world-leading center of great ape research. Recent studies have seen chimpanzees there using touchscreen controls to navigate virtual forests and locate food rewards—applying similar techniques to what they would use in the wild. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-great-apes-cognition-cooperation-curiosity.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:00:02 EDT news699726121 Humans can communicate various instructions to dogs without using actual words—simply by modulating the tone of their voice, a new study from ELTE University's Department of Ethology shows. By repeating the nonsense syllable 'bü' in different intonations, humans successfully signaled "Yes," "No," "Here," and "There" and, remarkably, dogs responded correctly, despite receiving no prior training. The findings reveal ancient acoustic codes, interpretable across species, that predate language itself. The study was published in Cognition. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dogs-human-tone-words-hinting.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:30:01 EDT news699720301 The first large-sized bovines grew to up to half a ton 4 million years ago in the European Early Pliocene, an early step toward our modern diversity of large-bodied buffalo and cattle, according to a study published June 3, 2026, in the open access journal PLOS One by Leonardo Sorbelli of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ton-early-bovines-roamed-million.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:00:05 EDT news699638342 The extinction that ended the Age of Dinosaurs is best known for clearing the way for the Age of Mammals on land. Scientists have long suspected that the same catastrophe also transformed life in the seas, opening ecological space for the rise of modern marine fish faunas. Yet the timing and geography of that transition have remained uncertain because of the sparse fossil record. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-egypt-fossils-modern-ocean-fish.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:00:04 EDT news699694441