https://phys.org/biology-news/evolution/ en-us The latest science news on evolution A new study has uncovered a fundamental link between brain size and offspring size, helping to solve a long-standing evolutionary puzzle: Why do birds lay such disproportionately large eggs? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-brain-growth-birds-lay-outsized.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:10:01 EDT news701432162 At first glance, bat sea stars, the nubbly, orange, many-footed creatures often found on the seafloor, seem about as far from humans as one can get. Appearances can be deceiving, however. Scientists have found evidence showing human and sea star ovaries share similar genetics, cell types and signaling processes, despite their ancient evolutionary split. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ovary-blueprint-ancient-sea-stars.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:40:07 EDT news701438461 Even in darkness, many animals retain a sense of orientation because their nervous system sustains a memory of heading encoded by the activity of head-direction (HD) cells. Animals continuously update this internal compass by temporally integrating angular head velocity relayed by vestibular, optic flow and motor efference signals. External cues, such as visual landmarks, are used to counteract cumulative integration errors. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-zebrafish-fruit-flies-internal-compass.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 14:40:21 EDT news701436841 For her doctoral dissertation, Yale's Nathalie Alomar decided to study a small amphibian that appeared to have eluded the forces of evolution. She found that there is more to its evolution than meets the eye. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-woodland-salamanders-millions-years-physiology.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:00:06 EDT news701433661 Coral reef ecosystems, widely seen as a climate change bellwether, are more complex than previously understood. A new international study by the universities of Bristol, Wuhan in China, and Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany reveals that the evolutionary advantage of coral-algae symbiosis is not fixed; it depends entirely on environmental context. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-million-year-fossil-reveals-corals.html Evolution Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:40:07 EDT news701433193 White barn owls are effective killing machines. They fly silently through the night air and swoop down on unsuspecting prey with their sharp talons. But they have something you would think goes against being a stealth predator: their white feathers. And perhaps this visual giveaway would be even worse when they glow in the moonlight. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-white-barn-owls-moonlight-startle.html Plants & Animals Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:20:30 EDT news701427418 A new study provides the first insights into how thylakoid membranes—the internal compartments where oxygen-producing photosynthesis takes place—emerged during evolution. By comparing the genomes of cyanobacteria with and without thylakoids, the researchers identified proteins that may have contributed to their formation. The work is published in the journal New Phytologist. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cyanobacteria-photosynthetic-membranes-evolution.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:50:01 EDT news701364481 The biggest jump in body size among our ancestors happened around 2–2.5 million years ago, with the appearance of Homo rudolfensis or Homo erectus/ergaster, rather than gradually across the whole human family tree. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-idea-human-bodies-simply-bigger.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:00:14 EDT news701346721 When Jasmin Imran Alsous peered down her microscope lens, she expected to see chaos—a mishmash of tangled cells. She was viewing the inside of a male fruit fly's sperm storage organ, using a powerful microscope at the CCBScope Observatory, the experimental biology lab at the Center for Computational Biology (CCB) at the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute in New York City. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-thousands-nature-longest-sperm-tiny.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:20:15 EDT news701353213 An international team of researchers has discovered a remarkable new spider species in the rainforest of North Queensland that spins an ingenious and powerful spring-actuated snare to catch a single species of ant—one ant at a time—in what they describe as "the ultimate specialization." https://phys.org/news/2026-06-newly-australian-ballista-spider-snare.html Plants & Animals Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:00:09 EDT news701094716 Many animal species that live in groups are known to adjust their behavior to strengthen their social bonds or increase their coordination with others around them. For instance, humans and some other animals exhibit vocal plasticity, meaning they tend to modify the sounds they produce based on their past experiences and the peers they have interacted with. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-marmoset-monkeys-voices-social-partners.html Plants & Animals Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:20:08 EDT news701337349 An international team of scientists led by Dr. Graciela Delvene of the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (CSIC) has uncovered the oldest known evidence of maternal care in shellfish, revealing that some freshwater species were protecting and incubating their young more than 125 million years ago. Published today in Scientific Reports, the new research found fossilized soft tissues preserved inside ancient shells. This is a remarkable discovery because such tissues normally decay soon after an animal dies. Among these tissues were microscopic embryos and larvae preserved within the gills. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-million-year-fossil-reveals-pregnant.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:00:09 EDT news701336881 Genes are not passed on exclusively from parents to their offspring. Some are mobile and can also jump to other species, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen have now shown. The direct observation of a jumping gene provides the first evidence that such genes can transfer from one species to another—from predator to prey. The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-gene-caught-species.html Evolution Sat, 20 Jun 2026 16:00:01 EDT news701017584 In this era of Big Data, the prevailing wisdom is that more information leads to better answers. However, a new Canadian study shows that in the hunt for life's ancient ancestors, more data can actually lead to less truth. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research by UdeM associate professor of computer science Miklós Csűrös reveals that standard methods for reconstructing the genomes of ancient microbes are being overwhelmed by an explosion of information. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-microbial-family-tree-statistically-earliest.html Evolution Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:20:03 EDT news701015701 Mosses are survivors. They can dry into what looks like green dust, only to spring back to life minutes after rain. They can grow on rocks, in deserts, and there's talk of using them to terraform Mars someday. According to new research, mosses have also been hiding something. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hidden-fungus-moss-rewrite-million.html Evolution Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:40:03 EDT news701012881 Life on our planet began in the water. Eventually, one branch of the fish family tree developed legs and came up on land. These early four-legged animals, the tetrapods, were the forebears of today's mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fossilized-babies-ancient-crocodile-predators.html Evolution Thu, 18 Jun 2026 14:00:04 EDT news700988881 For decades, biologists have known that hermit crabs forced to live in shells that are too small slow their growth. What wasn't clear was how they did it. New research suggests the answer isn't simply that the crabs eat less. Instead, they appear to regulate growth by changing how efficiently they use the food they consume. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-shell-snug-hermit-crabs.html Plants & Animals Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:40:03 EDT news700994746 A moss gene previously thought to have been inactive actually plays a key role in its evolutionary success, researchers from the University of Bristol have discovered. The new paper published in Current Biology investigated a family of plant genes called WOX genes—proteins that help control growth and development. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dismissed-moss-gene-suppresses-twins.html Evolution Thu, 18 Jun 2026 11:00:03 EDT news700992601 Genes aren't just transferred from parents to their offspring. Nature has found other ways to pass on genetic information, even between different species. And a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that cockroaches, in particular, are riddled with DNA transferred from another species. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cockroach-genomes-dna-endosymbiont-bacterial.html Plants & Animals Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:20:08 EDT news700914540 A new study led by Marco Fumasoni, principal investigator at Fundação GIMM, shows that evolution can substantially reduce cell size without significantly compromising cells' ability to grow. The work, carried out in yeast in collaboration with researchers at Cornell University, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-evolution-cells-smaller-growth.html Evolution Wed, 17 Jun 2026 09:00:09 EDT news700902833 An international study of infant remains from 50,000–75,000 years ago has provided new evidence about the developmental trajectory of our evolutionary "cousins," Neanderthals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-baby-fossils-reveal-link-human.html Evolution Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:40:05 EDT news700897802 Many animals exhibit fascinating collective behaviors, which allow them to move, search for food, reproduce and avoid threats more effectively than they would alone. One of these behaviors is queuing migration, which essentially entails traveling as a group in an organized line or procession. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ancient-amber-fossil-captures-mites.html Evolution Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:00:01 EDT news700735961 An international research team, which included University of Tartu visiting doctoral student Wen-Gang Zhang and Professor of Botany Meelis Pärtel, has found a new solution to one of ecology's long-standing controversies—Darwin's naturalization conundrum, which addresses the question of why some species successfully establish in a new habitat while others do not. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dark-biodiversity-darwin-year-puzzle.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:00:04 EDT news700834132 There's nothing like this in nature, Jonathan Wendel said as he showed a visitor in his Bessey Hall office the long white puffs billowing from a cotton boll—the protective flower capsule of the plant cultivated by humans for thousands of years. In the wild, cotton bolls are far smaller and hold darker, coarser and shorter fibers. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cotton-roots-yucatan-peninsula-wild.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 19:20:01 EDT news700834501 The sail-backed predator Dimetrodon is one of the most iconic animals of the early Permian—long before dinosaurs dominated Earth. Most known species of this early relative of mammals reached large body sizes, sometimes up to 3 meters (10 feet) in length and 250 kilograms (550 pounds). Yet some species remained surprisingly small. A new study by an international research team led by Dr. Aurore Canoville of the Friedenstein Stiftung Gotha and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin now shows that these small body sizes were achieved through very different growth strategies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-famous-predator-shrank-ways-fossils.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:00:04 EDT news700832821 Female chickadees living in monogamous mating systems will proactively seek out males that have better cognitive skills than their nest mate, according to new findings. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-female-chickadees-cognitively-skilled-males.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:20:06 EDT news700832462 Genome sequencing has revealed insights into how current-day residents of the Faroe Islands can trace their ancestry to a North Atlantic founder population and how evolutionary forces have shaped their genomes since. The research, published in eLife, uses whole-genome sequencing data from 40 Faroese individuals and is described by eLife's editors as a useful study with convincing analyses of demographic history and selection, generating results that add value beyond the region. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-genome-wide-analysis-uncovers-clues.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:50:01 EDT news700841882 A tropical butterfly has evolved an ingenious anti-aging strategy by delaying the aging process, enabling it to live far longer than its closest relatives, according to a new University of Bristol-led study published in Nature Communications. Found throughout the tropical rainforests of South and Central America, butterflies of the Heliconius tribe are among the longest-lived species ever recorded and could provide a new model for studying the biology of longevity. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-geriatric-butterfly-species.html Evolution Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:00:05 EDT news700821607 "Love makes fools of all of us," wrote 19th-century novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. A moment spent watching the pigeons at your local park suggests he was right: males with puffed-up, shimmering necks hop, pirouette, coo, and bow to capture the attention of unimpressed females. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-waltz-evolutionary-timescales-hard-animals.html Evolution Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:20:05 EDT news700747161 Can a snake in Thailand influence the evolution of a snake in the Philippines even if the two species never cross paths? According to a new study, the answer may be yes. The research suggests that migratory predators can act as evolutionary "messengers," carrying their avoidance behavior across continents and linking the fates of species separated by thousands of kilometers. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-predators-link-evolution-species-thousands.html Evolution Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:00:03 EDT news700730761