Evolutionary biology

After decades of bickering about which molecules came first, a new generation of scientists is rethinking what life was, is, and could be.

Energetic pathways that make and break complex molecules are critical to all life. It’s even possible that these self-sustaining cycles could have been key at life’s beginning.

Comb jellies are helping answer fundamental questions in biology, from how the earliest nervous systems evolved to how bioluminescence works.

The mystery of the flipping foraminifera may conceal a rarely observed evolutionary process playing out across the planet.

By doubling their entire genome, organisms can evolve extremely rapidly — or they can lose it all. New studies reveal how to survive the high-risk, high-reward evolutionary event.

Evolutionary biologists are uncovering genomic mechanisms that allow populations to adapt quickly to different, hyperlocal habitats without splitting into new species.

A vast meshwork of soil-bound fungi governs life aboveground. In Alaska, and at field sites around the world, researchers are racing to understand exactly how, with essential stores of carbon at stake.

New work shows that physical folding of the genome to control genes located far away may have been an early evolutionary development.

An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes.