Natural selection

Why does natural selection appear to happen slowly on long timescales and quickly on short ones? A multigenerational study of four lizard species addresses biology’s “paradox of stasis.”

Modern scientists aren’t content with predicting how life evolves. They want to shape it.

Paradoxically, natural selection can sometimes seem to block organisms from evolving useful adaptations. But a new study of “fitness landscapes” and antibiotic resistance in bacteria shows that life still finds a way.

Why did mammals, grasses and some other groups of organisms explode in diversity only after millions of years? The evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner plumbs the secrets of those “sleeping beauties.”

New modeling work suggests why nature is more diverse than niche-based ecological theory predicts.

Showy male competitions over mating privileges have grabbed scientists’ attention more often, but new work hints that sexual selection is also widespread among females.

The zoologist Arik Kershenbaum argues that because some evolutionary challenges are truly universal, life throughout the cosmos may share certain features.

The simple insight that most changes are random had a profound effect on genetics, evolution and ecology.

Promising efforts at disentangling the effects of genes and the environment on complicated traits may have been confounded by statistical problems.