Ever since Charles Darwin published his landmark theory of how species evolve, biologists have been fascinated with the intricate mechanisms that make evolution possible ..read more

A team of plant-breeding specialists at Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Science's State Key Laboratory of Vegetable Biobreeding and other institutions has, via genetic analysis, revealed some of the changes that cauliflower has undergone throughout its evolution ..read more

Small really does seem to be beautiful in evolutionary terms. The largest dinosaurs, pterosaurs and mammals may look impressive but these giants are vastly outnumbered by microscopic bacteria and single-celled algae and fungi. Small organisms are also ancient and incredibly resilient ..read more

Think about taking a walk: where you need to go, how fast you need to move to get there, and whether you need to bring something along to carry the results of your errand ..read more

A team of anthropologists, paleontologists and Earth scientists from Kent State University, the City University of New York and the University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology has for the first time identified the likely common ancestor of all modern hoofed animals ..read more

Atlantic salmon are caught by fisheries when the fish are migrating to spawn. A new study led by the University of Helsinki explored how salmon caught at different times during their spawning migration differ from each other genetically. The study on wild salmon in the northern Baltic Sea revealed that especially in the early part of the fishing season, fishing strongly targets salmon carrying a "large salmon genetic variant." The variant guides Atlantic salmon to grow large and to mature at an older age, which is an important trait for the fishing and viability of salmon stocks ..read more

Freshwater bacteria with small genomes frequently undergo prolonged periods of adaptive stagnation. Based on genomic analyses of samples from Lake Zurich and other European lakes, researchers at the University of Zurich have uncovered specific evolutionary strategies that shape these bacteria's lifestyles. Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of aquatic microbial communities is key to safeguarding ecosystem services ..read more

Chimpanzees continue to learn and hone their skills well into adulthood, a capacity that might be essential for the evolution of complex and varied tool use, according to a study published May 7 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Mathieu Malherbe of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences, France and colleagues ..read more

Plant life first emerged on land about 550 million years ago, and an international research team co-led by University of Nebraska–Lincoln computational biologist Yanbin Yin has cracked the genomic code of its humble beginnings, which made possible all other terrestrial life on Earth, including humans ..read more

New research has discovered that lemurs, the small primates native to Madagascar, are capable of exaggerating their size thanks to the unique structure of their larynx ..read more