Genomes are key to unlocking life's evolutionary history. The presence and absence of certain genetic sequences and mutations ...

In a world where evolutionary biology often gets boiled down to simplistic hierarchies of "primitive" and "advanced" species, a new book by University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) biologist ...

Life on Earth began in a way that still boggles the mind. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a chemical process called abiogenesis occurred, where life emerged from non-life. Imagine a hot, watery mix of ...

In a joint collaboration with researchers from colleges around the globe, a campus professor published a study Monday that uncovered new microbes, expanding the commonly known tree of life. Jillian ...

A popular model of evolution concludes that it was incredibly unlikely for humanity to evolve on Earth, and that extraterrestrial intelligence is vanishingly rare. But as experts on the entangled ...

Just as bird watchers may use binoculars to add to their species lists, scientists interested in bird evolution may use computational tools to clarify avian lineages. Indeed, such tools have enabled ...

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) forms part of an international consortium that is preparing the Tree of Sex project, an ambitious initiative aimed at decoding the evolutionary complexity ...

The branching structure of biological evolution confers statistical dependencies on phenotypic trait values in related organisms. For this reason, comparative macroevolutionary studies usually begin ...

As XEC, the latest COVID variant takes hold, we are watching viral evolution play out on a time scale short enough to follow, with different strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus independently acquiring ...

The strawberry is a treasured treat whose large red fruit and sweet flavor make mouthwatering jams, stand-alone afternoon snacks, or toppings to nearly any dessert. However, strawberries are more than ...