A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution, indicates that while the COVID-19 virus has developed rapidly since 2019, it has done so within limited genetic channels. These genetic limits have ...

Fifty years ago, Richard Dawkins shared an irresistible scientific metaphor with the world that modernised and democratised ...

Evolutionary biology explores how living systems change over time through variation, inheritance and differential success. At its heart lies the concept of descent with modification: populations ...

Men have nipples, mammary glands and the hormones required, but the ability for male lactation rarely turns on. Here’s why ...

Insect wings represent a pivotal evolutionary innovation that has underpinned the remarkable radiation of the Insecta. This field, at the intersection of evolution and developmental biology (evo-devo) ...

My colleague and I have published a new study of cactus flowers which may help explain the conundrum. For more than a century ...

In the intricate machinery of the inner ear, hearing begins with a protein that moves a few billionths of a meter up to ...

Biologists are closing in on a puzzle that seems to turn classic evolutionary logic inside out, yet may be so common that it deserves to be called a new rule of life. Instead of always purging harmful ...

A new study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (MPI-EB) sheds fresh light on one of the most debated concepts in biology: evolvability. The work provides the first ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

How the life histories, diets, and other ecological features of species evolve, and how these processes affect the composition and properties of communities and ecosystems; also, how species evolve in ...