Mosquitoes have historically caused millions of deaths through diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever. Yet most people don't have the same instinctive fear response toward mosquitoes as they do toward spiders, centipedes or cockroaches.

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Excerpt:

Importantly, they also found that promoters, which control transcription of adjacent genes, can act as distal enhancers when placed in a new genomic location (Fig. 1b). In other words, the specific role of any regulatory element depends highly on its genomic context. To Lowe, this fluidity between promoters and enhancers was the biggest surprise from their work. He hypothesizes that “promoters and enhancers are not distinct functional categories, and not many mutations are needed to convert a DNA sequence between acting as proximal or distal regulators of transcription.”

Highlight article:

- Pedro Andrade, Highlight: Segmental duplications at the center of regulatory innovation, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 43, Issue 7, July 2026, msag163, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag163

This is personal curiosity. And correct any of my understanding if it’s wrong.
In tetrapods there is the major split that led to the current living groups of tetrapods, where amniotes and amphibians diverge.
Do they know anything about that common ancestor? Like how they lived or reproduced.
Since many major differences happened: porous vs waterproof skin, being bound to water for eggs and mostly external fertilization vs internal fertilization and having young on land, being able to breathe without needing moist skin vs breathing requiring moist skin.
So many major gene changes had to happen between then. I’m curious about the transitional phases in those. Like what transitional eggs from water to land would be like, transitional porous skin to water proof skin, external to internal fertilization transitioning, full air breathing transitions.

People with a lower blood pressure are already more prone to fainting, and are often more sensitive to like blood pressure lower as result of fluid loss/blood loss...some sicknesses also lower the blood pressure and could allow it to jump too low, perhaps higher blood pressure could be protective against this?

While reading a botany book, I realized how much variety we have due to artificial selection.How can we make such a big change?

Title explains it really, my question is why did humans evolve to stand up and not keep to how chimps do it, where they travel with primarily 4 limbs but can transition to being upright as the situation depends

Seeing a recent post on canine transmissible venereal tumor got me thinking.

Bivalves are uniquely prone to transmissible neoplasm. Already 8 lineages have been found in modern times. One of them, MtrBTN2 has disseminated worldwide. Some have also already infected other species of bivalves.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-85098-5

Extrapolating this tendency all the way back to the Cambrian, roughly 500million years ago, when bivalves first emerged, there would have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of such lineages if not more.

Given the selection pressure against aggressive disease behaviour, the more indolent ones would be selected for. Coupled with the BTN cells’ ability to survive in seawater for some time, some may conceivably evolve to become free floating forms.

At any given time it is unlikely, but when you compound this across 500 million years, it is almost a certainty that there are very ancient lineages that still exist today. They may have outgrown their host and look like any free living protist in the sea, with life cycle stages that may or may not involve infecting bivalves. But when we sequence seawater, all metazoan genome is filtered away, they would have not been detected if we are not actively looking for it.

TLDR: I posit that ancient bivalve transmissible neoplasm lineages likely still exist and may be indistinguishable from any free living protist, with or without a parasitic life cycle. Surely one would have to classify such entities as a separate species of single cell bivalvia.

i breastfeed. I am beyond terrified that my boobs naturaly block the nose of my baby. I always have to keep my fingers on boobs to push them away from nose. If I didnt my baby would suffocate. Who tf thought this was the good design of boobs? I am serious.

Our findings challenge the view that human geometric reasoning is categorically distinct from that of other primates (1, 3, 4). Instead of a categorical divide, we find that monkeys and humans share a common representational space, relying on perceptual codes with graded contributions from abstract or symbolic-like features. Consistent with prior work, adult humans showed the strongest symbolic effects during geometric reasoning. However, we reveal that humans, particularly preschool children, share a common architecture with nonhuman primates rather than categorically different representations. This is important because it suggests that the stronger symbolic representation in adult humans is acquired rather than inherent. Our findings identify rotation invariance as a key component of this abstraction, suggesting that what has been interpreted as uniquely human symbolic structure may instead reflect increasingly powerful orientation-independent representations.

• Press release:
  Children and monkeys share common understanding of geometry

• PNAS paper:
  J. Li, I. Boni, L.R. Sandwick, E.M. Sanford, C.M. DeLong, L. Wenjie, M.M. Henderson, S.T. Piantadosi, & J.F. Cantlon
  Continuity in geometric intuition between humans and monkeys
  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (30) e2532934123
  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2532934123 (2026).

Like why is it that we feel good when we get a adrenaline rush or feel dopamine from things? couldn't the brain do the same with any other chemical? Plus, whats so special about adrenaline or dopamine to the brain that other chemicals can't do?

I’m trying to get more into evolution, biology, and evolutionary ecology. Does anyone have any free
video/course recommendations so I can educate myself without blindly watching YouTube videos? Thanks!!

I hear this misinterpreted so much. In an argument I had, someone used AI which stated how pugs aren’t wolves. I don’t trust AI as a source, and I was just wondering, since I’ve been thinking about this fro a while anyways. I’m aware they were bred from gray wolves, but also they were bred from their extinct ancestors. I’m sure both are true, but I was just wondering, is it a fact to say that they ARE wolves without argument?

I don't understand how the transmissible venereal tumor isn't considered a species of its own (this will be quick because I have to go to sleep)

These hellish monstrosities basically meet all the criteria to be classified as such, and I stand by that.

1) Out of the roughly 20,000 genes a dog has, 10,000 show non-synonymous (functionally different) variations, and 646 have been lost; in other words, based solely on what is missing, they differ more from a dog than a chimpanzee does from a human.

2) As unicellular organisms, their morphology is completely different.

3) And as obligate parasites, their ecological niche is also completely different—in fact, they have evolved specifically for that role.

4) And, obviously, they are reproductively isolated.

As for potential objections:

1) Being a parasite is no reason to claim they lack sufficient independence or their own life cycle; \*Henneguya zschokkei\* cannot even breathe on its own.

2) The biological species concept is nonsense in cases like this; it cannot be applied to anything that reproduces asexually—which accounts for more than 90% of the species on Earth.

Anyway...

What do you think?

This map, Vespertilioninae - Land of Vesper Bats, contains every known living species of vesper bats I could find reliable taxonomic data for. Species are represented as cities, grouped into genera and tribes according to their evolutionary relationships.

Science, design and cartography merge in MAPPA ANIMALIA, a visual project that reimagines the evolutionary relationships of animals as detailed map-like landscapes.

MAPPA ANIMALIA is an ever-growing series of illustrations I’ve created that currently consisting of 16 different maps - each dedicated to a specific family in the animal kingdom.

Instead of political borders or geographic territories, these maps are structured around phylogenetic trees.

Tribes and genera replace countries, states and regions allowing viewers to explore the animal kingdom through a format traditionally used to understand geography.

Additional information includes conservation status, size comparisons between selected species and a species index.

I’ve spent roughly ten years developing and refining this concept, combining zoology, taxonomy, illustration and cartography into a single visual format.

Happy exploring!

Full .csv and code linked there.

I'm floundering around something here I can't quite put into words.

Life expands into areas with energy that's being underutilized. If there's a source of energy, it's likely that there's something biological in there munching on that energy source. If there isn't something there yet, evolution will adapt something for it.

However, once that energy is being munched, it seems that there's an ever increasing system of complexity to use that energy more efficiently or have one species gather it better than another species. Each layer up gets more complex, it needs more information coded in its DNA or its brain cells.

So, It's almost like energy wants to be gathered and information wants to be compounded. One driving the other.

Why isn't the world simply covered in nice efficient slime molds munching on all the sunlight from pole to pole. What's the driver for complexity all about?

Like I said, the words aren't quite right and I'm only at 90% of what I'm trying to ask so I hope you folks can help with that.

I have been developing an evolution simulation as a passion project and to show my interest in biology and evolution. I wanted to make sure it is scientific on fundamental levels yet simplistic so everyone can play it and understand how organisms adapt and diverge into different traits.

There are still some gaps and a lot more to fix or add, but I'd love to hear your feedback. I made it free on browser so anyone can try it.

I love studying evolution and biology, and I felt compelled to make something interactive as a way to show my gratitude. That's all.

im talking about mammals as a group not humans specifically

Really cool study from a couple of days ago:

Background

Toxin-antidote (TA) systems are selfish genetic elements that ensure their own inheritance by eliminating offspring that do not inherit the module, thereby creating postzygotic genetic incompatibilities both within and between species. Despite their ubiquity and substantial fitness costs, the origin and persistence of TA systems remain poorly understood.

Results

Here, we report a TA gene pair in the nematode Caenorhabditis nigoni. The antidote gene, Cni-shls-2, is a C. nigoni-specific F-box gene that arose through recent tandem duplications, leading to three identical copies. Its absence results in embryonic lethality in both C. nigoni and its hybrids with the sister species Caenorhabditis briggsae. This lethality is mediated by a maternally deposited toxin, Cni-hlix-1, a chimeric gene formed by the fusion of duplicated host sequences with novel sequences that could be derived from bacteria/archaea. Analysis of evolutionary trajectory of the TA genes among various populations suggests that the antidote is more likely to predate the toxin.

Discussion

These results support a possible model of TA origin, in which Cni-shls-2 initially evolved under pathogen pressure, whereas the subsequent emergence of the toxin enforces antidote retention. We speculate that host–pathogen conflict may serve as a key driving force in the evolution and maintenance of TA systems, inadvertently leading to reproductive barriers.

• D. Xie, Y. Ma, J. Zeng, P. Ye, & Z. Zhao
  Sequential evolution of antidote and toxin links genetic incompatibility with immune responses
  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123 (29) e2603772123
  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2603772123 (2026).

Link: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Evolution

I recently came across this multiple-choice question about evolution, and I think that the given answer is wrong.

Which statement about variation and natural selection is correct?

A: Favourable alleles are selected for by natural selection.

B: Mutant allele frequency can be increased or decreased by natural selection.

C: Natural selection acts on all genotypic variations within a population.

D: Variation in a population is a result of meiosis and recombination only.

I chose option A, since the gene is a unit of selection according to both gene-centric evolution and multilevel selection. Options C and D are obviously wrong, while option B isn't fully accurate since it doesn't describe how mutant allele frequency can be also be maintained via stabilising selection, leading to evolutionary stasis.

However, the right answer is supposedly option B. According to the answer key, option A is incorrect because phenotypes are selected for, rather than alleles. However, I'm pretty sure that this is an obsolete idea that ignores different levels of evolution. What do you think?

What fundamental and essential factors explain why humans evolved to develop such a superior and advanced level of intelligence compared to all other non-Homo species?

Why have all the other non-Homo species fallen behind?