New papers on Evolution
60 new papers on evolution in the last 7 days, within Ecology & evolution. These are the 50 Pipette rates most worth reading, with the main result in the authors' own words.
The best of the week
Supra-regular recursion in primate vocal sequences
Leveraging a new likelihood method for probabilistic formal grammars, we show that the call sequences of three phylogenetically diverse nonhuman primates (bonobos, olive colobus monkeys, common marmosets) include parts that are most likely generated by supra-regular recursive grammars, similar to human language.
PreprintBold claims, read criticallyBroad interestClaims a big stepSomatic differentiation evolves rapidly and repeatedly through the modification of developmental plasticity
Our results provide the first empirical demonstration that the modification of plastic responses to the environment can drive the evolution of somatic differentiation, a key step in the evolution of a new kind of evolutionary individual.
PreprintClaims a big stepBistability of compartmentalized autocatalytic systems at the dawn of hereditary variation
Here we show that two mutually interacting autocatalytic networks can form alternative stable chemical states, maintained by weak cross-catalysis and switched by environmental change when enclosed in reproducing compartments.
Peer-reviewed journalReference genomes and fossils revise bat family phylogeny and biogeography
By integrating comprehensive genomic and morphological datasets, analysed using innovative methods, we resolve long-standing controversies in bat biology and provide new insights into the evolutionary history and trait diversification of bats.
Peer-reviewed journalClaims a big stepBig-team science reveals that patterns of inhibitory control variation in teleost fishes differ from those in mammals and birds
Performance varied markedly among species, but, strikingly, showed only a weak phylogenetic signal, contrasting with patterns previously reported in mammals and birds.
PreprintTransposable elements as evolutionary catalysts of ant macrodiversity
Our findings demonstrate the broad-scale impact of TE-dependent genome evolution during ant adaptive radiation and suggest that similar comparative analyses across other major lineages will be worthwhile to reconstruct the wider macroevolutionary impact of TEs.
Peer-reviewed journalRapid genome-wide purging following tsunami-induced hybridization in a stickleback population
Here we report a 9-year genomic monitoring of a tsunami-induced hybrid stickleback population, revealing rapid genome-wide purging within only a few generations.
Peer-reviewed journalThe diversity, evolution, and conservation of African plants
We reveal a pronounced decoupling between DR and accumulated evolutionary history across Africa.
PreprintAdaptive introgression in Tibetans spans focal and distributed architectures
These findings reveal that adaptive introgression can contribute to complex human adaptation through functionally convergent combinations of archaic variants, rather than only through shared large-effect haplotypes.
PreprintCo-option of a tendon-associated osteogenic program drives the evolutionary plasticity of intermuscular bones in teleosts
Our findings reveal a distinct tendon-associated osteogenic system in teleosts, providing a mechanistic framework for IB evolution during teleost adaptive radiation.
Peer-reviewed journalSociality in weevils is shaped by sheltering and convergent gene losses
These findings indicate that the molecular mechanisms of social evolution in weevils are primarily characterised by relaxed selection and gene loss, rather than adaptive innovation and gene family expansions.
PreprintOlder Adults Forage Broadly for Information Despite Cost
These findings suggest that, as individuals age, they prefer to seek information, which earns them fewer points and slows learning but incurs no cost to long-run projected performance.
PreprintBold claims, read criticallyBroad interestBiogeographic cline is associated with the global plant telomere length variation
Surprisingly, plants with different life-histories had minimal telomere length differences, but biogeographic clines had significant effect on telomere length variation.
PreprintPhenotypic divergence is driven by mobile genetic elements in a heritable insect symbiont
Together, our results show that gain and loss of a single MGE contributes to divergence in a key adaptive trait, providing a mechanism by which symbiont evolution generates phenotypic differences among host populations.
Peer-reviewed journalDrivers of tandem repeats variation within and between stick insect genomes
By characterizing TR abundance and TR sequence composition within and between chromosomes and species in the stick insect genus Timema, we uncover that TR loads are enriched in genomic regions of high recombination but tend to be reduced in species with higher effective population sizes.
PreprintGenome-wide evidence for cryptic multi-generational introgression between invasive Bursaphelenchus xylophilus and native B. mucronatus
Our findings reveal cryptic, multigenerational introgression between an invasive forest pathogen and its native congener, highlighting the importance of genomic surveillance for forest disease management and invasion-risk assessment under climate change.
PreprintReal-world useCoordinated P450–UGT detoxification contributes to furanocoumarin tolerance associated with host plant range divergence in Helicoverpa
Together, these findings provide direct evidence for coordinated Phase I-Phase II detoxification of a plant defensive compound in insects and show that functional divergence in this pathway contributes to interspecific differences in plant toxin tolerance, which are associated with contrasting dietary breadth in closely related herbivorous insects.
Peer-reviewed journalGene flow drives periods of both evolutionary stasis and change in a wild bird population
Indeed, attributing interannual genetic change to its contributing demographic processes revealed immigration to be key to explaining periods of both evolutionary stasis and change, with its evolutionary impact varying across time and space in a manner analogous to the dynamism of natural selection.
Peer-reviewed journalIndividual variation in glucocorticoid plasticity to temperature is not associated with reproductive success in a wild songbird population
However, neither intercepts nor slopes were associated with reproductive success (fledgling number or brood mass), suggesting that individual variation in endocrine plasticity was not under natural selection, at least within the environmental conditions experienced.
PreprintA feedback between dispersal and hybridization may facilitate the repeated emergence of flight in field crickets
These results are consistent with a dispersal-hybridization feedback shaping both the reticulated phylogenetic history of Gryllus and the repeated emergence of flight.
PreprintA meta-analysis of Neotropical butterflies reveals long-term signature of the Pebas wetland on Neotropical biogeography
While several clades show little evidence of Pebas influence, our study suggests that the Pebas wetland did not uniformly restrict diversification, but rather selectively constrained dispersal between the Andes and Amazonia, preventing simultaneous diversification in both regions and thereby creating a diversity imbalance that characterizes the modern Neotropic.
PreprintThe genomic origins of cyanobacterial morphological diversity
Our analyses reveal a dynamic evolutionary history characterized by independent gains and losses of multicellularity-associated traits.
Peer-reviewed journalBiosurfactants direct the evolutionary dynamics of surface-associated microbial systems
Our results demonstrate that biosurfactants not only promote ecological dispersal but also direct evolutionary dynamics by determining the spatial constraints acting on the system.
Peer-reviewed journalDemographic inference of pathogen-infected populations from partially observed transmission forests
From this we obtain, again in closed form, the probability that a sample of a given size contains no linked individuals at all, and the likelihood of an arbitrary observed configuration of clusters, both when the transmission structure within each is known, and when only the cluster sizes are.
PreprintAccelerated Evolution of Context-Dependent Gene Expression in Primate Immune Cells
However, the subset of genes that respond to in vitro perturbations have evolved at significantly higher rates than environmentally-insensitive genes, a finding we replicate in an independent four-species dataset of primary white blood cells (n=26).
PreprintEnvironmental history can counteract nutrient quality in shaping the evolution of bacterial growth rates
Our results highlight that bacterial growth rates can rapidly adapt to their recent environmental history by proteome allocation alone, in ways that often oppose expectations based on nutrient quality.
PreprintPhylogenies as graphs: structured neural networks improve host origin predictions from paramyxovirus sequences
We conduct rigorous benchmarking against non-structured neural networks and predictions made using phylogeny alone, showing that GNNs carry distinct advantages over other methods when making predictions where training data is sparse.
PreprintReal-world useNot all roads lead to selfing: mating-system stability in an invasive ectomycorrhizal fungus
Our works in S. luteus demonstrates that although selfing is possible in this species, it is not favored during colonization, potentially due to inbreeding depression and higher population density, highlighting the complex interaction among the invasion biology, genetics, and the colonizing context.
PreprintThe Genetic Architecture of Neonatal Deer Mouse Cries Implicates the Cerebellum in the Temporal Control of an Infant Social Behavior
Taken as a whole, this work identifies contributions of the cerebellar system to neonatal social behaviors and suggests testable neural and genetic hypotheses about the evolution of infant crying.
PreprintAncient inversion polymorphisms associate with sexually selected traits across natural guppy populations
Overall, our results show the role of sexual selection in the long-term maintenance of inversion polymorphisms, and an interplay between sexual and natural selection in frequency dynamics.
Peer-reviewed journalScarlet Fever Dynamics in 19th and 20th Century London
We find that almost all spectral evolution in the time series can be explained by changes in the effective reproduction number and the amplitude of seasonal forcing.
PreprintOne species, two lives: cryptic population structure and life-history divergence in a vineyard spittlebug (Aphrophora sp.), a candidate vector for Pierce's disease
Overall, our findings elucidate an intriguing degree of life history divergence between geographically proximate, conspecific populations linked by gene flow and may have implications for the continued management of vineyard populations.
PreprintReal-world useComparative genomics reveals a genomic and functional continuum among secondary replicons in Halobacteriota
Together, these results support a model in which secondary replicons in Halobacteriota span a genomic and functional continuum from plasmid-like to chromosome-like states , with increasing size associated with greater conservation, gene duplication and progressively more chromosome-like gene content and functional profile.
PreprintStrength of developmental carry-over varies continuously with environmental conditions in a wild bird population
Overall, our findings show that climatic and demographic shifts can substantially reshape developmental carry-over without altering the genetic architecture tying body mass across life stages, with implications for how reliably early-life mass can predict individual quality and adult traits in wild animal populations.
PreprintMutation Order and Selection Shape Intratumor Heterogeneity in Tumor Evolution
These results show how mutation order, mutational accessibility, selection, and epistasis jointly determine lineage-level intratumor heterogeneity.
PreprintToxin structure shapes palatability in a chemically defended butterfly
These results show that variation in toxin structure can strongly affect palatability, with some compounds conferring greater protection than others.
PreprintComputational modeling of an RNA-peptide world
Comparison of the evolutionary trajectories and the structures of RNA molecules and RNA-peptide complexes emerging in these simulations shows that short random peptides accelerate RNA evolution, stabilize RNA folds, and boost the structural diversity of evolving RNA molecules, potentially enabling a broader range of activities.
PreprintBold claims, read criticallyShedding light on fenestrations in carnivorous pitcher plants: a test for convergent function
While future studies may uncover weak to moderate light manipulation function not detected in our study, our data do not support convergent function in these distantly related, morphologically similar species.
PreprintSequential accumulation of adaptive alleles forms an inversion supergene in deer mice
Here, we identified two candidate genes, Slc45a2 and Npr3, within a 41-Mb inversion supergene in the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) that respectively drive darker coats and longer tails - two traits associated with forest adaptation.
PreprintPhylogenetic Inference and the Stickiness of Fr\'echet Means, via Precise Asymptotics of an Embedded Random Walk
In this work, we identify a particular multidimensional random walk embedded within the Fr\'echet mean process, and we show that the time at which stickiness occurs is determined by the largest last-passage time above zero of the coordinates of this random walk.
PreprintTropical rainforest versus savannah: Biome-specific landscape structure mediates adaptive strategies and resilience to environmental change
Rainforest populations exhibited strong local adaptation to fragmented, stable environments, while savannah populations showed less genomic differentiation and morphological divergence, patterns consistent with weaker local adaptation.
PreprintPhysiological signatures but no evidence for universal genomic predictors of extreme drought responses in European beech
These findings indicate that drought survival in European beech is not governed by a universal set of major-effect alleles.
PreprintMulti-omics dissection of transcriptional and post-transcriptional responses in cyanobacterial high-light adaptation
Overall, this study demonstrates how a small number of point mutations in genes with central cellular functions can reprogram the cyanobacterial cell to achieve enhanced tolerance to HL.
PreprintLineage-specific positive selection on stress-response genes in wild wheat relatives
Our study provides a framework for detecting positive selection in wild wheat relatives and identifies candidate genes that may contribute to adaptation and represent valuable targets for future functional analyses and wheat improvement programs.
PreprintSelection history alters fitness across ecological interactions in a fly-parasitoid system
Our results show that rapid evolution in response to a single interaction can reshape multiple ecological interactions through fitness trade-offs, highlighting how recent evolutionary history may influence community dynamics and invasion susceptibility.
PreprintFrom Genes to Brains: Molecular Evolution and Mammalian Brain Cellular Diversity
Our study provides a comparative framework linking relative evolutionary rates of protein-coding genes to quantitative variation in mammalian brain cellular architecture while accounting for shared evolutionary history.
PreprintSelection for high metabolic rate reduces gut microbiota responsiveness to dietary restriction in bank voles
These effects were largely similar for the selection lines, but contrary to our prediction, the effect of dietary restriction on bacterial diversity was stronger in C-lines.
PreprintAbiotic and biotic ecological factors affect the genomic consequences of plant-butterfly coevolution
Overall, our results highlight how modifications in temperature and community context, potentially stemming from global environmental change, will affect the genomic basis of coevolution.
PreprintConvergent molecular changes in populations of two pipefish species in the Baltic Sea
Overall, we identified molecular convergence at the gene and nucleotide level between Baltic populations of distantly related pipefish species, while convergence was limited at broader genomic scales.
PreprintBroad scale environmental conditions, not urbanisation, explain geographic variation in great tit feather microstructure
However, feather microstructure significantly varied between the studied areas and was positively associated with elevation and ultraviolet B (UV-B) radiation, suggesting a potential adaptive response to variation in solar radiation.
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