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Neanderthal gene variant lowers muscle enzyme activity in modern humans
The enzyme AMPD1 plays a key role in muscle energy production and normal muscular function. Loss of AMPD1 activity due to genetic mutations is the most common cause of metabolic myopathy in Europeans, occurring at a frequency of 9% to 14%.
New clues from two million-year-old tooth enamel tell us more about an ancient relative of humans
For nearly a century, scientists have been puzzling over fossils from a strange and robust-looking distant relative of early humans: Paranthropus robustus. It walked upright, and was built for heavy chewing with relatively massive jaws, and huge teeth with thick dental enamel. It's thought to have lived between 2.25 million and 1.7 million years ago.
Sled dog genetic history sheds light on human migration patterns into Greenland
The histories of sled dogs and humans in the Arctic have been intricately linked for thousands of years, so it is no surprise that the migration patterns of these dogs mirror those of humans through the Arctic. Sled dogs have assisted humans with the difficult tasks of traversing through harsh environments and transporting heavy materials and food, ultimately playing an important role in survival. However, many breeds of sled dog, like the Siberian husky, Alaskan malamute and Samoyed, have now mostly transitioned out of their traditional roles and into the role of pets and are often mixed with other breeds.
Study analyzes 400 million years of enzyme evolution
Enzymes catalyze chemical reactions in organisms—without which life would not be possible. Leveraging AlphaFold2 artificial intelligence, researchers at Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now succeeded in analyzing the laws of their evolution on a large scale.
'False head' in certain butterflies found to evolve from multiple traits working in tandem to deflect predators
Animals often evolve to have certain characteristics that help them escape predators more effectively. Some of these characteristics work to deflect predators away from the animal's head. Many butterfly species have evolved such characteristics in the form of a quasi-head on their hindwings. These "false heads" attract predators to a less vital part of the butterfly's body, thus preserving their actual head and allowing them to survive.
Ancient rhino tooth protein recovery illuminates family tree
Scientists have shed new light on the rhino family tree after recovering a protein sequence from a fossilized tooth from more than 20 million years ago. The recovered protein sequences allowed researchers to determine that this ancient rhino diverged from other rhinocerotids during the Middle Eocene-Oligocene epoch, around 41–25 million years ago.
Fossil teeth yield 18-million-year-old proteins, offering new clues to mammal evolution
Proteins degrade over time, making their history hard to study. But new research has uncovered ancient proteins in the enamel of the teeth of 18-million-year-old fossilized mammals from Kenya's Rift Valley, opening a window into how these animals lived and evolved.
Gut length driven by 'sexual conflict' in fish species
A new study that looked at gut length variation between cichlid fish species found that some of the genetic loci for the trait are sex-specific even though males and females of the same species have the same gut length. The work supports a scenario of "sexual conflict," where gut length differences evolved under different pressures for males and females of the same species and could have implications for the understanding of gut length evolution more generally.
380-million-year-old lungfish jawbones reveal ancient eating habits of Earth's first land animals
Predatory fish that evolved into the first terrestrial animals on Earth are still revealing insights into the origins of mammals—including new research into the eating habits of lobe-finned fish which inhabited an ancient reef in northern Australia.
When domesticated rabbits go feral, new morphologies emerge
Originally bred for meat and fur, the European rabbit has become a successful invader worldwide. When domesticated breeds return to the wild and feralize, the rabbits do not simply revert to their wild form—they experience distinct, novel anatomical changes.
A pointless fashion trend or something else? Chimpanzees wear blades of grass in their ears and rears
A team of researchers from Utrecht University, Durham University, and other institutions have observed something remarkable at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia. Several chimpanzees from one particular group were seen dangling blades of grass from their ear holes or their behinds, for no apparent reason. The behavior was not seen in other chimpanzee groups at the same sanctuary, despite similar living conditions.
Beyond the alpha male: Primate studies challenge male-dominance norms
New findings by researchers at the University of Montpellier, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and the German Primate Center in Göttingen resolve why male-female power asymmetries vary across primate societies.
From ancient vertebrates to modern medicine: Tracing cellular energy evolution to improve rare disease diagnosis
Mitochondria are the body's "energy factories," and their proper function is essential for life. Inside mitochondria, a set of complexes called the oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) system acts like a biochemical assembly line, transforming oxygen and nutrients into usable energy.
Climate change outpaces trees: Forests face centuries-long lag in adaptation
Ecologists are concerned that forest ecosystems will not keep pace with a rapidly changing climate, failing to remain healthy and productive. Before the rapid climate change of the past century, tree populations in the Northern Hemisphere adapted to colder and warmer periods over thousands of years.
Embryonic cells use same communication proteins as hearing cells due to shared evolution, study finds
Like all complex organisms, every human originates from a single cell that multiplies through countless cell divisions. Thousands of cells coordinate, move and exert mechanical forces on each other as an embryo takes shape.
Meet the 'weird' sea spider that's mapping the evolution of eight-legged creatures
It's not easy to look at a sea spider and see an animal so representative of its kind that it may help scientists sort out the evolution of almost everything with eight legs. But that's the potential a new study finds in these spindly, strikingly strange bottom-dwellers.
At the frontier between two lives—the evolutionary origins of pregnancy
An international research team led by scientists from the University of Vienna has uncovered new insights into how specialized cell types and communication networks at the interface between mother and fetus evolved over millions of years. These discoveries shed light on one of nature's most remarkable innovations—the ability to sustain a successful pregnancy. The findings have just been published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Structural differences in Nasonia wasps linked to evolution, behavior and disease
What can a tiny wasp with a rather gruesome parasitic life cycle teach us about evolution, behavior and human developmental diseases? In a new paper, researchers led by István Mikó and Holly Hoag at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) suggest that it may be a lot.
Religion, politics and war drive urban wildlife evolution, say biologists
The downstream consequences of religion, politics and war can have far-reaching effects on the environment and on the evolutionary processes affecting urban organisms, according to a new analysis from Washington University in St. Louis.
It takes a village: Chimpanzee babies do better when their moms have social connections
In chimpanzee communities, strong social ties can be a matter of life and death not just for the adults who form them, but for their kids, too. A new study of wild eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) from Gombe National Park shows that female chimpanzees who were more socially integrated with other females in the year before giving birth were more likely to raise surviving offspring.
Genomes reveal the Norwegian lemming as one of the most recently evolved mammal species
Using whole genome sequencing and cutting‐edge analyses, researchers at Stockholm University have uncovered the surprising evolutionary history of the Norwegian lemming (Lemmus lemmus), revealing it to be one of the most recently evolved mammal species.
Snails get stressed: Invertebrate model sheds light on biological basis of anxiety
Anxiety, the psychological and physiological state characterized by an anticipation of potential threats and a heightened sense of vigilance, is regularly experienced by many humans worldwide. Research suggests that anxiety is a behavioral consequence of stress, designed to "prepare" humans for uncertainty and risky situations.
Analysis provides day-by-day insight into prehistoric plankton's capacity for change
Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of analyzing fossils, allowing them to see how creatures from millions of years ago were shaped by their environment on a day-to-day basis for the first time.
Invasive Adirondack smallmouth bass evolve to counter control efforts
Decades of efforts to eradicate invasive smallmouth bass from a midsized Adirondack lake have led to a surprising result: The bass rapidly evolved to grow faster and invest more in early reproduction, leading to an even larger population of smaller fish.
How night lizards survived the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs
Yale University ecologists reveal a lizard lineage that rode out the dinosaur-killing asteroid event with unexpected evolutionary survival traits. Night lizards (family Xantusiidae) survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event 66 million years ago (formerly known as the K-T extinction) despite having small broods and occupying limited ranges, a departure from the theory of how other species are thought to have persisted in the aftermath of the event.
Loss of hard chorion: An evolutionary dead-end for parental egg-care fish
Parental egg-care in fish traps them in an evolutionary dead-end through the loss of the chorion-hardening system, according to scientists from the Institute of Science Tokyo. Fish have diverse egg-caring strategies that have independently emerged multiple times across lineages. Comparative whole genome analyses of 240 fish species revealed a strong correlation between loss of the chorion-hardening system and parental egg-care, revealing the mechanisms behind the evolutionary bias that restricts egg-caring fish from becoming non-egg-carers.
Fossil fungi trapped in amber reveal ancient origin of parasitic zombie-ants
Chinese Academy of Sciences researchers report that fossilized entomopathogenic fungi from mid-Cretaceous amber reveal some of the oldest direct evidence of parasitic relationships between fungi and insects, suggesting that Ophiocordyceps fungi originated approximately 133 million years ago and underwent early host shifts that shaped their evolution.
Cambrian explosion may have occurred 15 million years earlier than previously thought
The Cambrian explosion was an extraordinary phenomenon in the evolution of life on the planet that led to the emergence of many animal phyla and the diversification of species. During this period, some 530 million years ago, most of the basic body plans of organisms that have survived to the present day emerged. However, this great explosion of life that changed the evolutionary landscape on Earth may have occurred millions of years earlier than previously thought, a hypothesis now reinforced in a study published in the journal Geology.
500-million-year-old fossil reveals how starfish got their shape
A 500-million-year-old fossil from Morocco, discovered by Natural History Museum scientists, is offering extraordinary new insights into one of evolution's most puzzling transformations: how echinoderms, the group that includes starfish, sea cucumbers and sea urchins, evolved from ancestors that showed bilateral symmetry, like humans, to the unique fivefold symmetry we see today.