Columbine flowers develop long nectar spurs in response to pollinators
Research offers evidence that evolution may occur in a stop-and-go pattern

Which came first: Primates' ability to see colorful food or see colorful sex?
The adaptive significance of the unique ability in many primates to distinguish red hues from green ones (i.e., trichromatic color vision) has always enticed debate among evolutionary biologists.

How plants learned to respond to changing environments
A team of scientists have discovered how plants evolved the ability to adapt to changes in climate and environment.

Inter-Element Recombination Between Retrotransposons May Be Strategy For Evolution Of Viruses Like HIV
Researchers have uncovered intriguing new lues about the evolution of retrotransposons in a genome

UCLA Study Finds Ocean Currents Slow Adaptation Of Tree-dwelling Lizards
Evolution of genetically distinct species that live exclusively on land can be slowed by over-water dispersal following tropical storms

Evolutionary Pathway To Separate-Sex Plants
When it comes to sex, most plants have the best of both worlds: their sex organs (flowers) are both male and female at the same time.

Selection for the miniaturization of highly expressed genes
What controls the sizes of genes and their introns? Some people believe that genes with complex expression pattern have coding for longer proteins, and contain more undiscovered regulatory motif in their introns (thus they should have longer introns). And

Lessons from the past: Evolutionary impacts of mass extinctions
Mass extinctions have played many evolutionary roles, involving differential survivorship or selectivity of taxa and traits...

The role of extinction in evolution
The extinction of species is not normally consideed an important element of neodarwinian theory, in contrast to the opposite phenomenon, specation...

Disrupting evolutionary processes: The effect of habitat fragmentation on collared lizards in the Missouri Ozarks
Humans affect biodiversity at the genetic, species, community, and ecosystem levels.

The evolutionary impact of invasive species
The authors explored the nature of these recent biotic exchanges and their consequences on evolutionary processes.

Roots: evolutionary origins and biogeochemical significance
This review considers root evolution by attempting to define the root and, in so doing, delimiting its difference from the shoot, and by considering the functions of the roots of extant plants and cases in which ‘root’ functions are performed by non-r

The biotic crisis and the future of evolution
The biotic crisis overtaking our planet is likely to precipitate a major extinction of species.

Feedbacks and the coevolution of plants and atmospheric CO2
A systems analysis of the physiological and geochemical processes involved was presented, identifying new positive and negative feedbacks between plants and CO2 on geological time scales.

Leaf Evolution: Gases, Genes and Geochemistry
This Botanical Briefing reviews how the integration of palaeontology, geochemistry and developmental biology is providing a new mechanistic framework for interpreting the 40- to 50-million-year gap between the origination of vascular land plants and the a

How Did Bilaterally Symmetric Flowers Evolve From Radially Symmetric Ones?
How did bilaterally symmetric flowers evolve from radially symmetric ones?

Water Lily May Provide A "Missing Link" In The Evolution Of Flowering Plants
One of the great mysteries of evolutionary biology is how, 150 or more million years ago, modern-day angiosperms (flowering plants) diverged from their closest relatives, the gymnosperms

Tiny Tampa Bay Fish Key To Evolution Of Immune System
Scientists studying a tiny primitive fish in Tampa Bay now say they have found the "missing link" marking the point in evolution that led to the development of the modern-day human immune system.

New Cellular Evolution Theory Rejects Darwinian Assumptions
The driving force in evolving cellular life on Earth has been horizontal gene transfer, in which the acquisition of alien cellular components work to promote the evolution of recipient cellular entities, says microbiologist.

Fruitfly Study Shows How Evolution Wings It
In the frantic world of fruitfly courtship, the difference between attracting a mate and going home alone may depend on having the right wing spots.