Evolution

Partnerships between engineers and biologists have begun to reveal how birds evolved their superb maneuverability.

Everybody gets older, but not everyone ages in the same way. In this episode, Steven Strogatz speaks with Judith Campisi and Dena Dubal, two biomedical researchers who study the aging process.

Structural studies of the robust material called sporopollenin reveal how it made plants hardy enough to reproduce on dry land.

Without a good definition of life, how do we look for it on alien planets? Steven Strogatz speaks with Robert Hazen, a mineralogist and astrobiologist, and Sheref Mansy, a chemist, to learn more.

The lush biodiversity of the Amazon may be due in part to the dynamics of branching rivers, which serve as invisible fences that continuously barricade and merge bird populations.

Some animal neuropeptides have been around longer than nervous systems.

When researchers gave a genetic molecule the ability to replicate, it evolved over time into a complex network of “hosts” and “parasites” that both competed and cooperated to survive.

Was the addition of mitochondria a first step in the formation of complex cells or one of the last? A new study of bacteria tries to answer this contentious question in evolutionary biology.

Traits from RNA molecules passed between multiple generations of worms can work with genetic changes to influence future evolution.