Intense fishing and overexploitation have led to evolutionary changes in fish stocks like cod, reducing both their productivity and value on the market. These changes can be reversed by more sustainable and far-sighted fisheries management. The new study by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Leipzig University and the Institute of Marine Research in Tromsø, which was published in Nature Sustainability, shows that reversal of evolutionary change would only slightly reduce the profit of fishing, but would help regain and conserve natural genetic diversity.

Überfischung und Übernutzung der Meere haben bei Fischbeständen wie dem Kabeljau zu evolutionären Veränderungen geführt, die die Produktivität und den Marktwert der Fischebestände schmälern. Ein nachhaltigeres und vorausschauendes Management der Fischereien könnte diese Veränderungen rückgängig machen. Eine neue Studie, die im Fachmagazin Nature Sustainability veröffentlicht wurde, zeigt, dass diese Umkehr der evolutionären Veränderungen sich nur geringfügig auf den Gewinn der Fischereien auswirken, aber zum Erhalt der natürlichen genetischen Vielfalt beitragen würde.

A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human – but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. In a study with long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), researchers at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) have now confirmed an alternative explanatory approach. A combination of social disappointment with the human experimenter and some degree of food competition best explains their behavior in an ‚inequity aversion‘ experiment.

Non-vascular bryophytes live in colonies that cover the ground and resemble tiny forests. In a real forest, plants compete for light in different layers of the canopy. If a plant does not receive enough sunlight, it stops lateral branching and instead grows vertically to reach the sunlight. Researchers from the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences discovered that the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, whose plant body is fundamentally different from those of vascular plants, also adapts its architecture in response to shade. These new insights into the evolution of genetic pathways governing branching were published in Current Biology.

Scientists of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin and the University of Vienna studied an exceptionally large flower inclusion, almost measuring 3 cm across. This flower and its pollen were enclosed and preserved in resin about 38-34 million years ago. It is about three times as large as most floral inclusions and therefore the largest flower, which was discovered from any amber so far. These new findings help to shed new light into the Baltic amber forest and allow drawing conclusions about the climate of the past, as well as the evolution of forests.

A study conducted by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin revealed the evolution of ossification patterns in the backbones of four-legged vertebrates. Antoine Verrière and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the patterns of how the bones in the vertebral column formed in the ancestor to all land vertebrates based on a large dataset of modern and fossil vertebrates with the inclusion of rare new data from the 300 Ma old reptile Mesosaurus tenuidens. The results are published this week in Scientific Reports.

Evolutionary pressure across male mammals to guarantee the procreation of their own offspring led to a rapid evolution of the testicle. Bioinformatic studies – conducted by an international team of researchers led by Prof. Dr Henrik Kaessmann from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University – show that this pressure particularly accelerated the evolution of later stages of sperm formation.

Biology: Publication in Current Biology

Modern eukaryotic cells contain numerous so-called organelles, which once used to be independent bacteria. In order to understand how these bacteria were integrated into the cells in the course of evolution and how they are controlled, a research team from the Institute of Microbial Cell Biology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has examined the single-celled flagellate Angomonas deanei, which contains a bacterium that was taken up relatively recently. In the journal Current Biology, the biologists now describe how certain proteins in the flagellate control the cell division process of the bacterium, among other things.

The TGF-ß cellular signaling network, essential to various functions in all metazoans and involved in many severe human pathologies like autoimmune diseases and cancer, is more flexible than previously thought. Researchers at the MPI for Neurobiology of Behavior and the MPI for Biology discovered an unknown genetic variability in this signaling pathway amongst different nematode species resulting in morphological and behavioral variations. This fresh view on the TGF-ß machinery, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, is important for understanding the evolution of signaling pathways, their adaptability to acquire novel functions and for new strategies to control parasitic nematodes.

Basic researchers at Leipzig University have solved a puzzle in the evolution of bacterial enzymes. By reconstructing a candidate for a special RNA polymerase as it existed about two billion years ago, they were able to explain a hitherto puzzling property of the corresponding modern enzymes. Unlike their ancestors, they do not work continuously and are thus significantly more effective – these pauses in activity constitute evolutionary progress. The reconstruction of the protein from prehistoric times was made possible thanks to interdisciplinary cooperation between molecular biochemistry and bioinformatics.

An international team has reconstructed the genome organization of the earliest common ancestor of all mammals. The reconstructed ancestral genome could help in understanding the evolution of mammals and in conservation of modern animals. The earliest mammal ancestor likely looked like the fossil animal “Morganucodon” which lived about 200 million years ago. The work is published the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”.

A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the University of Sussex in the UK shows that the age of a gene determines how fast they adapt. These findings demonstrate how gene evolution occurs as an “adaptive walk” through time.

Brain organoids provide insights into the evolution of the human brain

Is the geographical history of Sundaland closely linked to the evolution of the native Sumatran Cascade Frogs? This question was investigated by an international team led by herpetologist Umilaela Arifin of the LIB in their latest study, which was recently published in the scientific journal „Nature Scientific Report“. They assumed that these frogs have already dispersed in Sundaland way before the formation of the watersheds in this region, which took place during the Pleistocene – the Earth’s history about 2.5 million to 11,650 years ago. These findings challenge previous assumptions by experts.

A research team led by André Marques at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, has uncovered the profound effects of an atypical mode of chromosome arrangement on genome organization and evolution. Their findings are published in the journal Cell.

The worldwide distribution of one of the most important cereal pathogens is the result of human activity. Researchers at the University of Zurich have traced the history and spread of wheat powdery mildew along wheat trade routes and found that mixing of genetic ancestries of related powdery mildew species played a central role in the evolution and adaptation of the pathogen.

Gene duplication increased the diversity and specificity of enzymes that enable larvae of longhorned beetles to degrade important wood components. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, looked closer at a group of digestive enzymes found only in this beetle family. They resurrected the primordial enzymes, which first appeared in a common ancestor of longhorned beetles. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to the beetle as well as ancient and recent gene duplications promoted the evolution of this family of digestive enzymes and enabled longhorned beetles to degrade the main components of the plant cell wall.

Darwinian evolution is the process by which natural selection promotes genetic changes in traits that favour survival and reproduction of individuals. How fast evolution happens depends crucially on the abundance of its “fuel”: how much genetic difference there is in the ability to survive and reproduce. New research by an international research team with participation of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has now discovered that the raw material for evolution is much more abundant in wild animals than previously believed. The findings were published in “Science”.

The ricefishes of Sulawesi have evolved a special type of brood care – pelvic brooding. Only a few gene loci determine the associated morphological traits, and the body of the fish is modular. An international team of researchers led by the LIB found that these two factors might have facilitated the evolution of the complex reproductive strategy of pelvic brooding. Because of the modularity of the body, the pelvic fin and the ribs in the mid-body region were able to adapt to pelvic brooding independently of other body parts. The results were recently published in the journal “Evolution”.

The genetic origins of the first agriculturalists in the Neolithic period long seemed to lie in the Near East. A new study published in the journal Cell shows that the first farmers actually represented a mixture of Ice Age hunter-gatherer groups, spread from the Near East all the way to south-eastern Europe. Researchers from the University of Bern and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics as well as from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the University of Fribourg were involved in the study. The method they developed could help reveal other human evolution patterns with unmatched resolution.

Stick insects that reproduce asexually cannot adapt as quickly in the course of evolution as sexually reproducing species, leading to a decrease in biological diversity / publication in ‘Science Advances’

Museum Koenig & University of Bonn

Whether nectar-sucking butterflies or blood-sucking mosquitoes – the ingestion of liquid food has long been known for many insects and other arthropods. A research team from Germany and Switzerland, led by the LIB and the University of Bonn, now shows that millipedes also use a sucking pump to ingest liquid food. A sucking pump has thus evolved independently in different groups of organisms over several 100 million years. In the process, astonishingly similar biomechanical solutions for ingesting liquid food have evolved in widely distant animal groups. The study results have been published in the journal Science Advances.

Hermaphroditic species face a fundamental question: how much energy should they expend on their male and female sides? Flatworms have found various answers to this question over the course of evolution – and the solutions are directly correlated with their mating behavior.

Researchers have developed a new protocol for monitoring acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common cancer in children, to inform more effective treatment strategies and detect disease recurrence. The personalized mediator probe PCR (MP PCR) uses multiple genomic cancer cell markers in a single assay and is simpler than current techniques. It improves monitoring clonal tumor evolution to detect a relapse sooner and avoid false negative results.

The evolution of aging is a particularly exciting field in theoretical evolutionary research. Scientists are trying to figure out why and when the phenomenon of aging developed over the course of evolution. Mathematical models can help to develop theories for a better understanding of aging. At the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, intensive research has also been carried out in this area in recent years in the Department of Evolutionary Theory.