Shared meanings create institutions with real power. They also enable us to construct personal narratives that give our lives ...

Flowers emit scented chemicals to attract pollinators, but this perfume — and how pollinators interact with the plant — can go through profound changes as a crop ...

Microbes that hitched a ride into orbit are not just surviving in space, they are changing in ways that give them startling ...

An ecosystem is a web of interactions between many different organisms, all adapted to live in harmony with each other — or sworn enemies constantly evolving and adapting to outwit the other. This ...

The trajectory of life on Earth has always been predicated by genetic evolution, but two scientists from the University of Maine argue that culture is now the main force shaping our lives. A new study ...

In a recent op-ed published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, SFI External Professor Michael Hochberg and co-author Paul Rainey explore whether deepening interdependence between ...

ORONO, Maine — Humans may be experiencing one of the most unusual evolutionary changes in our species’ history, and it may have little to do with DNA. A new study from the University of Maine suggests ...

The crude view of evolution is often stark: a struggle for life in the wilderness, dominated by the strong, the cunning, the fierce, or the exquisitely camouflaged. And yet, who thrives today? Dogs.

Figure 1. Fossilized nits of chewing lice, tightly affixed to feathers of an enantiornithine bird, entombed in mid-Cretaceous amber from northern Myanmar. (a) Isolated barbs and regularly arranged ...

It has been suggested that the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI). But there is disagreement about how to apply the ETI framework to our species, and ...