Throughout their evolutionary history, bacteria have faced diverse threats from other
microorganisms, including competing bacteria, bacteriophages and predators. In response …

How animals evolved from a single-celled ancestor, transitioning from a unicellular lifestyle
to a coordinated multicellular entity, remains a fascinating question. Key events in this …

Phenotypic plasticity–the ability of an individual organism to alter its features in direct
response to a change in its environment–is ubiquitous. Understanding how and why this …

In experimental evolution, laboratory-controlled conditions select for the adaptation of
species, which can be monitored in real time. Despite the current popularity of such …

Plant (archaeplastid) evolution has transformed the biosphere, but we are only now
beginning to learn how this took place through comparative genomics, phylogenetics, and …

Consortia of multicellular magnetotactic bacteria (MMB) are currently the only known
example of bacteria without a unicellular stage in their life cycle. Because of their …

Evolutionary transitions in individuality are central to the emergence of biological complexity.
Recent experiments provide glimpses of processes underpinning the transition from single …

Hyphae represent a hallmark structure of multicellular fungi. The evolutionary origins of
hyphae and of the underlying genes are, however, hardly known. By systematically …

Atmospheric oxygen is thought to have played a vital role in the evolution of large, complex
multicellular organisms. Challenging the prevailing theory, we show that the transition from …

Highlights•We survey ten key selective drivers favouring the evolution of simple
multicellularity.•The selective drivers of multicellularity depend on both lineage and …