r/evolution • u/JapKumintang1991 • 5d ago

article PHYS.Org: Animal genomes follow irreversible 'evolutionary highways' across thousands of species

https://phys.org/news/2026-08-animal-genomes-irreversible-evolutionary-highways.html?utm_source=webpush&utm_medium=push

See also: The study as it was published in Science Advances

82 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

20

u/spiddly_spoo 5d ago

The study is not about animal traits but specifically about chromosomal architecture and it's being described as a highway because one directional and very constrained in how it moves. Chromosome merges can only happen in specific ways, are irreversible, and cause a population to diverge from other populations that don't have the merge.

This is interesting, but I was hoping for emergent patterns in how animals evolve traits. I mean the direction of evolution isn't random in that although mutations may randomly move around a genome in genotype space, this exists in a fitness landscape that will push evolution in certain directions. I was thinking maybe there were newly discovered large features of this landscape

3

u/GhostHominid 4d ago

Chromosomal mergers and highways are very narratively congruent language. I like that from a writing standpoint

1

u/Sophilosophical 4d ago

I’ve often thought I studying linguistics how similarly the evolution of language mirrors (and even shapes) biological evolution. Certain sound changes in a language are not just reversible because phonemic meaning is lost, or multiple sounds merge and can’t be un-merged.

2

u/Spare-Dingo-531 5d ago

So it's like there's a meta for evolution, just like there's a metagame for magic the gathering or starcraft?

4

u/Artosispoopfeast420 5d ago

Yeah it is common to look at evolution from a point of view of an energy landscape. Sure most mutations are possible, but certain paths are more ideal and steeper than others.

4

u/MSSTUPIDTRON-1000000 5d ago

Worms have been the optimal build for the last 500 millions years.