A major event in the evolution of organisms on earth was the development of complex, multicellular life forms made of eukaryotic cells, which are thought to have come from prokaryotic cells. Studies ...

Life’s leap from single-celled to multicellular organisms marks a pivotal moment in evolutionary history. This transformation laid the foundation for the complex life forms we see today. By studying ...

In fact, why and how multicellular life evolved has long puzzled biologists. The first known instance of multicellularity was about 2.5 billion years ago, when marine cells (cyanobacteria) hooked up ...

New studies by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology show that competition between different evolutionary developmental stages of multicellular life cycles can be important for the ...

Researchers have discovered a mechanism steering the evolution of multicellular life. They identified how altered protein folding drives multicellular evolution. Researchers have discovered a ...

A new study shows that multicelled organisms like the metazoan daphnia (pictured) require a tenfold increase in energy compared with protists for their growth, maintenance and survival. The high cost ...

On the one hand, it would mean that multicellular life takes on average (ha!) 1.5 billion years less to evolve than we previously thought it would. 1.5 billion years is a very respectable difference, ...

The world would look very different without multicellular organisms – take away the plants, animals, fungi, and seaweed, and Earth starts to look like a wetter, greener version of Mars. But precisely ...

Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. However, the emergence of new multicellular life forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state” that lies beyond the ...

Stentor coeruleus is a giant unicellular, filter-feeding protist that uses the coordinated motion of its oral ciliary structure to generate feeding currents. These currents allow the organism to ...