Between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago, earthly life was in the doldrums. During this period, called the "boring ...

How does multicellularity evolve? Scientists who study a family of green algae that includes unicellular Chlamydomonas and multicellular Volvox are beginning to find answers to this question.

Chromosphaera perkinsii, a billion-year-old species, may reveal multicellularity’s origins, predating the chicken and egg.

Shown are representatives of all major lineages of eukaryotic organisms, color coded for occurrence of multicellularity. Solid black circles indicate major lineages composed entirely of ...

The "boring billion" shaped multicellularity, with energy demands sparking complexity. This era shows evolution's cost.

Multicellularity is key to eukaryotes acquiring organismal complexity and large size, and is often regarded as a major transition in the history of life on Earth. However, scientists have been ...

"Kirk also describes comparative analyses suggesting explanations for the function of multicellularity that can be tested experimentally. This breadth of treatment raises Kirk's book from a technical ...

Indeed, some prokaryotes have achieved versions of multicellularity—for example, some photosynthetic cyanobacteria partition labor into two cell types, where one cell type carries out ...

Complex multicellularity evolved independently in various eukaryotic lineages, including animals, plants, fungi, and algae. This evolutionary leap of going from one to many requires organisms to ...

A cell of the ichthyosporean C. perkinsii showing distinct signs of polarity, with clear cortical localization of the nucleus ...

Caption Representative diverse origins of multicellularity are shown on a highly redacted and unrooted phylogenetic diagram of the major eukaryotic clades (modified from a variety of sources ...

My research interests are primarily in the evolution of land plants from their algal ancestors. This has expanded in recent years to include the fossil origins of plant development and the evolution ...