Diagrams (top) and electron microscope images (bottom) of chiton shells. From left to right: Aesthetes (green) are fount on all chitons, while shell eyes (blue) and eyespots (red) only evolved in a ...

You’d probably walk past a chiton without even seeing it. These creatures often look like nothing more than another speck of seaweed on the crusty intertidal rocks. But it sees you. At least, if it’s ...

Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and specializes in reporting on health, medicine, and genetics. Maddy has a degree in biochemistry from the University of York and ...

The visual systems of an obscure group of mollusks provide a rare natural example of path-dependent evolution, in which a critical fork in the creatures’ past determined their evolutionary futures.

This essay was launched by reading an almost unintelligible (to me) scientific paper about chiton eyes. Nevertheless, that paper led to others, and here I have summarized some of the related natural ...

Biologists have often wondered what would happen if they could rewind the tape of life’s history and let evolution play out all over again. Would lineages of organisms evolve in radically different ...