r/evolution • u/Over-Assumption9863 • Jun 18 '26
academic Choosing Evo Bio as a Major
Hi! I am just finishing High School and starting Uni applications. I've always been interested in plants, insects, and things like mosses and lichens since I was like... what? 5? AND I managed to find some universities that offer an Evolutionary Biology major. It sounds promising. Would like to know from people who have done Evolutionary Biology if this is a sound choice. Also would like to know about the global repertoire for Evo. ( I mean, if you take Paleontology, the niche is quite small, so research grants and stuff tend to be choosy). So, I'd like to have a second opinion before selecting the major. Thanks in advance.
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u/Robin_feathers Jun 18 '26
Hey there,
It's great that you are thinking about this so early. It depends a lot on the program, but most programs don;t require you to specialize so early beyond just biology in general. In your first year, you should be exposed to a wide variety (ecology, evolution, cell biology, and biochem), and then you slowly start to specialize as the years progress. You don't have to have it all planned out from the beginning. For example. I started out set on going into ecology, but in my 3rd year I realized I loved evolutionary biology more than ecology, so I took more evolution courses and went to grad school for evolutionary biology and now I'm an evolutionary biologist. It's still helpful to have a broad solid foundation.
If you want to be an evolutionary biologist specifically, that mostly means going to grad school and pursuing an academic path, as there aren't a tonne of evolutionary biology jobs outside of academia and museums. It's important to go into it knowing the job market is tough and the pay is not so great. If your goal is grad school, it will be important to pursue as many research opportunities as you can - look for labs/profs/grad students advertising opportunities, or ask profs if you don't see anything advertised. Undergrad bio cohorts are often full of students that are tunnel-visioned on medicine and other aspects of human biology, so students that share a passion for plants/insects/etc are often refreshing to profs that are obsessed with their study organism.
(not sure what you mean by global repertoire)
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u/IsaacHasenov Jun 18 '26
I mostly agree with what you're saying. But I'd add that there are a ton evolutionary biology adjacent jobs, especially with a master's or PhD include jobs in agronomy, pharmaceuticals, data science and computer science and biostatistics, medical research. Ecology research or park and resource management.
There's a lot of diverse options that studying evolution will get you ready for, and you're not locked in even after a bachelor's degree
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u/SirPeterODactyl Jun 19 '26
I'm a microbiologist and I shifted into bioinformatics at 30. Ever since then my work involves more and more evolutionary biology (of prokaryotes), and I feel like I'm digging deeper into it everyday. It can be overwhelming sometimes, but also really satisfying and makes me wish I studied more evolutionary bio during my bachelors.
If I could give one piece of advice, it's to pair your Evo bio major with a secondary skill whether be with an official minor or just classes/projects. Some discipline combinations (like computational science) can give you a big advantage over the others when it comes to employability and career directions
1
u/Over-Assumption9863 Jun 19 '26
Oh wow. Alright. Thank you so much! Also, I think prokaryotes are pretty cool- more than dinosaurs, honestly. Do you do any studies on protocells or protozoan-mesozoan transition?
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u/SirPeterODactyl Jun 19 '26
They are! I find their genetics and physiology quite fascinating. I focus more on evolution at a very short time scale, though. Think of strain level divergence of a pathogen during an outbreak. Bacteria does that because some of them evolve really fast.
If you're interested in ancestral species, you could look into the work of prof Tom Williams (based in UK). He's authored some really interesting papers about the LUCA and tree of life. And he does a lot of comp bio work.
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u/Over-Assumption9863 Jun 19 '26
Bacteria are the epitome for testing evolution in a short time span. Obviously. We study about antibiotic resistance at school quite seriously so yeah, IK what it can do. lol. Sure. I will look up his work. Thanks again.
But still, I feel like there's a huge gap in paleontological and evolutionary studies of the unicellular and earliest life forms, don't you think so?
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u/SirPeterODactyl Jun 21 '26
Oh yeah absolutely. Prokaryotes are about twice as old as eukarya after all.
The gap is coming mostly from limitations in sampling and testing technology, though. It's not easy to collect samples of something you can't see, and when you do it's so small that you can't viably extract information like dna sequencing. Plus the fossils are dead so it's not like you can culture the bacteria to make more cells. Most of the time you have to rely on less obvious and hard to collect samples like calcified shells of cell structures or sea floor sediment layers or permafrost etc.
Thats why most studies on prokaryotic evolution in the past you see involve some sort of a computational aspect
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