Ecology & Evolution Journal
INTRODUCTION
Stay tuned.
Resources
- “The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution: Exploring Deep Origins, Emergent Life, and the Foundations of Complex Biological Systems.” OSF, https://osf.io/ur79d/. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/UR79D
- "The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution", Volume 1, Issue 1, Resurgentes Ab Inferis (2025). OSF, https://osf.io/69whf/. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/69WHF
- "The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution", Volume 1, Issue 2, Scientia Ex Systemis Naturae (2025). OSF, https://osf.io/ywb2t/. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/YWB2T
Issue one
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Thermal, UV, and Impact Constraints on Pre-cambrian Terrestrial Evolution: The Impossibility of Complex Multicellular Life on Land Before 600 MYA”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 25, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15739885. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley, M. “Compiled Chemistry: Structural Inheritance and the Deep Origins of Biological Function”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 23, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15717955. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “The Multiple Multicellular Prototype Framework: Silica-based Biomineralization and Early Eukaryotic Diversification”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 9, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15622349 (PDF)
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “A Recursive Strategy for Deep Homology Discovery in Genetic Sequence Alignment”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 10, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15628144 (PDF)
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Decolonizing the Sciences: A Critique of the Colonial Foundations of Western Scientific Authority”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution 1, no. 1 (July 23, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16202629. (PDF_English) (PDF_Spanish) (PDF_French) (PDF_Arabic).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Oopsacas Minuta, an Amoebozoan Animal: Genetic Evidence Supports a Case of Multicellular Evolution from Amoebozoan Ancestry”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (July 6, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15815730. (PDF - English) (PDF - French).
- Gjøvik, Ashley, M. “Molecular Characterization of Trichophyton Schoenleinii Reveals Systematic Affinities with Ancient Eukaryotic Lineages”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 22, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15717921. (PDF - English) (PDF - Chinese).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “High-confidence Genetic Alignment Between Sphaerobolus (the "cannonball" Fungi) & Turritopsis (the "immortal Jellyfish")”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 11, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15639701. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Extensive Human/siphonophore Genetic Sequence Overlap: A Brief Communication”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 4, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15596204 (PDF)
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “The Pseudocolus Stinkhorn and the Survival of Ediacaran Architecture: A Genomic & Structural Reassessment of a Misclassified Proto-animal”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 16, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15675088 (PDF - English). (PDF - Japanese). (PDF - Chinese).
- Gjøvik, Ashley, M. “Coral Mushrooms and Mushroom Corals Are the Same Organisms: Genetic Confirmation of Close Relationship Between Fungiidae Coral and "coral" Basidiomycota Fungi”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 20, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15707211 (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Deep Time Geology in Santa Clara County: Evidence for Two Billion Years of Active Continental Margin Processes”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (July 15, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15892989. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “The Lost Hydrothermal Crystals of Santa Clara County: A Structural and Archival Study of Six Rare Minerals from a Single Geologic Province”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 1 (June 9, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15626525 (PDF)
FROM THE EDITOR
This journal was born the moment I saw a long "fungal" DNA sequence return a near-perfect match to an deep sea amoeba. Not a weak match. Not an error. A confident, high-identity, statistically undeniable match between a terrestrial "mushroom" and a marine, soft-bodied, metazoan, non-fungal organism.
Since then, I’ve been following the threads: across domain boundaries, geological fault lines, corporate coverups, and evolutionary riddles. The questions I’ve uncovered are both obvious and unspeakable: What happens when the crust brings ancient life back to the surface? What if some of it never left? What if the next evolutionary event isn't a mutation, but an unsealing and acknowledgement of what's already around us?
This journal exists because traditional science has no category for these ideas. It is a publication for those asking dangerous questions that live at the fault lines of biology, geology, quantum mechanism, and deep time. It’s for the fungal phylogenies that were not supposed to exist, the uplifted vent ecosystems beneath strip malls, the microbial diseases no one can explain, and the animals we were certain could never be here on land with us.
You’re holding the first issue of The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution. I don’t expect you to believe everything in these page. In fact, I hope you do not, and instead you do your own research and publish it. If your research presents similar ideas and you cannot find a space to have those ideas published, you know where to find me and this journal.
— Ashley Gjovik, JD, PMP, Editor-in-Chief
This journal was born the moment I saw a long "fungal" DNA sequence return a near-perfect match to an deep sea amoeba. Not a weak match. Not an error. A confident, high-identity, statistically undeniable match between a terrestrial "mushroom" and a marine, soft-bodied, metazoan, non-fungal organism.
Since then, I’ve been following the threads: across domain boundaries, geological fault lines, corporate coverups, and evolutionary riddles. The questions I’ve uncovered are both obvious and unspeakable: What happens when the crust brings ancient life back to the surface? What if some of it never left? What if the next evolutionary event isn't a mutation, but an unsealing and acknowledgement of what's already around us?
This journal exists because traditional science has no category for these ideas. It is a publication for those asking dangerous questions that live at the fault lines of biology, geology, quantum mechanism, and deep time. It’s for the fungal phylogenies that were not supposed to exist, the uplifted vent ecosystems beneath strip malls, the microbial diseases no one can explain, and the animals we were certain could never be here on land with us.
You’re holding the first issue of The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution. I don’t expect you to believe everything in these page. In fact, I hope you do not, and instead you do your own research and publish it. If your research presents similar ideas and you cannot find a space to have those ideas published, you know where to find me and this journal.
— Ashley Gjovik, JD, PMP, Editor-in-Chief
Issue Two
- Gjøvik, Ashley, M. “Quantum-active Genomic Architecture: Personal Genome Analysis Reveals Coordinated Quantum-genomic Networks”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 2 (June 26, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15750523. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley, M. “First Principles for Quantum Mechanics: Open Sourcing the Universe's Operating System”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution 1, no. 2 (June 27, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15751689. (PDF).
- Gjøvik, Ashley M. “Genomic Evidence of Human/cnidarian Neural Integration: Systematic Conservation of Jellyfish Neural Networks Across All Known Homo Lineages”. The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution 1, no. 2 (July 27, 2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16471873. (PDF_English)
Issue Two is in progress.
The Journal of Decolonized Ecology and Evolution
The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution is a cross-disciplinary platform for research at the intersection of deep-time biology, ecological persistence, and evolutionary theory. It was founded to investigate a possibility science has largely ignored: that ancient marine organisms and biospheres survived the transition to land and continue to shape the surface world in ways we do not yet fully understand.
The original spark for the editor and author was a biological "discovery" under her own microscope. She sought to understand her observations with existing literature and theories, and then realized there was no existing explanation. She then took a systems engineering and failure analysis approach to modern biological consensus, starting with the theories that were directly challenged by what she observed. She then worked to 'debug' modern scientific consensus and evaluate where the failures were originating, and how to mitigate and resolve those gaps and issues. These publications document those findings and a suggested path forward, admittedly from an outsider without any vested interest in modern consensus.
This journal brings together work from molecular biology, marine sciences, mycology and protistology, systems ecology, emergence and complexity, quantum mechanics, engineering, palaeoarchaeology, hydrology and geological sciences, the humanities, and beyond; to explore questions that resist categorization.
Whether the subject is an ancient fungal lineage with protist genomic signatures, a city built atop a vent-formed seafloor, or an ancient deep-sea amoeba rediscovered alive and well in a ditch behind a coastal strip mall, this journal seeks to document, investigate, and honor the tangled, preserved, resurrected ancestry of life and to hold accountable the systems that keep trying to bury it again.
-Ashley
The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution is a cross-disciplinary platform for research at the intersection of deep-time biology, ecological persistence, and evolutionary theory. It was founded to investigate a possibility science has largely ignored: that ancient marine organisms and biospheres survived the transition to land and continue to shape the surface world in ways we do not yet fully understand.
The original spark for the editor and author was a biological "discovery" under her own microscope. She sought to understand her observations with existing literature and theories, and then realized there was no existing explanation. She then took a systems engineering and failure analysis approach to modern biological consensus, starting with the theories that were directly challenged by what she observed. She then worked to 'debug' modern scientific consensus and evaluate where the failures were originating, and how to mitigate and resolve those gaps and issues. These publications document those findings and a suggested path forward, admittedly from an outsider without any vested interest in modern consensus.
This journal brings together work from molecular biology, marine sciences, mycology and protistology, systems ecology, emergence and complexity, quantum mechanics, engineering, palaeoarchaeology, hydrology and geological sciences, the humanities, and beyond; to explore questions that resist categorization.
- What forms of life originated in the ocean but successfully made it to land?
- What forms of life are still alive but buried beneath our coastal cities?
- How may ancient marine organisms and the emergence of complex life explain today's biological mysteries?
- Could consciousness be explained through a proper understanding of evolutionary process and marine origins?
- Could quantum mechanics explain modern biological mysteries related to complexity and networks?
- How might tectonic processes like uplift, obduction, or subduction contribute to biological preservation and emergence?
- What if biological theories require multiple lines of evidence, including ecological and evolutionary consideration?
- What if new theories could be accepted based on first principles and multiple lines of evidence, without requiring harmony with "consensus"?
- I created this journal because these are the kinds of questions that don’t have a home in conventional science. They're too interdisciplinary, too complex, too biologically speculative, too politically inconvenient. But they are essential questions. Answering them demands a platform willing to bridge data and danger, theory and nature, what we actually see in front of us and what we think we know.
Whether the subject is an ancient fungal lineage with protist genomic signatures, a city built atop a vent-formed seafloor, or an ancient deep-sea amoeba rediscovered alive and well in a ditch behind a coastal strip mall, this journal seeks to document, investigate, and honor the tangled, preserved, resurrected ancestry of life and to hold accountable the systems that keep trying to bury it again.
-Ashley
About the Founder & Editor
Ashley Gjovik, JD, PMP is an independent investigator, evolutionary theorist, and founder of The Journal of Decolonized Ecology & Evolution. Ashley’s work is deeply rooted in Santa Clara County, California; one of the most geologically active and historically overlooked regions in the world. Through her earlier and ongoing series The People’s History of Silicon Valley, she documented the region’s brutal colonial past, Indigenous resistance, covert militarization, and environmental collapse. Her investigations into the area’s hidden contamination zones, suppressed histories, and biological risks have become part of a broader, place-based reckoning with Silicon Valley’s past and future.
Ashley has held senior roles in the tech and academic sectors (including at Apple, Nike, and Northeastern University) where she led global programs involving systems engineering, complex risk, process architecture, and organizational design.
She holds a Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University, where she specialized in human rights, environmental, and public health law. Her earlier scientific training includes evolutionary ecology, biogeography, complexity theory, and bioinformatics and she now draws from all of these fields to explore how ancient biospheres interact with modern infrastructure and institutions.
Ashley’s earliest scientific work was tactile and direct: as a science educator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, she cared for exotic animals, organized fossil records, and taught evolutionary biology to thousands of visitors. She later served as an assistant veterinary technician at a clinic specializing in exotic animals and assisting in surgeries and animal advocacy. She also volunteered on medical welfare teams supporting unhoused community members and their pets.
These experiences shaped her understanding of life as something that persists, adapts, and reappears in unexpected places. These early, tactile experiences gave her a lasting appreciation for biology not just as a theory, but as something lived: delicate, ancient, and constantly surprising.
As a whistleblower, Ashley also became known for exposing toxic environmental conditions caused by Apple: including secretive operations at a manufacturing plant and over a Superfund site. Her case drew international attention to corporate suppression, government failure, and systemic disregard for biosafety. That experience continues to inform her work on accountability, deep risk, systemic failure modes, and the invisible inheritance of industrial activity.
As editor, Ashley brings scientific rigor, a deep moral clarity, infectious curiosity, and a lived sense of biological entanglement to the journal.
Ashley has held senior roles in the tech and academic sectors (including at Apple, Nike, and Northeastern University) where she led global programs involving systems engineering, complex risk, process architecture, and organizational design.
She holds a Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University, where she specialized in human rights, environmental, and public health law. Her earlier scientific training includes evolutionary ecology, biogeography, complexity theory, and bioinformatics and she now draws from all of these fields to explore how ancient biospheres interact with modern infrastructure and institutions.
Ashley’s earliest scientific work was tactile and direct: as a science educator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, she cared for exotic animals, organized fossil records, and taught evolutionary biology to thousands of visitors. She later served as an assistant veterinary technician at a clinic specializing in exotic animals and assisting in surgeries and animal advocacy. She also volunteered on medical welfare teams supporting unhoused community members and their pets.
These experiences shaped her understanding of life as something that persists, adapts, and reappears in unexpected places. These early, tactile experiences gave her a lasting appreciation for biology not just as a theory, but as something lived: delicate, ancient, and constantly surprising.
As a whistleblower, Ashley also became known for exposing toxic environmental conditions caused by Apple: including secretive operations at a manufacturing plant and over a Superfund site. Her case drew international attention to corporate suppression, government failure, and systemic disregard for biosafety. That experience continues to inform her work on accountability, deep risk, systemic failure modes, and the invisible inheritance of industrial activity.
As editor, Ashley brings scientific rigor, a deep moral clarity, infectious curiosity, and a lived sense of biological entanglement to the journal.