How do ship upgrades unlocked via research get applied?

Hi, new player to the franchise, starting with Sins 2. In other 4X games, when you unlock a new piece of research, you usually have to upgrade your ships, buildings, etc, either by paying to upgrade them and/or queuing them for upgrade. However, I haven't found anything like this in Sins 2. Do you have to upgrade ships one the new technologies have been researched, or are they automatically upgraded? It's hard for me to tell just from looking at the ship details. Thanks.