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The aquiferous system in sponges represents one of the simplest circulatory systems used by animals for the internal uptake and distribution of oxygen and metabolic substrates. Its modular organization enables...
Anthropomorphic activities have caused major damage to ecosystems worldwide. Although documenting this damage is important, implementing measures to halt and reverse ecosystem decline is critical and is now be...
Biodiversity is generally reduced when non-native species invade an ecosystem. Invasive crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, populate California freshwater streams, and in the Santa Monica Mountains (Los Angeles, USA),...
No phenotypic trait evolves independently of all other traits, but the cause of trait-trait coevolution is poorly understood. While the coevolution could arise simply from pleiotropic mutations that simultaneo...
Mitochondrial respiration plays a central role in the survival of many eukaryotes, including apicomplexan parasites. A 479-bp fragment from the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene is widely used as a barcode to id...
Dipsadine snakes represent one of the most spectacular vertebrate radiations that have occurred in any continental setting, with over 800 species in South and Central America. Their species richness is paralle...
Animals select and interact with their environment in various ways, including to ensure their physiology is at its optimal capacity, access to prey is possible, and predators can be avoided. Often conflicting,...
Plankton seascape genomics studies have revealed different trends from large-scale weak differentiation to microscale structures. Previous studies have underlined the influence of the environment and seascape ...
Intraspecific public goods are commonly shared within microbial populations, where the benefits of public goods are largely limited to closely related conspecifics. One example is the production of iron-scaven...
Neck elongation has appeared independently in several tetrapod groups, including giraffes and sauropod dinosaurs on land, birds and pterosaurs in the air, and sauropterygians (plesiosaurs and relatives) in the...
Dry evergreen montane forests of Ethiopia provide economic and ecological services for the community but it is under several threats of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. The study aimed to investigate th...
The widespread Indo-Pacific coral species Pocillopora acuta Lamarck, 1816 displays varying levels of asexual versus sexual reproduction, with strong repercussions on genetic diversity, connectivity and genetic st...
The Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, includes interfertile surface-dwelling and cave-dwelling morphs, enabling powerful studies aimed at uncovering genes involved in the evolution of cave-associated traits. Com...
Rodents form the largest order among mammals in terms of species diversity, and home range is the area where an individual normally moves during its normal daily activities. Information about rodent home range...
In spite of extensive research, cancer remains a major health problem worldwide. As cancer progresses, cells acquire traits that allow them to disperse and disseminate to distant locations in the body – a proc...
In 2023, researchers from around the world entered the BMC Ecology and Evolution photography competition. As a result, we received a spectacular collection of photographs that capture the wonder of nature, those ...
Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology betw...
Phylogeographical approaches explain the genetic diversity of local organisms in the context of their geological and geographic environments. Thus, genetic diversity can be a proxy for geological history. Here...
Fighting disease while fighting rivals exposes males to constraints and trade-offs during male-male competition. We here tested how both the stage and intensity of infection with the fungal pathogen Metarhizium r...
The unicellular ancestors of modern-day multicellular organisms were remarkably complex. They had an extensive set of regulatory and signalling genes, an intricate life cycle and could change their behaviour i...
To date, plastid genomes have been published for all but two holoparasitic angiosperm families. However, only a single or a few plastomes represent most of these families. Of the approximately 40 genera of hol...
The origins of all major living reptile clades, including the one leading to birds, lie in the Triassic. Following the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history at the end of the Permian, the earliest definit...
Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are globally distributed in tropical and subtropical seas. Their life history traits (slow growth, late maturity, low reproductive output) make them vulnerable to perturbations an...
Morphology and molecules are important data sources for estimating evolutionary relationships. Modern studies often utilise morphological and molecular partitions alongside each other in combined analyses. How...
The global food system is the predominant driver of biodiversity loss. Consequently, there is an increasing need to transition towards more sustainable and resilient agri-food systems to protect, restore and p...
The false codling moth (FCM), Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick, 1913), is a significant pest of various important economic crops and is a EU quarantine pest. In the last decade the pest has been reported on Rosa
Ictalurus is one of the most representative groups of North American freshwater fishes. Although this group has a well-studied fossil record and has been the subject of several morphological and molecular phyloge...
Climate affects the thermal adaptation and distribution of hosts, and drives the spread of Chytridiomycosis—a keratin-associated infectious disease of amphibians caused by the sister pathogens Batrachochytrium de...
The ‘wallflower’ hypothesis proposes females mate indiscriminately to avoid reproductive delays. Post-copulatory mechanisms may then allow ‘trading up’, favouring paternity of future mates. We tested links bet...
The major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which encodes molecules that recognize various pathogens and parasites and initiates the adaptive immune response in vertebrates, is renowned for its exceptional pol...
The original article was published in BMC Ecology and Evolution 2021 21:118
The original article was published in BMC Ecology and Evolution 2022 22:121
Selection pressure exerted by pathogens can influence patterns of genetic diversity in the host. In the immune system especially, numerous genes encode proteins involved in antagonistic interactions with patho...
Despite intensive research, cancer remains a major health problem. The difficulties in treating cancer reflect the complex nature of this disease, including high levels of heterogeneity within tumours. Intra-t...
Freshwater ecosystems, such as streams, are facing increasing pressures from agricultural land use and recent literature stresses the importance of robust biomonitoring to detect trends in insect decline globa...
Theory predicts that the level of escalation in animal contests is associated with the value of the contested resource. This fundamental prediction has been empirically confirmed by studies of dyadic contests ...
Phylliidae are herbivorous insects exhibiting impressive cryptic masquerade and are colloquially called “walking leaves”. They imitate angiosperm leaves and their eggs often resemble plant seeds structurally a...
Artificial habitats can allow many fish to flock together and interact and have been widely used to restore and protect fishery resources. The piece of research intends to elucidate the relationship of microbi...
The genus Amaranthus L. consists of 70–80 species distributed across temperate and tropical regions of the world. Nine species are dioecious and native to North America; two of which are agronomically important w...
Gene duplication is an important process for genome expansion, sometimes allowing for new gene functions to develop. Duplicate genes can be retained through multiple processes, either for intermediate periods ...
Plants have demonstrated tremendous resilience through past mass extinction events. However, anthropogenic pressures are rapidly threatening plant survival. To develop our understanding of the impact of enviro...
According to a longstanding paradigm, aquatic amniotes, including the Mesozoic marine reptile group Ichthyopterygia, give birth tail-first because head-first birth leads to increased asphyxiation risk of the f...
Kin and multilevel selection provide explanations for the existence of altruism based on traits or processes that enhance the inclusive fitness of an altruist individual. Kin selection is often based on indivi...
The shape of the semicircular canals of the inner ear of living squamate reptiles has been used to infer phylogenetic relationships, body size, and life habits. Often these inferences are made without controll...
Pesticides are identified as one of the major reasons for the global pollinator decline. However, the sublethal effects of pesticide residue levels found in pollen and nectar on pollinators have been studied l...
The original article was published in BMC Ecology and Evolution 2023 23:3
BLAST searches against the human genome showed that of the 93 keratin-associated proteins (KRTAPs) of Homo sapiens, 53 can be linked by sequence similarity to an H. sapiens metallothionein and 16 others can be li...
Sex ratios of animal populations are important factors of population demographics. In pond-breeding amphibians, the operational sex ratio (OSR) among the breeding population is usually male-biased. Also, in Eu...
Group II introns are common in the two endosymbiotic organelle genomes of the plant lineage. Chloroplasts harbor 22 positionally conserved group II introns whereas their occurrence in land plant (embryophyte) ...
Diatoms are present in all waters and are highly sensitive to pollution gradients. Therefore, they are ideal bioindicators for water quality assessment. Current indices used in these applications are based on ...
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