Section edited by David Ferrier
This section considers studies in the evolution of development and developmental processes, and into morphological evolution.
Section edited by David Ferrier
This section considers studies in the evolution of development and developmental processes, and into morphological evolution.
Page 1 of 5
Placentation has evolved multiple times among both chordates and invertebrates. Although they are structurally less complex, invertebrate placentae are much more diverse in their origin, development and positi...
Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2021 21:54
It has been proposed that recently duplicated genes are more likely to be redundant with one another compared to ancient paralogues. The evolutionary logic underpinning this idea is simple, as the assumption i...
Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2021 21:33
Ciliated protists, a huge assemblage of unicellular eukaryotes, are extremely diverse and play important ecological roles in most habitats where there is sufficient moisture for their survivals. Even though th...
Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2021 21:21
Strongyllodes variegatus (Fairmaire) is a major insect pest of oilseed rape in China. Despite its economic importance, the contribution of its population genetics in the development of any suitable protection con...
Citation: BMC Ecology and Evolution 2021 21:18
How vascular systems and their respiratory pigments evolved is still debated. While many animals present a vascular system, hemoglobin exists as a blood pigment only in a few groups (vertebrates, annelids, a f...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:165
Although Trapa is a well-defined genus of distinctive freshwater plants with accumulations of extensive morphological and embryological autapomorphies, its phylogenetic relationships have long been unclear. Forme...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:150
Leaves have highly diverse morphologies. However, with an evolutionary history of approximately 200 million years, leaves of the pine family are relatively monotonous and often collectively called “needles”, a...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:131
The primordial eye field of the vertebrate embryo is a single entity of retinal progenitor cells spanning the anterior neural plate before bifurcating to form bilateral optic vesicles. Here we review fate mapp...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:129
Nervous system development is an interplay of many processes: the formation of individual neurons, which depends on whole-body and local patterning processes, and the coordinated growth of neurites and synapse...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:117
In this study, we investigate species limits in the cyanobacterial lichen genus Rostania (Collemataceae, Peltigerales, Lecanoromycetes). Four molecular markers (mtSSU rDNA, β-tubulin, MCM7, RPB2) were sequenced a...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:115
Amber has been reported from the Early Cretaceous Crato Formation, as isolated clasts or within plant tissues. Undescribed cones of uncertain gymnosperm affinity have also been recovered with amber preserved i...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:107
Pseudogamy is a reproductive system in which females rely on the sperm of males to activate their oocytes, generally parasitizing males of other species, but do not use the sperm DNA. The nematode Mesorhabditis b...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:105
Adaptive radiations are characterized by extreme and/or iterative phenotypic divergence; however, such variation does not accumulate evenly across an organism. Instead, it is often partitioned into sub-units, ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:95
Hypotrichia are a group with the most complex morphology and morphogenesis within the ciliated protists. The classification of Gastrostyla-like species, a taxonomically difficult group of hypotrichs with a common...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:92
Diverse architectures of nervous systems (NSs) such as a plexus in cnidarians or a more centralized nervous system (CNS) in insects and vertebrates are present across Metazoa, but it is unclear what selection ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:84
Fangs are a putative key innovation that revolutionized prey capture and feeding in snakes, and – along with their associated venom phenotypes – have made snakes perhaps the most medically-significant vertebra...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:80
Metamorphosis remains one of the most complicated and poorly understood processes in insects. This is particularly so for the very dynamic transformations that take place within the pupal sheath of holometabol...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:79
Poecilogony, the presence of two developmental modes in the same animal species, is a rare phenomenon. Few cases of poecilogony have been suggested for marine invertebrates including molluscs and even less sto...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:76
The remarkable abilities of the human brain are distinctive features that set us apart from other animals. However, our understanding of how the brain has changed in the human lineage remains incomplete, but i...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:72
The diversification process known as the Lake Tanganyika Radiation has given rise to the most speciose clade of African cichlids. Almost all cichlid species found in the lakes Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria, ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:65
The Chengjiang biota is one of the most species-rich Cambrian Konservat-Lagerstätten, and preserves a community dominated by non-biomineralized euarthropods. However, several Chengjiang euarthropods have an un...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:62
Tooth morphology within theropod dinosaurs has been extensively investigated and shows high disparity throughout the Cretaceous. Changes or diversification in feeding ecology, i.e., adoption of an herbivorous ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:46
Evolutionary transitions in temporal niche necessitates specialized morphology, physiology, and behaviors. Diurnal, heliothermic squamates (lizards and snakes) that bask require protection from ultraviolet rad...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:40
Bird plumage exhibits a diversity of colors that serve functional roles ranging from signaling to camouflage and thermoregulation. However, birds must maintain a balance between evolving colorful signals to at...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:32
Temperature exerts a strong influence on protein evolution: species living in thermally distinct environments often exhibit adaptive differences in protein structure and function. However, previous research on...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:28
The evolution of the Jehol Biota of western Liaoning in China includes three phases, initiation in the Dabeigou phase, radiation in the Yixian phase, and decline in the Jiufotang phase. Numerous ephedroid macr...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:19
Chondrichthyans represent a monophyletic group of crown group gnathostomes and are central to our understanding of vertebrate evolution. Like all vertebrates, cartilaginous fishes evolved concretions of materi...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:238
Palaeognathae is a basal clade within Aves and include the large and flightless ratites and the smaller, volant tinamous. Although much research has been conducted on various aspects of palaeognath morphology,...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:233
Recently we proposed an evolutionary explanation for a spinal pathology that afflicts many people, intervertebral disc herniation (Plomp et al. [2015] BMC Evolutionary Biology 15, 68). Using 2D data, we found tha...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:226
Many pathologies that modify the shell geometry and ornamentation of ammonoids are known from the fossil record. Since they may reflect the developmental response of the organism to a perturbation (usually a s...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:210
Two previous studies on interspecific body size variation of anurans found that the key drivers of variation are the species’ lifestyles and the environments that they live in. To examine whether those finding...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:208
Parasite attachment structures are critical traits that influence effective host exploitation and survival. Morphology of attachment structures can reinforce host specificity and niche specialisation, or even ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:207
Tardigrada is a group of microscopic invertebrates distributed worldwide in permanent and temporal aquatic habitats. Famous for their extreme stress tolerance, tardigrades are also of interest due to their clo...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:206
Odontocetes (toothed whales) are the most species-rich marine mammal lineage. The catalyst for their evolutionary success is echolocation - a form of biological sonar that uses high-frequency sound, produced i...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:195
Hybridization has been widely practiced in plant and animal breeding as a means to enhance the quality and fitness of the organisms. In domestic equids, this hybrid vigor takes the form of improved physical an...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:188
Understanding the mechanisms promoting or constraining morphological diversification within clades is a central topic in evolutionary biology. Ecological transitions are of particular interest because of their...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:179
The annelid anterior central nervous system is often described to consist of a dorsal prostomial brain, consisting of several commissures and connected to the ventral ganglionic nerve cord via circumesophageal...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:173
Little is known about the long-term patterns of body size evolution in Crocodylomorpha, the > 200-million-year-old group that includes living crocodylians and their extinct relatives. Extant crocodylians are m...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:167
Cetaceans exhibit an exceptionally wide range of body size, yet in this regard, their genetic basis remains poorly explored. In this study, 20 body-size-related genes for which duplication, mutation, or defici...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:157
Most fatty acids (FAs) making up the adipose tissue in mammals have a dietary origin and suffer little modification when they are stored. However, we propose that some of those FAs, specifically those that can...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:155
Understanding how variation in gene expression contributes to morphological diversity is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Cichlid fishes from the East African Great lakes exhibit striking diversity in tro...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:150
Volvocine algae provide a suitable model for investigation of the evolution of multicellular organisms. Within this group, evolution of the body plan from flattened to spheroidal colonies is thought to have oc...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:120
The branchiostegal series consists of an alignment of bony elements in the posterior portion of the skull of osteichthyan vertebrates. We trace the evolution of the number of elements in a comprehensive survey...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:117
Male genitals have repeatedly evolved left-right asymmetries, and the causes of such evolution remain unclear. The Drosophila nannoptera group contains four species, among which three exhibit left-right asymmetri...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:109
Sparid fishes of the genus Diplodus show a complex life history. Juveniles have adaptations well suited to life in the water column. When fishes recruit into the adult population, individuals develop a radically ...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:106
The Psittaciformes (parrots and cockatoos) are characterised by their large beaks, and are renowned for their ability to produce high bite forces. These birds also possess a suite of modifications to their cra...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:104
Color and pattern phenotypes have clear implications for survival and reproduction in many species. However, the mechanisms that produce this coloration are still poorly characterized, especially at the genomi...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:85
Many species of snakes exhibit epidermal surface nanostructures that form complex motifs conferring self-cleaning properties, and sometimes structural iridescence, to their skin.
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:91
Self-powered flight is one of the most energy-intensive types of locomotion found in vertebrates. It is also associated with a range of extreme morpho-physiological adaptations that evolved independently in th...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:75
Variation in body size is thought to be a major driver of a wide variety of ecological and evolutionary patterns, including changes in development, reproduction, and longevity. Additionally, drastic changes in...
Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:74
For BMC Evolutionary Biology (former title)
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85 days to first decision for all manuscripts
214 days from submission to acceptance
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3.058 - 2-year Impact Factor
3.252 - 5-year Impact Factor
1.198 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)
1.531 - SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)
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