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Ever since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have studied sexual selection driving differences in appearance and behaviour between males and females. An unchallenged paradigm in such studies is that one sex (usu...
A frequent event in the evolution of prokaryotic genomes is homologous recombination, where a foreign DNA stretch replaces a genomic region similar in sequence. Recombination can affect the relative position o...
Raw second-generation (2G) lignocellulosic biomass materials have the potential for development into a sustainable and renewable source of energy. Poplar is regarded as a promising 2G material (P. davidiana Dode×...
Photosymbiotic associations between metazoan hosts and photosynthetic dinoflagellates are crucial to the trophic and structural integrity of many marine ecosystems, including coral reefs. Although extensive ef...
Sympatric sister species provide an opportunity to investigate the genetic mechanisms and evolutionary forces that maintain species boundaries. The persistence of morphologically and genetically distinct popul...
Distichodus is a clade of tropical freshwater fishes currently comprising 25 named species distributed continent-wide throughout the Nilo-Sudan and most Sub-Saharan drainages. This study investigates the phylogen...
Many organisms are responding to climate change with dramatic range shifts, involving plastic and genetic changes to cope with novel climate regimes found at higher latitudes. Using experimental lineages of th...
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 ...
Copepods are key components of aquatic ecosystems and can help regulate the global carbon cycle. Much attention has been paid to the species diversity of copepods worldwide, but the phylogeography and genetic ...
The Mexican hand tree or Canac (Chiranthodendron pentadactylon) is a temperate tree species of cloud and pine-oak forests of southern Mexico and Guatemala. Its characteristic hand-shaped flower is used in folk me...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:94
Parasites may mediate the success of biological invasions through their effect on host fitness and thus, on host population growth and stability. However, a release from the pressure of parasites is strongly r...
Olfactory receptors (ORs) are G protein-coupled receptors with a crucial role in odor detection. A typical mammalian genome harbors ~ 1000 OR genes and pseudogenes; however, different gene duplication/deletion...
Advances in next-generation sequencing technologies have reduced the cost of whole transcriptome analyses, allowing characterization of non-model species at unprecedented levels. The rapid pace of transcriptom...
Evolutionary transitions in temporal niche necessitates specialized morphology, physiology, and behaviors. Diurnal, heliothermic squamates (lizards and snakes) that bask require protection from ultraviolet rad...
Chromosomal rearrangements are thought to be an important driving force underlying lineage diversification, but their link to speciation continues to be debated. Antarctic teleost fish of the family Notothenii...
Most cinquefoils (Potentilla L., Rosaceae) are polyploids, ranging from tetraploid (4x) to dodecaploid (12x), diploids being a rare exception. Previous studies based on ribosomal and chloroplast data indicated th...
Various ecological groups of earthworms very likely constitute sharply isolated niches that might permit speciation of their symbiotic ciliates, even though no distinct morphological features appear to be reco...
The family Aegisthidae is known as typical component of deep-sea hyperbenthic waters that gradually colonized other marine environments. The phylogenetic relationships within this family have been examined her...
Differing evolutionary interests of males and females may result in sexual conflict, whereby traits or behaviours that are beneficial for male reproductive success (e.g., traits related to male-male competitio...
Understanding adaptation involves establishing connections between selective agents and beneficial population responses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to seasonal adaptation, in part, beca...
Human chromosome 19 has many unique characteristics including gene density more than double the genome-wide average and 20 large tandemly clustered gene families. It also has the highest GC content of any chro...
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...
In recent years, Ecuador and other South American countries have experienced an increase in arboviral diseases. A rise in dengue infections was followed by introductions of chikungunya and Zika, two viruses ne...
Modularity is important for evolutionary innovation. The recombination of existing units to form larger complexes with new functionalities spares the need to create novel elements from scratch. In proteins, th...
Crocidura, the most speciose mammalian genus, occurs across much of Asia, Europe and Africa. The taxonomy of Chinese representatives has been studied primarily based on cursory morphological comparisons and their...
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...
Recent human transcriptomic analyses revealed a very large number of testis-enriched genes, many of which are involved in spermatogenesis. This comprehensive transcriptomic data lead us to the question whether...
Climatic variation and geologic change both play significant roles in shaping species distributions, thus affecting their evolutionary history. In Sahara-Sahel, climatic oscillations shifted the desert extent ...
Taste is fundamental to diet selection in vertebrates. Genetic basis of sweet taste receptor in the shaping of food habits has been extensively studied in mammals and birds, but scarcely studied in fishes. Gra...
Understanding the origins of genome content has long been a goal of molecular evolution and comparative genomics. By examining genome evolution through the guise of lineage-specific evolution, it is possible t...
The flat periwinkles, Littorina fabalis and L. obtusata, are two sister species widely distributed throughout the Northern Atlantic shores with high potential to inform us about the process of ecological speciati...
Polyplacophora, or chitons, have long fascinated malacologists for their distinct and rather conserved morphology and lifestyle compared to other mollusk classes. However, key aspects of their phylogeny and ev...
The hybridizing field crickets, Gryllus firmus and Gryllus pennsylvanicus have several barriers that prevent gene flow between species. The behavioral pre-zygotic mating barrier, where males court conspecifics mo...
Understanding the forces that maintain diversity across a range of scales is at the very heart of biology. Frequency-dependent processes are generally recognized as the most central process for the maintenance...
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...
The disposable soma theory of ageing assumes that organisms optimally trade-off limited resources between reproduction and longevity to maximize fitness. Early reproduction should especially trade-off against ...
Drosophila subobscura exhibits a rich inversion polymorphism, with some adaptive inversions showing repeatable spatiotemporal patterns in frequencies related to temperature. Previous studies reported increased ba...
The need for enhancing the productivity of fisheries in Africa triggered the introduction of non-native fish, causing dramatic changes to local species. In East Africa, the extensive translocation of Nile tila...
The current Brazilian population is the product of centuries of admixture between intercontinental founding groups. Although previous results have revealed a heterogeneous distribution of mitochondrial lineage...
The piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that specifically repress transposable elements (TEs) in the germline of Drosophila. Despite our expanding understanding of TE:piRNA interaction, wheth...
The theory of trade-off suggests that limited resources should lead to trade-off in resource intensive traits such as, immunity related and sexually selected traits in males. Alternatively, sexual exaggeration...
The immense geologic and ecological complexity of the Caribbean has created a natural laboratory for interpreting when and how organisms disperse through time and space. However, competing hypotheses compounde...
The CO2-concentrating mechanism associated to Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) alters the catalytic context for Rubisco by increasing CO2 availability and provides an advantage in particular ecological conditio...
Gymnosperms represent five of the six lineages of seed plants. However, most sequenced plant mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) have been generated for angiosperms, whereas mitogenomic sequences have been gen...
The relative influence of diet and phylogeny on snake venom activity is a poorly understood aspect of snake venom evolution. We measured the activity of two enzyme toxin groups – phospholipase A2 (PLA2), and L-am...
Red Queen dynamics are defined as long term co-evolutionary dynamics, often with oscillations of genotype abundances driven by fluctuating selection in host-parasite systems. Much of our current understanding ...
A key question in plant dispersal via animal vectors is where and why fruit colors vary between species and how color relates to other fruit traits. To better understand the factors shaping the evolution of fr...
Understanding the genomic basis of phenotypic diversity can be greatly facilitated by examining adaptive radiations with hypervariable traits. In this study, we focus on a rapidly diverged species group of mor...
Ecological speciation is a prominent mechanism of diversification but in many evolutionary radiations, particularly in invertebrates, it remains unclear whether supposedly critical ecological traits drove or f...
Early Cambrian Lagerstätten from China have greatly enriched our perspective on the early evolution of animals, particularly arthropods. However, recent studies have shown that many of these early fossil arthr...
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