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The somatic musculature in trematode hermaphroditic generation (cercariae, metacercariae and adult) is presumed to comprise uniform layers of circular, longitudinal and diagonal muscle fibers of the body wall,...
β-defensins and cathelicidins are two families of cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with a broad range of antimicrobial activities that are key components of the innate immune system. Due to their importa...
Determining reliable evolutionary rates of molecular markers is essential in illustrating historical episodes with phylogenetic inferences. Although emerging evidence has suggested a high evolutionary rate for...
Tradeoffs among competing traits are believed to be crucial to the maintenance of diversity in complex communities. The production of antibiotics to inhibit competitors and resistance to antibiotic inhibition ...
The development of multicellular organisms is accompanied by gene expression changes in differentiating cells. Profiling stage-specific expression during development may reveal important insights into gene set...
A fundamental and enduring problem in evolutionary biology is to understand how populations differentiate in the wild, yet little is known about what role organismal development plays in this process. Organism...
The rice genus (Oryza) contains many wild genetic resources that are vital to the well-being of humans. However, little is known about the process by which the genus diversified or the factors that drove its spec...
Reproductive skew, the uneven distribution of reproductive success among individuals, is a common feature of many animal populations. Several scenarios have been proposed to favour either high or low levels of...
Bacterial cells have a remarkable ability to adapt to environmental changes, a phenomenon known as adaptive evolution. During adaptive evolution, phenotype and genotype dynamically changes; however, the relati...
The Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK signaling pathway is involved in essential cell processes and it is abnormally activated in ~30 % of cancers and cognitive disorders. Two ERK isoforms have been described, ERK1 and ERK2; ER...
Acariformes is the most species-rich and morphologically diverse radiation of chelicerate arthropods, known from the oldest terrestrial ecosystems. It is also a key lineage in understanding the evolution of th...
In the short-term, organisms acclimate to stress through phenotypic plasticity, but in the longer term they adapt to stress genetically. The mutations that accrue during adaptation may contribute to completely...
Eurypterids are a diverse group of chelicerates known from ~250 species with a sparse Ordovician record currently comprising 11 species; the oldest fully documented example is from the Sandbian of Avalonia. Th...
Insects rely more on chemical signals (semiochemicals) than on any other sensory modality to find, identify, and choose mates. In most insects, pheromone production is typically regulated through biosynthetic ...
Meiotic recombination rate has long been known to be phenotypically plastic. How plastic recombination evolves and is maintained remains controversial; though a leading model for the evolution of plastic recom...
The Marburg virus (MARV) has a negative-sense single-stranded RNA genome, belongs to the family Filoviridae, and is responsible for several outbreaks of highly fatal hemorrhagic fever. Codon usage patterns of vir...
Oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) is the primary source of ATP in eukaryotes and serves as a mechanistic link between variation in genotypes and energetic phenotypes. While several physiological and anatomica...
Much debate has focused on how transitions in life history have influenced the proliferation of some clades. Rodents of the subfamily Sigmodontinae (family Cricetidae) comprise one of the most diverse clades o...
For conservation of highly threatened species to be effective, it is crucial to differentiate natural population parameters from atypical behavioural, ecological and demographic characteristics associated with...
The mechanistic basis of speciation and in particular the contribution of behaviour to the completion of the speciation process is often contentious. Contact zones between related taxa provide a situation wher...
Colour polymorphisms are a fascinating facet of many natural populations of plants and animals, and the selective processes that maintain such variation are as relevant as the processes which promote their dev...
Butterflies of the subtribe Mycalesina have radiated successfully in almost all habitat types in Africa, Madagascar, the Indian subcontinent, Indo-China and Australasia. Studies aimed at understanding the reas...
Despite their abundance, unspliced EST data have received little attention as a source of information on non-coding RNAs. Very little is know, therefore, about the genomic distribution of unspliced non-coding ...
Pathogens evolve in a close antagonistic relationship with their hosts. The conventional theory proposes that evolution of virulence is highly dependent on the efficiency of direct host-to-host transmission. M...
Life history traits like developmental time, age and size at maturity are directly related to fitness in all organisms and play a major role in adaptive evolution and speciation processes. Comparative genomic ...
The introduction of foreign DNA by Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT) can quickly and drastically alter genome composition. Problems can arise if the genes introduced by LGT use codons that are not suited to the host...
Mammal vocal parameters such as fundamental frequency (or pitch; f o ) and formant dispersion often provide information about quality traits of th...
Squaliform sharks represent approximately 27 % of extant shark diversity, comprising more than 130 species with a predominantly deep-dwelling lifestyle. Many Squaliform species are highly specialized, includin...
The historical orogenesis and associated climatic changes of mountain areas have been suggested to partly account for the occurrence of high levels of biodiversity and endemism. However, their effects on dispe...
Populations and subspecies of the house mouse Mus musculus were able to invade new regions worldwide in the wake of human expansion. Here we investigate the origin and colonization history of the house mouse inha...
The Related Article to this article has been published in Scientific Data 2016 3:160075
Individuals rarely grow as fast as their physiologies permit despite the fitness advantages of being large. One reason may be that rapid growth is costly, resulting for example in somatic damage. The chromosom...
The populations of Soldanella (Primulaceae) of the southern Apennines (Italy) are unique within the genus for their distribution and ecology. Their highly fragmented distribution range, with three main metapopula...
Recent methodological advances allow better examination of speciation and extinction processes and patterns. A major open question is the origin of large discrepancies in species number between groups of the s...
Identifying the causes of intraspecific phenotypic variation is essential for understanding evolutionary processes that maintain diversity and promote speciation. In polymorphic species, the relative frequenci...
Hybridization between incipient species is expected to become progressively limited as their genetic divergence increases and reproductive isolation proceeds. Amphibian radiations and their secondary contact z...
Carassius auratus complex is an extraordinary species complex including the diploid and polyploid forms exhibiting asexual and sexual reproduction modes. The coexistence of both forms ...
Adaptive radiation theory posits that ecological opportunity promotes rapid proliferation of phylogenetic and ecological diversity. Given that adaptive radiation proceeds via occupation of available niche spac...
The Arabian Peninsula is home to a unique fauna that has assembled and evolved throughout the course of major geophysical events, including the separation of the Arabian Plate from Africa and subsequent collis...
Mollusca is an extremely diverse animal phylum that includes the aculiferans (worm-like aplacophorans and eight-shelled polyplacophorans) and their sister group, the conchiferans, comprising monoplacophorans, ...
The use of transcriptomic and genomic datasets for phylogenetic reconstruction has become increasingly common as researchers attempt to resolve recalcitrant nodes with increasing amounts of data. The large siz...
Ameloblastin (AMBN) is a phosphorylated, proline/glutamine-rich protein secreted during enamel formation. Previous studies have revealed that this enamel matrix protein was present early in vertebrate evolutio...
Several previous studies have shown that some morphologically distinctive, small genera of vascular plants that are endemic to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and adjacent Hengduan Mountains appear to have unexpec...
The subfamily Stevardiinae is a diverse and widely distributed clade of freshwater fishes from South and Central America, commonly known as “tetras” (Characidae). The group was named “clade A” when first propo...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2015 15:269
Among the understudied fungi found in nature are those living in close association with social and solitary bees. The bee-specialist genera Bettsia, Ascosphaera and Eremascus are remarkable not only for their spe...
Pleistocene climatic instability had profound and diverse effects on the distribution and abundance of Arctic organisms revealed by variation in phylogeographic patterns documented in extant Arctic populations...
Caribbean anole lizards (Dactyloidae) have frequently been used as models to study questions regarding biogeography and adaptive radiations, but the evolutionary history of Central American anoles (particularl...
The White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV) is an important pathogen that infects a variety of decapod species and causes a highly contagious disease in penaeid shrimps. Mass mortalities caused by WSSV have pronounce...
The European mink (Mustela lutreola, L. 1761) is a critically endangered mustelid, which inhabits several main river drainages in Europe. Here, we assess the genetic variation of existing populations of this spec...
Polyploidisation is one of the most important mechanisms in the evolution of angiosperms. As in many other genera, formation of polyploids has significantly contributed to diversification and radiation of Knautia
The involvement of MADS-box genes of the AGAMOUS lineage in the formation of both flowers and fruits has been studied in detail in Angiosperms. AGAMOUS genes are expressed also in the reproductive structures of G...
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