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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...
Gene duplication provides raw material for the evolution of functional innovation. We recently developed a phylogenetic method that classifies evolutionary processes driving the retention of duplicate genes by...
Whether natural selection can erase the imprint of past evolutionary history from phenotypes has been a topic of much debate. A key source of evidence that present-day selection can override historically conti...
The arthropod ventral nerve cord features a comparably low number of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons, occurring in segmentally repeated arrays. In different crustaceans and hexapods, these neurons have been i...
A number of recent studies have shown that the pattern of mitochondrial DNA variation and evolution is at odds with a neutral equilibrium model. Theory has suggested that selection on mitonuclear genotypes can...
Leucomeris decora and Nouelia insignis (Asteraceae) are narrowly and allopatrically distributed species, separated by the important biogeographic boundary Tanaka Line in Southwest Chin...
Octopods have successfully colonised the world’s oceans from the tropics to the poles. Yet, successful persistence in these habitats has required adaptations of their advanced physiological apparatus to compen...
Identifying orthologous molecular markers that potentially resolve relationships at and below species level has been a major challenge in molecular phylogenetics over the past decade. Non-coding regions of nuc...
Hybridization between two species usually leads to inviable or infertile offspring, due to endogenous or exogenous selection pressures. Yet, hybrid taxa are found in several plant and animal genera, and some o...
Entoprocta (Kamptozoa) is an enigmatic, acoelomate, tentacle-bearing phylum with indirect development, either via a swimming- or a creeping-type larva and still debated phylogenetic position within Lophotrocho...
Long-distance dispersal events have the potential to shape species distributions and ecosystem diversity over large spatial scales, and to influence processes such as population persistence and the pace and sc...
Only a handful of signaling pathways are major actors of development and responsible for both the conservation and the diversification of animal morphologies. To explain this twofold nature, gene duplication a...
Peripatric speciation and peripheral isolation have uncertain importance in species accumulation, and are largely overshadowed by assumed dominance of allopatric modes of speciation. Understanding the role of ...
Sexual dimorphism in brain size is common among primates, including humans, apes and some Old World monkeys. In these species, the brain size of males is generally larger than that of females. Curiously, this ...
The classification of royal ferns (Osmundaceae) has long remained controversial. Recent molecular phylogenies indicate that Osmunda is paraphyletic and needs to be separated into Osmundastrum and Osmunda s.str. H...
Sympatric speciation is today generally viewed as plausible, and some well-supported examples exist, but its relative contribution to biodiversity remains to be established. We here quantify geographic overlap...
Hemostasis is a defense mechanism that enhances an organism’s survival by minimizing blood loss upon vascular injury. In vertebrates, hemostasis has been evolving with the cardio-vascular and hemodynamic syste...
Retraction is among the most important basic behaviors of anthozoan Cnidaria polyps and is achieved through the coordinated contraction of at least six different muscle groups. Across the Anthozoa, these muscl...
Large proliferations of cytochrome P450 encoding genes resulting from gene duplications can be termed as ‘blooms’, providing genetic material for the genesis and evolution of biosynthetic pathways. Furanocouma...
The aim of this research was to identify the effects of Pleistocene climate change on the distribution of fauna in Tasmania, and contrast this with biotic responses in other temperate regions in the Northern a...
Wild birds are the major reservoir hosts for influenza A viruses, occasionally transmitting to other species such as domesticated poultry. Despite an abundance of genomic data from avian influenza virus (AIV),...
It appears that substitution rate estimates co-vary very strongly with their timescale of measurement; the shorter the timescale, the higher the estimated value. Foamy viruses have a long history of co-speciat...
Cuticular specialisations such as joints and membranes play an important role in the function of arthropod limbs. This includes sclerotisations and mineral incrustations of cuticular areas to achieve either mo...
The genus Flaveria has been extensively used as a model to study the evolution of C4 photosynthesis as it contains C3 and C4 species as well as a number of species that exhibit intermediate types of photosynthesi...
Sexual ornamentation may be related to the degree of paternal care and the ‘good-parent’ model predicts that male secondary characters honestly advertise paternal investment. In most birds, males are involved ...
Substrate, ocean current and freshwater discharge are recognized as important factors that control the larval dispersal and recruitment of intertidal species. Life history traits of individual species will det...
The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress towards resolution of the Tree of Life. However, despite the increased use of genomic scale datasets, some phylogenetic relationships remain difficult to resol...
Host-parasite coevolution is predicted to result in changes in the virulence of the parasite in order to maximise its reproductive success and transmission potential, either via direct host-to-host transfer or...
The evolution of species boundaries and the relative impact of selection and gene flow on genomic divergence are best studied in populations and species pairs exhibiting various levels of divergence along the ...
Redox enzyme maturation proteins (REMPs) describe a diverse family of prokaryotic chaperones involved in the biogenesis of anaerobic complex iron sulfur molybdoenzyme (CISM) respiratory systems. Many REMP fami...
Antarctic notothenioids are an impressive adaptive radiation. While they share recent common ancestry with several species-depauperate lineages that exhibit a relictual distribution in areas peripheral to the ...
The doublesex gene controls somatic sexual differentiation of many metazoan species, including the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae and the dengue and yellow fever vector Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae). As ...
Current sequence-based approaches to identify enzyme functional shifts, such as enzyme promiscuity, have proven to be highly dependent on a priori functional knowledge, hampering our ability to reconstruct evolut...
During past glacial periods, many species of forest-dwelling animals experienced range contractions. In contrast, species living outside such moist habitats appear to have reacted to Quaternary changes in diff...
In parasitic taxa, life history traits such as microhabitat preference and host specificity can result in differential evolutionary responses to similar abiotic events. The present study investigates the influ...
The 361 species of hummingbirds that occur from Alaska to Patagonia pollinate ~7,000 plant species with flowers morphologically adapted to them. To better understand this asymmetric diversity build-up, this st...
Long term selection experiments bring unique insights on the genetic architecture of quantitative traits and their evolvability. Indeed, they are utilized to (i) monitor changes in allele frequencies and asses...
Genomes of Methanosarcina spp. are among the largest archaeal genomes. One suggested reason for that is massive horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria. Genes of bacterial origin may be involved in the centr...
Organisms living at high altitudes must overcome three major environmental challenges: hypoxia, cold, and intense UV radiation. The molecular mechanisms that enable these challenges to be overcome have mainly ...
Intraspecific variability is seen as a central component of biodiversity. We investigated genetic differentiation, contemporary patterns of demographic connectivity and intraspecific variation of adaptive beha...
The presence of intraspecific color polymorphism can have multiple impacts on the ecology of a species; as a consequence, particular color morphs may be strongly selected for in a given habitat type. For examp...
Sex determination mechanisms are known to be evolutionarily labile but the factors driving transitions in sex determination mechanisms are poorly understood. All insects of the Hymenoptera are haplodiploid, wi...
Yeasts belonging to the subphylum Saccharomycotina have been used for centuries in food processing and, more recently, biotechnology. Over the past few decades, these yeasts have also been studied in the inter...
Tribe Orchideae dominates the orchid flora of the temperate Northern Hemisphere but its representatives in East Asia had been subject to less intensive phylogenetic study than those in Eurasia and North Americ...
Aquatic vascular plants are a distinctive group, differing from terrestrial plants in their growth forms and habitats. Among the various aquatic plant life forms, the evolutionary processes of freshwater subme...
Phylogeographic research has advanced in South America, with increasing efforts on taxa from the dry diagonal biomes. However, the diversification of endemic fauna from the semiarid Caatinga biome in northeast...
Although males and females need one another in order to reproduce, they often have different reproductive interests, which can lead to conflict between the sexes. The intensity and frequency of male-male compe...
Quaternary climatic changes led to variations in sea level and these variations played a significant role in the generation of marine terrace deposits in the South Atlantic Coastal Plain. The main consequence ...
Traditionally, the evolution of terrestrial reproduction in anurans from ancestors that bred in water has been accepted in the literature. Still, the existence of intermediate stages of water dependency, such ...
The highly derived morphology and astounding diversity of snakes has long inspired debate regarding the ecological and evolutionary origin of both the snake total-group (Pan-Serpentes) and crown snakes (Serpen...
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