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The geographic distribution of evolutionary lineages and the patterns of gene flow upon secondary contact provide insight into the process of divergence and speciation. We explore the evolutionary history of t...
The tropical Andes and Amazon are among the richest regions of endemism for mammals, and each has given rise to extensive in situ radiations. Various animal lineages have radiated ex situ after colonizing one of ...
Trypanosomatids of the genera Angomonas and Strigomonas live in a mutualistic association characterized by extensive metabolic cooperation with obligate endosymbiotic Betaproteobacteria. However, the role played ...
Osmoregulation was a primary challenge for cetaceans during the evolutionary transition from a terrestrial to a mainly hyperosmotic environment. Several physiological mechanisms have been suggested to maintain...
Repeated colonisation of novel host-plants is believed to be an essential component of the evolutionary success of phytophagous insects. The relative timing between the origin of an insect lineage and the plan...
We recently reported (Curr Biol 22:683–688, 2012) that the eyes of giant and colossal squid can grow to three times the diameter of the eyes of any other animal, including large fishes and whales. As an explan...
Opsins have been found in the majority of animals and their most apparent functions are related to vision and light-guided behaviour. As an increasing number of sequences have become available it has become cl...
Maintenance and deployment cost of immunity is high, therefore, it is expected to trade-off with other high cost traits like sexual activity. Previous studies with Drosophila melanogaster show that male’s ability...
Pathogenicity islands (PAIs) or genomic islands (GEIs) are considered to be the result of a recent horizontal transfer. Detecting PAIs/GEIs as well as their putative source can provide insight into the organis...
The evolution and origin of cave organisms is a recurring issue in evolutionary studies, but analyses are often hindered by the inaccessibility of caves, morphological convergence, and complex colonization pro...
Despite its short-term costs, behaviour that appears altruistic can increase an individual’s inclusive fitness by earning direct (selfish) and/or indirect (kin-selected) benefits. An evolved preference for oth...
The maternally inherited bacterium Wolbachia often acts as a subtle parasite that manipulates insect reproduction, resulting potentially in reproductive isolation between host populations. Whilst distinct Wolbach...
Isoprenoids constitute a vast family of natural compounds performing diverse and essential functions in all domains of life. In most eubacteria, isoprenoids are synthesized through the methylerythritol 4-phosp...
Modularity is an important feature in the evolvability of organisms, since it allows the occurrence of complex adaptations at every single level of biological systems. While at the cellular level the modular o...
The glacial and interglacial cycles that characterized the Quaternary greatly affected the distribution and genetic diversity of plants. In the Neotropics, few phylogeographic studies have focused on coastal s...
Fossil evidence of ginkgophyte ontogeny is exceedingly rare. Early development in the extant Ginkgo biloba is characterized by a series of distinct ontogenetic stages. Fossils providing insights into the early on...
Brown trout Salmo trutta have been described in terms of five major mtDNA lineages, four of which correspond to major ocean basins, and one, according to some authors, to a distinct taxon, marbled trout Salmo mar...
The Galapagos Islands constitute a highly diverse ecosystem and a unique source of variation in the form of endemic species. There are two endemic tomato species, Solanum galapagense and S. cheesmaniae and two in...
Sex in higher diploids carries a two-fold cost of males that should reduce its fitness relative to cloning, and result in its extinction. Instead, sex is widespread and clonal species face early obsolescence. ...
Few mitochondrial gene rearrangements are found in vertebrates and large-scale changes in these genomes occur even less frequently. It is difficult, therefore, to propose a mechanism to account for observed ch...
Hotspots of angiosperm species richness and endemism in Mediterranean-climate regions are among the most striking, but least well-understood, geographic patterns of biodiversity. Recent studies have emphasized...
A dual olfactory system, represented by two anatomically distinct but spatially proximate chemosensory epithelia that project to separate areas of the forebrain, is known in several classes of tetrapods. Lungf...
Two theories for the origin of animal life cycles with planktotrophic larvae are now discussed seriously: The terminal addition theory proposes a holopelagic, planktotrophic gastraea as the ancestor of the eum...
Niche construction has received increasing attention in recent years as a vital force in evolution and examples of niche construction have been identified in a wide variety of taxa, but viruses are conspicuous...
Patterns of genetic diversity between and within natural plant populations and their driving forces are of great interest in evolutionary biology. However, few studies have been performed on the genetic struct...
On August 9th 2012, we published an original research article in Scientific Reports, concluding that artificial radionuclides released from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant exerted genetically and physi...
The accumulation of repetitive DNA during sex chromosome differentiation is a common feature of many eukaryotes and becomes more evident after recombination has been restricted or abolished. The accumulated re...
Molecular phylogenetics has provided unprecedented resolution in the ruminant evolutionary tree. However, molecular age estimates using only one or a few (often misapplied) fossil calibration points have produ...
In recent years, as the development of next-generation sequencing technology, a growing number of genes have been reported as being horizontally transferred from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, most of them involvi...
Synonymous or silent mutations are usually thought to evolve neutrally. However, accumulating recent evidence has demonstrated that silent mutations may destabilize RNA structures or disrupt cis regulatory motifs...
The persistence of antibiotic resistance depends on the fitness effects of resistance elements in the absence of antibiotics. Recent work shows that the fitness effect of a given resistance mutation is influen...
Despite rapid progress in understanding the mechanisms that shape the evolution of proteins, the relative importance of various factors remain to be elucidated. In this study, we have assessed the effects of 1...
The intention of this editorial is to steer researchers through methodological choices in molecular evolution, drawing on the combined expertise of the authors. Our aim is not to review the most advanced metho...
The extent of phenotypic differentiation in response to local environmental conditions is a key component of species adaptation and persistence. Understanding the structuring of phenotypic diversity in respons...
Light, the driving force of photosynthesis, can be harmful when present in excess; therefore, any light harvesting system requires photoprotection. Members of the extended light-harvesting complex (LHC) protei...
One of the most intriguing questions in evolutionary developmental biology is how an insect acquires a mimicry pattern within its body parts. A striking example of pattern mimicry is found in the pattern diver...
The rate of female remating can have important impacts on a species, from affecting conflict and cooperation within families, to population viability and gene flow. However, determining the level of polyandry ...
GroESL is a heat-shock protein ubiquitous in bacteria and eukaryotic organelles. This evolutionarily conserved protein is involved in the folding of a wide variety of other proteins in the cytosol, being essen...
Birnaviruses form a distinct family of double-stranded RNA viruses infecting animals as different as vertebrates, mollusks, insects and rotifers. With such a wide host range, they constitute a good model for s...
Gen(om)e duplication events are hypothesized as key mechanisms underlying the origin of phenotypic diversity and evolutionary innovation. The diverse and species-rich lineage of teleost fishes is a renowned ex...
Transposable elements (TEs) have the potential to produce broad changes in the genomes of their hosts, acting as a type of evolutionary toolbox and generating a collection of new regulatory and coding sequence...
Individuals commonly prefer certain trait values over others when choosing their mates. If such preferences diverge between populations, they can generate behavioral reproductive isolation and thereby contribu...
Fiddler crabs, genus Uca, are classic examples of how intense sexual selection can produce exaggerated male traits. Throughout the genus the enlarged “major” cheliped (claw) of the male fiddler crab is used both ...
Currently, there is very limited knowledge about the genes involved in normal pigmentation variation in East Asian populations. We carried out a genome-wide scan of signatures of positive selection using the 1...
Genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exhibit high levels of variability, which is believed to have arisen through pathogen-mediated selection. We investigated the relationship between parasite l...
Gene conversion of duplicated genes can slow the divergence of paralogous copies over time but can also result in other interesting evolutionary patterns. Islands of genetic divergence that persist in the face...
Pleistocene climatic oscillations have played a major role in structuring present-day biodiversity. The southern Mediterranean peninsulas have long been recognized as major glacial refugia, from where Northern...
Increasingly, similarity networks are being used for evolutionary analyses of molecular datasets. These networks are very useful, in particular for the analysis of gene sharing, lateral gene transfer and for t...
Histone modification is an epigenetic mechanism that influences gene regulation in eukaryotes. In particular, histone modifications in CpG islands (CGIs) are associated with different chromatin states and with...
Vitamin D is essential for a wide range of physiological processes including immune function and calcium homeostasis. Recent investigations have identified candidate genes which are strongly linked to concentr...
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