Page 51 of 96
Post-mating interactions between the reproductive traits and gametes of mating individuals and among their genes within zygotes are invariably complex, providing multiple opportunities for reproduction to go a...
Sympatric species pairs are particularly common in freshwater fishes associated with postglacial lakes in northern temperate environments. The nature of divergences between co-occurring sympatric species, fact...
Adaptation to different ecological environments is thought to drive ecological speciation. This phenomenon culminates in the radiations of cichlid fishes in the African Great Lakes. Multiple characteristic tra...
Increasing genome data show that introns, a hallmark of eukaryotes, already existed at a high density in the last common ancestor of extant eukaryotes. However, intron content is highly variable among species....
Heterococcus is a microalgal genus of Xanthophyceae (Stramenopiles) that is common and widespread in soils, especially from cold regions. Species are characterized by extensively branched filaments produced when ...
There has been a considerable increase in studies investigating rates of diversification and character evolution, with one of the promising techniques being the BiSSE method (binary state speciation and extinc...
The acquisition of complex transcriptional regulatory abilities and epigenetic machinery facilitated the transition of the ancestor of apicomplexans from a free-living organism to an obligate parasite. The abi...
Colour vision in birds can be categorized into two classes, the ultraviolet (UVS) and violet sensitive (VS). Their phylogenetic distributions have traditionally been regarded as highly conserved. However, the ...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2014 14:62
DNA barcoding of land plants has relied traditionally on a small number of markers from the plastid genome. In contrast, low-copy nuclear genes have received little attention as DNA barcodes because of the abs...
Hair is one of the main distinguishing characteristics of mammals and it has many important biological functions. Cetaceans originated from terrestrial mammals and they have evolved a series of adaptations to ...
Ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), the enzyme responsible for the formation of deoxyribonucleotides from ribonucleotides, is found in all domains of life and many viral genomes. RNRs are also amongst the most abu...
Wolbachia pipientis, a diverse group of α-proteobacteria, can alter arthropod host reproduction and confer a reproductive advantage to Wolbachia-infected females (cytoplasmic incompatibility (CI)). This advantage...
Sexual system is a key factor affecting the genetic diversity, population structure, genome structure and the evolutionary potential of species. The sexual system androdioecy – where males and hermaphrodites c...
Coevolution with parasites and population size are both expected to influence the evolution of mating rates. To gain insights into the interaction between these dual selective factors, we used populations from...
Whereas the impact of endosymbionts on the ecology of their hosts is well known in some insect species, the question of whether host communities are influenced by endosymbionts remains largely unanswered. Nota...
The evolution of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is likely constrained by life history. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we examined correlations between SSD among anurans and their life history traits, in...
Molecular techniques are increasingly employed to recognize the presence of cryptic species, even among commonly observed taxa. Previous studies have demonstrated that bats using high-duty cycle echolocation m...
Males in some species of the genus Xiphophorus, small freshwater fishes from Meso-America, have an extended caudal fin, or sword – hence their common name “swordtails”. Longer swords are preferred by females from...
When studying the genetic structure of human populations, the role of cultural factors may be difficult to ascertain due to a lack of formal models. Linguistic diversity is a typical example of such a situatio...
Many species with sexual and asexual variants show a pattern of geographic parthenogenesis where asexuals have broader and higher-latitude distribution than sexuals. Because sexual reproduction is often consid...
Explanations for bacterial biofilm persistence during antibiotic treatment typically depend on non-genetic mechanisms, and rarely consider the contribution of evolutionary processes.
The inhabitants of deep-sea hydrothermal vents occupy ephemeral island-like habitats distributed sporadically along tectonic spreading-centers, back-arc basins, and volcanically active seamounts. The majority ...
Secondary edentulism (toothlessness) has evolved on multiple occasions in amniotes including several mammalian lineages (pangolins, anteaters, baleen whales), birds, and turtles. All edentulous amniote clades ...
Inherited Copy Number Variants (CNVs) can modulate the expression levels of individual genes. However, little is known about how CNVs alter biological pathways and how this varies across different populations....
Current biodiversity patterns are considered largely the result of past climatic and tectonic changes. In an integrative approach, we combine taxonomic and phylogenetic hypotheses to analyze temporal and geogr...
Bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) are of key importance in ecological processes at scales from biofilms to biogeochemical cycles. Close interaction can lead to antagonistic coevolution of phage and ...
Integron systems are now recognized as important agents of bacterial evolution and are prevalent in most environments. One of the human pathogens known to harbor chromosomal integrons, the Treponema spirochetes a...
The number of members of the Dlx gene family increased during the two rounds of whole-genome duplication that occurred in the common ancestor of the vertebrates. Because the Dlx genes are involved in the developm...
Climatic oscillations are among the long-term factors shaping the molecular features of animals and plants and it is generally supposed that the rear edges (i.e., the low-latitude limits of distribution of any...
Invasive pest species offers a unique opportunity to study the effects of genetic architecture, demography and selection on patterns of genetic variability. Invasive Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemline...
The nematode infraorder Tylenchomorpha (Class Chromadorea) includes plant parasites that are of agricultural and economic importance, as well as insect-associates and fungal feeding species. Among tylenchomorp...
When beneficial mutations present in different genomes spread simultaneously in an asexual population, their fixation can be delayed due to competition among them. This interference among mutations is mainly d...
In stark contrast to the wealth of detail about C. elegans developmental biology and molecular genetics, biologists lack basic data for understanding the abundance and distribution of Caenorhabditis species in na...
The enzyme phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase, PEPCK, occurs in its guanosine-nucleotide-using form in animals and a few prokaryotes. We study its natural genetic variation in Colias (Lepidoptera, Pieridae). PEPCK...
Plastid genome structure and content is remarkably conserved in land plants. This widespread conservation has facilitated taxon-rich phylogenetic analyses that have resolved organismal relationships among many...
Proteomes of thermophilic prokaryotes have been instrumental in structural biology and successfully exploited in biotechnology, however many proteins required for eukaryotic cell function are absent from bacte...
The original article was published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2012 12:204
Cnidaria (corals, sea anemones, hydroids, jellyfish) is a phylum of relatively simple aquatic animals characterized by the presence of the cnidocyst: a cell containing a giant capsular organelle with an eversi...
Competitive social interactions are ubiquitous in nature, but their genetic basis is difficult to determine. Much can be learned from single gene knockouts in a eukaryote microbe. The mutants can be competed w...
Lying in a shallow continental shelf cyclically affected by oscillating sea levels since the Miocene, the Seychelles islands are particularly interesting for evolutionary studies. Recent molecular studies are ...
Inference of population and species histories and population stratification using genetic data is important for discriminating between different speciation scenarios and for correct interpretation of genome sc...
Every year the human population encounters epidemic outbreaks of influenza, and history reveals recurring pandemics that have had devastating consequences. The current work focuses on the development of a robu...
The evolutionary history of the biota of North Africa and Arabia is inextricably tied to the complex geological and climatic evolution that gave rise to the prevalent deserts of these areas. Reptiles constitut...
Theories of ageing predict a trade-off between metabolism, reproduction, and maintenance. Species with low investment in early reproduction are thus expected to be able to evolve more efficient maintenance and...
Toll-like receptors (Tlrs) are major molecular pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system. Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) is the first vertebrate known to have lost most of the mammalian Tlr orthologu...
The complex geological history of Mesoamerica provides the opportunity to study the impact of multiple biogeographic barriers on population differentiation. We examine phylogeographic patterns in a clade of lo...
Understanding demographic histories, such as divergence time, patterns of gene flow, and population size changes, in ecologically diverging lineages provide implications for the process and maintenance of popu...
Gene duplications have been proposed to be the main mechanism involved in genome evolution and in acquisition of new functions. Polydnaviruses (PDVs), symbiotic viruses associated with parasitoid wasps, are id...
Single-stranded (ss) DNA viruses in the family Geminiviridae are proving to be very useful in real-time evolution studies. The high mutation rate of geminiviruses and other ssDNA viruses is somewhat mysterious in...
Phenotypic evolution may occur through mutations that affect either the structure or expression of protein-coding genes. Although the evolution of color vision has historically been attributed to structural mutat...
View featured videos from across the BMC-series journals
For BMC Evolutionary Biology (former title)
Citation Impact 2023
Journal Impact Factor: 2.3
5-year Journal Impact Factor: 2.3
Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 0.959
SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.887
Speed 2023
Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 15
Submission to acceptance (median days): 193
Usage 2023
Downloads: 1,882,764
Altmetric mentions: 3,013
Transparency and Openness
TOP Factor score - 9
Peer Community In
BMC Ecology and Evolution welcomes submissions of pre-print manuscripts recommended by the Peer Community In (PCI) platform. The journal may use PCI reviews and recommendations for the review process if appropriate. For instructions to submit your PCI recommended article, please click here. To find out more, please read our blog.