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In heterogeneous environments, sex-biased dispersal could lead to environmental adaptive parental effects, with offspring selected to perform in the same way as the parent dispersing least, because this parent...
Phylogenetic studies of wild Canis species have relied heavily on the mitochondrial DNA control region (mtDNA CR) to infer species relationships and evolutionary lineages. Previous analyses of the CR provided evi...
Lysozymes are enzymes that lyse bacterial cell walls, an activity widely used for host defense but also modified in some instances for digestion. The biochemical and evolutionary changes between these differen...
The Conserved Oligomeric Golgi (COG) complex is an eight-subunit assembly that localizes peripherally to Golgi membranes and is involved in retrograde vesicular trafficking. COG subunits are organized in two h...
Members of the disintegrin metalloproteinase (ADAM) family play important roles in cellular and developmental processes through their functions as proteases and/or binding partners for other proteins. The amph...
The quality of multiple sequence alignments plays an important role in the accuracy of phylogenetic inference. It has been shown that removing ambiguously aligned regions, but also other sources of bias such a...
The original article was published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2010 10:21
Global climatic oscillations, glaciation cycles and the unique geographic topology of China have profoundly influenced species population distributions. In most species, contemporary distributions of populatio...
The unfolding speed of some hyperthermophilic proteins is dramatically lower than that of their mesostable homologs. Ribonuclease HII from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus kodakaraensis (Tk-RNase HII) ...
The maternal zygotic transition marks the time at which transcription from the zygotic genome is initiated and a subset of maternal RNAs are progressively degraded in the developing embryo. A number of early z...
When a large number of alleles are lost from a population, increases in individual homozygosity may reduce individual fitness through inbreeding depression. Modest losses of allelic diversity may also negative...
There are few predictions about the directionality or extent of morphological trait (mis)matches between interacting organisms. We review and analyse studies on morphological trait complementarity (e.g. floral...
South America's western coastline, extending in a near-straight line across some 35 latitudinal degrees, presents an elegant setting for assessing both contemporary and historic influences on cladogenesis in t...
Tropical trees undergo severe stress through seasonal drought and flooding, and the ability of these species to respond may be a major factor in their survival in tropical ecosystems, particularly in relation ...
Mitochondrial introgression may result in the mitochondrial genome of one species being replaced by that of another species without leaving any trace of past hybridization in its nuclear genome. Such introgres...
Within Rosaceae, the RNase based gametophytic self-incompatibility (GSI) system has been studied at the molecular level in Maloideae and Prunus species that have been diverging for, at least, 32 million years. In...
The Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is considered a hopeful monster because it exhibits an adaptive and derived mode of development - paedomorphosis - that has evolved rapidly and independently among tiger ...
Glutamine synthetase (GS) is essential for ammonium assimilation and the biosynthesis of glutamine. The three GS gene families (GSI, GSII, and GSIII) are represented in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organism...
Species are fundamental units in biology, yet much debate exists surrounding how we should delineate species in nature. Species discovery now requires the use of separate, corroborating datasets to quantify in...
Phosphorylated phosphatidylinositol (PtdIns) lipids, produced and modified by PtdIns kinases and phosphatases, are critical to the regulation of diverse cellular functions. The myotubularin PtdIns-phosphate ph...
Comparative phylogeography of sympatric sibling species provides an opportunity to isolate the effects of geography and demographics on the evolutionary history of two lineages over the same, known time scale....
Although allopatric speciation is viewed as the most common way in which species originate, allopatric divergence among a group of closely related species has rarely been examined at the population level throu...
Hemorrhagic diseases from Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus (Filoviridae) infections can be dangerous to humans because of high fatality rates and a lack of effective treatments or vaccine. Although there is evidenc...
The vast sequence divergence among different virus groups has presented a great challenge to alignment-based analysis of virus phylogeny. Due to the problems caused by the uncertainty in alignment, existing to...
Plastid replacements through secondary endosymbioses include massive transfer of genes from the endosymbiont to the host nucleus and require a new targeting system to enable transport of the plastid-targeted p...
Wood is a valuable natural resource and a major carbon sink. Wood formation is an important developmental process in vascular plants which played a crucial role in plant evolution. Although genes involved in x...
The New World monkey (Platyrrhini) subfamily Pitheciinae is represented by the genera Pithecia, Chiropotes and Cacajao. In this work we studied the karyotypes of Pithecia irrorata (2n = 48) and Cacajao calvus rub...
Lake Tanganyika (LT) is the oldest of the African Rift Lakes and is one of the richest freshwater ecosystems on Earth, with high levels of faunal diversity and endemism. The endemic species flocks that occur i...
The interplay between transcription and mutational processes can lead to particular mutation patterns in transcribed regions of the genome. Transcription introduces several biases in mutational patterns; in pa...
Positive selection of host proteins that interact with pathogens can indicate factors relevant for infection and potentially be a measure of pathogen driven evolution.
On coral reefs, damselfish defend their territories from invading herbivores and maintain algal turfs, from which they harvest filamentous algae. In southern Japan, intensive weeding of indigestible algae by Steg...
Rodents are recognized as hosts for at least 60 zoonotic diseases and may represent a serious threat for human health. In the context of global environmental changes and increasing mobility of humans and anima...
Knowledge on fossil and evolutionary history of the Gnetales has expanded rapidly; Ephedra and ephedroids as well as the Gnetum-Welwitschia clade are now well documented in the Early Cretaceous. However, hypothes...
Many homeobox genes show remarkable conservation between divergent animal phyla. In contrast, the ARGFX (Arginine-fifty homeobox) homeobox locus was identified in the human genome but is not present in mouse or i...
The scavenger receptor cysteine rich (SRCR) domain is an ancient and conserved protein domain. CD163 and WC1 molecules are classed together as group B SRCR superfamily members, along with Spα, CD5 and CD6, all...
Weedy rice (red rice), a conspecific weed of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.), is a significant problem throughout the world and an emerging threat in regions where it was previously absent. Despite belonging to...
Nutrition and predation have been considered two primary agents of selection important in the evolution of avian life history traits. The relative importance of these natural selective forces in the evolution ...
The (almost) universality of the genetic code is one of the most intriguing properties of cellular life. Nevertheless, several variants of the standard genetic code have been observed, which differ in one or s...
The temporal origin and diversification of orchids (family Orchidaceae) has been subject to intense debate in the last decade. The description of the first reliable fossil in 2007 enabled a direct calibration ...
The complexity of mitochondrial complex I (CI; NADH:ubiquinone oxidoreductase) has increased considerably relative to the homologous complex in bacteria. Comparative analyses of CI composition in animals, fung...
The species is a fundamental unit of biological pattern and process, but its delimitation has proven a ready source of argument and disagreement. Here, we discuss four key steps that utilize statistical thresh...
The past several years have seen a flurry of papers seeking to clarify the utility and limits of DNA barcoding, particularly in areas such as species discovery and paralogy due to nuclear pseudogenes. Heteropl...
Evolution of cooperative behaviour is widely studied in different models where interaction is heterogeneous, although static among individuals. However, in nature individuals can often recognize each other and...
Butterflies of the subtribe Mycalesina (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) are important model organisms in ecology and evolution. This group has radiated spectacularly in the Old World tropics and presents an exciting o...
The sulfide-rich Frasassi caves in central Italy contain a rare example of a freshwater ecosystem supported entirely by chemoautotrophy. Niphargus ictus, the sole amphipod species previously reported from this lo...
Various enzyme inhibitors act on key insect gut digestive hydrolases, including alpha-amylases and proteinases. Alpha-amylase inhibitors have been widely investigated for their possible use in strengthening a ...
The potential role hybridisation in adaptive radiation and the evolution of new lineages has received much recent attention. Hybridisation between roach (Rutilus rutilus L.) and bream (Abramis brama L.) is well d...
Numerous phylogenetic analyses on polychaete annelids suggest a taxon Capitellida that comprises the three families Maldanidae, Arenicolidae and Capitellidae. Recent molecular studies support the position of t...
Minisatellites are genomic loci composed of tandem arrays of short repetitive DNA segments. A minisatellite map is a sequence of symbols that represents the tandem repeat array such that the set of symbols is ...
Ecological shifts can promote rapid divergence and speciation. However, the role of ecological speciation in animals that reproduce predominantly asexually with periodic sex and strong dispersal, such as lacus...
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