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Vertebrate brains show extensive variation in relative size. The expensive brain hypothesis argues that one important source of this variation is linked to a species’ ability to generate the energy required to...
Gene duplication is an important process in evolution. What causes some genes to be retained after duplication and others to be lost is a process not well understood. The most prevalent theory is the gene dupl...
Despite recent advances, reliable tools to simultaneously handle different types of sequencing data (e.g., target capture, genome skimming) for phylogenomics are still scarce. Here, we evaluate the performance...
The Hengduan Mountains (HDM) are one of the major global biodiversity hotspots in the world. Several evolutionary scenarios, especially in-situ diversification, have been proposed to account for the high species ...
Osyris lanceolata (Hochst. & Steud.) (Santalaceae) is a multipurpose plant highly valued culturally and economically in Africa. However, O. lanceolata populations have rapidly dwindled in East Africa due to overe...
This study explores the age, growth, and energy storage of Triplophysa rosa, a troglobitic cavefish. A total of 102 wild T. rosa specimens were collected in Wulong County, Chongqing, China, between 2018 and 2022,...
The aim of this study is to investigate how climate change influences the distribution of economically and environmentally important species of P. abyssinica and H. citrispinum in Ethiopia. The species distributi...
Tree diseases are one of the major threats to forests worldwide. As the frequency and severity of disease outbreaks increase, effective prevention and mitigation strategies are urgently needed. Emerging method...
Evidence of correlation between genome size, the nuclear haploid DNA content of a cell, environmental factors and life-history traits have been reported in many animal species. Genome size, however, spans over...
Ethiopia is a mountainous country with great geographic diversity. The diversified topographic features in Ethiopia made the country have a rich biodiversity forest cover in tropical Africa. This made Ethiopia...
Within the Hymenoptera, bees are notable for their relationship with flowering plants, being almost entirely dependent on plant pollen and nectar. Though functionally herbivorous, as a result of their role as ...
The evening primrose family (Onagraceae) includes 664 species (803 taxa) with a center of diversity in the Americas, especially western North America. Ongoing research in Onagraceae includes exploring striking...
Climate change coupled with other anthropogenic pressures may affect the extent of suitable habitat for species and thus their distributions. This is particularly true for species occupying high-altitude habit...
The negative impacts of climate change on biodiversity are consistently increasing. Developmental stages are particularly sensitive in many ectotherms. Moreover, sex-specific differences in how organisms cope ...
The transition from notochord to vertebral column is a crucial milestone in chordate evolution and in prenatal development of all vertebrates. As ossification of the vertebral bodies proceeds, involutions of r...
Cetaceans (whales, porpoises, and dolphins) are a lineage of aquatic mammals from which some species became giants. Only recently, gigantism has been investigated from the molecular point of view. Studies focu...
Bats provide ecologically and agriculturally important ecosystem services but are currently experiencing population declines caused by multiple environmental stressors, including mortality from white-nose synd...
Cyclic di-guanylate (c-di-GMP), synthesized by diguanylate cyclase, is a major second messenger in prokaryotes, where it triggers biofilm formation. The dictyostelid social amoebas acquired diguanylate cyclase (d...
Recent developments, including new imaging and ancient environmental DNA (aeDNA) technologies, are providing unprecedented insights into the past, which can also help researchers predict future ecological chan...
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease posing a significant threat to public health. Dengue virus (DENV) evolution is often characterized by lineage turnover, which, along with ecological and immunological f...
According to the IUCN Red List the anadromous houting Coregonus oxyrinchus is categorized as ‘extinct’. However, this extinct status might be incorrect because taxonomic difference between C. oxyrinchus and the c...
Woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) is a typical indicator of cold-stage climate that was widely distributed in Northern Hemisphere during the Middle-Late Pleistocene. Although a plethora of fossils have ...
The sturgeon group has been economically significant worldwide due to caviar production. Sturgeons consist of 27 species in the world. Mitogenome data could be used to infer genetic diversity and investigate t...
Cancer cell populations evolve by a stepwise process involving natural selection of the fittest variants within a tissue ecosystem context and as modified by therapy. Genomic scrutiny of patient samples reveal...
The aquiferous system in sponges represents one of the simplest circulatory systems used by animals for the internal uptake and distribution of oxygen and metabolic substrates. Its modular organization enables...
Anthropomorphic activities have caused major damage to ecosystems worldwide. Although documenting this damage is important, implementing measures to halt and reverse ecosystem decline is critical and is now be...
Biodiversity is generally reduced when non-native species invade an ecosystem. Invasive crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, populate California freshwater streams, and in the Santa Monica Mountains (Los Angeles, USA),...
No phenotypic trait evolves independently of all other traits, but the cause of trait-trait coevolution is poorly understood. While the coevolution could arise simply from pleiotropic mutations that simultaneo...
Mitochondrial respiration plays a central role in the survival of many eukaryotes, including apicomplexan parasites. A 479-bp fragment from the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene is widely used as a barcode to id...
Dipsadine snakes represent one of the most spectacular vertebrate radiations that have occurred in any continental setting, with over 800 species in South and Central America. Their species richness is paralle...
Animals select and interact with their environment in various ways, including to ensure their physiology is at its optimal capacity, access to prey is possible, and predators can be avoided. Often conflicting,...
Plankton seascape genomics studies have revealed different trends from large-scale weak differentiation to microscale structures. Previous studies have underlined the influence of the environment and seascape ...
Intraspecific public goods are commonly shared within microbial populations, where the benefits of public goods are largely limited to closely related conspecifics. One example is the production of iron-scaven...
Neck elongation has appeared independently in several tetrapod groups, including giraffes and sauropod dinosaurs on land, birds and pterosaurs in the air, and sauropterygians (plesiosaurs and relatives) in the...
Dry evergreen montane forests of Ethiopia provide economic and ecological services for the community but it is under several threats of natural and anthropogenic disturbances. The study aimed to investigate th...
The widespread Indo-Pacific coral species Pocillopora acuta Lamarck, 1816 displays varying levels of asexual versus sexual reproduction, with strong repercussions on genetic diversity, connectivity and genetic st...
The Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, includes interfertile surface-dwelling and cave-dwelling morphs, enabling powerful studies aimed at uncovering genes involved in the evolution of cave-associated traits. Com...
Rodents form the largest order among mammals in terms of species diversity, and home range is the area where an individual normally moves during its normal daily activities. Information about rodent home range...
In spite of extensive research, cancer remains a major health problem worldwide. As cancer progresses, cells acquire traits that allow them to disperse and disseminate to distant locations in the body – a proc...
In 2023, researchers from around the world entered the BMC Ecology and Evolution photography competition. As a result, we received a spectacular collection of photographs that capture the wonder of nature, those ...
Modern baleen whales are unique as large-sized filter feeders, but their roles were replicated much earlier by diverse marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Here, we investigate convergence in skull morphology betw...
Phylogeographical approaches explain the genetic diversity of local organisms in the context of their geological and geographic environments. Thus, genetic diversity can be a proxy for geological history. Here...
Fighting disease while fighting rivals exposes males to constraints and trade-offs during male-male competition. We here tested how both the stage and intensity of infection with the fungal pathogen Metarhizium r...
The unicellular ancestors of modern-day multicellular organisms were remarkably complex. They had an extensive set of regulatory and signalling genes, an intricate life cycle and could change their behaviour i...
To date, plastid genomes have been published for all but two holoparasitic angiosperm families. However, only a single or a few plastomes represent most of these families. Of the approximately 40 genera of hol...
The origins of all major living reptile clades, including the one leading to birds, lie in the Triassic. Following the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history at the end of the Permian, the earliest definit...
Reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are globally distributed in tropical and subtropical seas. Their life history traits (slow growth, late maturity, low reproductive output) make them vulnerable to perturbations an...
Morphology and molecules are important data sources for estimating evolutionary relationships. Modern studies often utilise morphological and molecular partitions alongside each other in combined analyses. How...
The global food system is the predominant driver of biodiversity loss. Consequently, there is an increasing need to transition towards more sustainable and resilient agri-food systems to protect, restore and p...
The false codling moth (FCM), Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick, 1913), is a significant pest of various important economic crops and is a EU quarantine pest. In the last decade the pest has been reported on Rosa
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