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Evolutionary ecology and behaviour

This section considers studies in the areas of evolutionary behaviour and ecology including sexual conflict and selection.

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  1. Local coexistence of distinct, genetically determined color morphs can be unstable and transitional. Stable, long-term coexistence requires some form of balancing selection to protect morphs from getting lost ...

    Authors: Holger Schielzeth and Petra Dieker

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:63

    Content type: Research article

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  2. Ever since Darwin, evolutionary biologists have studied sexual selection driving differences in appearance and behaviour between males and females. An unchallenged paradigm in such studies is that one sex (usu...

    Authors: Ke Gao, Michiel van Wijk, Zoe Clement, Martijn Egas and Astrid T. Groot

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:53

    Content type: Research article

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  4. Taste is fundamental to diet selection in vertebrates. Genetic basis of sweet taste receptor in the shaping of food habits has been extensively studied in mammals and birds, but scarcely studied in fishes. Gra...

    Authors: Xiao-Chen Yuan, Xu-Fang Liang, Wen-Jing Cai, Shan He, Wen-Jie Guo and Kang-Sen Mai

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:25

    Content type: Research article

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  5. The hybridizing field crickets, Gryllus firmus and Gryllus pennsylvanicus have several barriers that prevent gene flow between species. The behavioral pre-zygotic mating barrier, where males court conspecifics mo...

    Authors: Brianna Heggeseth, Danielle Sim, Laura Partida and Luana S. Maroja

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:21

    Content type: Research article

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  6. The disposable soma theory of ageing assumes that organisms optimally trade-off limited resources between reproduction and longevity to maximize fitness. Early reproduction should especially trade-off against ...

    Authors: Charly Jehan, Manon Chogne, Thierry Rigaud and Yannick Moret

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:18

    Content type: Research article

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  7. A key question in plant dispersal via animal vectors is where and why fruit colors vary between species and how color relates to other fruit traits. To better understand the factors shaping the evolution of fr...

    Authors: Miranda A. Sinnott-Armstrong, Chong Lee, Wendy L. Clement and Michael J. Donoghue

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:7

    Content type: Research article

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  8. Natural selection on fitness-related traits can be temporally heterogeneous among populations. As climate changes, understanding population-level responses is of scientific and practical importance. We examine...

    Authors: Yang Liu and Yousry A. El-Kassaby

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:231

    Content type: Research article

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  9. The presence of a novel pollutant can induce rapid evolution if there is additive genetic variance for the tolerance to the stressor. Continuous selection over some generations can then reduce the toxicity of ...

    Authors: Lucas Marques da Cunha, Diane Maitre and Claus Wedekind

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:227

    Content type: Research article

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  12. Disentangling the selective factors shaping adaptive trait variation is an important but challenging task. Many studies—especially in Drosophila—have documented trait variation along latitudinal or altitudinal cl...

    Authors: Jeremy S. Davis and Leonie C. Moyle

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:204

    Content type: Research article

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  13. Raising unrelated offspring is typically wasteful of parental resources and so individuals are expected to reduce or maintain low levels of parental effort when their parentage is low. This can involve faculta...

    Authors: Holger Zimmermann, Karoline Fritzsche, Jonathan M. Henshaw, Cyprian Katongo, Taylor Banda, Lawrence Makasa, Kristina M. Sefc and Aneesh P. H. Bose

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:200

    Content type: Research article

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  14. The existence of extended post-reproductive lifespan is an evolutionary puzzle, and its taxonomic prevalence is debated. One way of measuring post-reproductive life is with post-reproductive representation, th...

    Authors: Simon N. Chapman, John Jackson, Win Htut, Virpi Lummaa and Mirkka Lahdenperä

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:193

    Content type: Research article

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  15. The genus Ilex (Aquifoliaceae) has a near-cosmopolitan distribution in mesic habitats from tropical to temperate lowlands and in alpine forests. It has a high rate of hybridization and plastid capture, and compri...

    Authors: Xin Yao, Yun-hong Tan, Jun-bo Yang, Yan Wang, Richard T. Corlett and Jean-François Manen

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:192

    Content type: Research article

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  17. Studying reproductive trait allometries can help to understand optimal male investment strategies under sexual selection. In promiscuous mating systems, studies across several taxa suggest that testes allometr...

    Authors: Lennart Winkler, Leon M. Kirch, Klaus Reinhold and Steven A. Ramm

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:185

    Content type: Research article

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  18. Diversity at the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) is critical to health and fitness, such that MHC genotype may predict an individual’s quality or compatibility as a competitor, ally, or mate. Moreover, ...

    Authors: Kathleen E. Grogan, Rachel L. Harris, Marylène Boulet and Christine M. Drea

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:171

    Content type: Research article

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  19. Female promiscuity is highly variable among birds, and particularly among songbirds. Comparative work has identified several patterns of covariation with social, sexual, ecological and life history traits. How...

    Authors: Jan T. Lifjeld, Jostein Gohli, Tomáš Albrecht, Eduardo Garcia-del-Rey, Lars Erik Johannessen, Oddmund Kleven, Petter Z. Marki, Taiwo C. Omotoriogun, Melissah Rowe and Arild Johnsen

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:169

    Content type: Research article

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  21. In the wake of climate change many environments will be exposed to increased and more variable temperatures. Knowledge about how species and populations respond to altered temperature regimes is therefore impo...

    Authors: Johanna Sunde, Per Larsson and Anders Forsman

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:148

    Content type: Research article

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  22. Understanding the mechanisms by which diversity is maintained in pathogen populations is critical for epidemiological predictions. Life-history trade-offs have been proposed as a hypothesis for explaining long...

    Authors: Elina Numminen, Elise Vaumourin, Steven R. Parratt, Lucie Poulin and Anna-Liisa Laine

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:142

    Content type: Research article

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  23. A decade ago, the mixed reproductive strategy Asexual Queen Succession (AQS) was first described in termites. In AQS species, the workers, soldiers and dispersing reproductives are produced through sexual repr...

    Authors: Simon Hellemans, Klára Dolejšová, Jan Křivánek, Denis Fournier, Robert Hanus and Yves Roisin

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:131

    Content type: Research article

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  24. Studying variation in life-history traits and correlated behaviours, such as boldness and foraging (i.e., pace-of-life syndrome), allows us to better understand how these traits evolve in a changing environmen...

    Authors: Beatriz Diaz Pauli, Sarah Garric, Charlotte Evangelista, L. Asbjørn Vøllestad and Eric Edeline

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:127

    Content type: Research article

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  25. Several genetic lineages of obligate parthenogenetic Daphnia pulex, a common zooplankton species, have invaded Japan from North America. Among these, a lineage named JPN1 is thought to have started colonization a...

    Authors: Xiaofei Tian, Hajime Ohtsuki and Jotaro Urabe

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:122

    Content type: Research article

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  27. Host genotype - parasite genotype co-evolutionary dynamics are influenced by local biotic and abiotic environmental conditions. This results in spatially heterogeneous selection among host populations. How suc...

    Authors: Agnes Piecyk, Olivia Roth and Martin Kalbe

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:80

    Content type: Research article

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    The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:101

  28. Medullary bone (MB) is an estrogen-dependent, sex-specific tissue produced by female birds during lay and inferred to be present in extinct avemetatarsalians (bird-line archosaurs). Although preliminary studie...

    Authors: Aurore Canoville, Mary H. Schweitzer and Lindsay E. Zanno

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:71

    Content type: Research article

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  29. Sex-determining systems may profoundly influence the ecology, behaviour and demography of animals, yet these relationships are poorly understood. Here we investigate whether species with temperature-dependent ...

    Authors: Veronika Bókony, Gregory Milne, Ivett Pipoly, Tamás Székely and András Liker

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:57

    Content type: Research Article

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  30. DNA barcoding utilises a standardised region of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene to identify specimens to the species level. It has proven to be an effective tool for identification of avian samples. The uni...

    Authors: Jacqueline Tizard, Selina Patel, John Waugh, Erika Tavares, Tjard Bergmann, Brian Gill, Janette Norman, Les Christidis, Paul Scofield, Oliver Haddrath, Allan Baker, David Lambert and Craig Millar

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:52

    Content type: Research article

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  31. Phenotypic plasticity is a pervasive property of all organisms and considered to be of key importance for dealing with environmental variation. Plastic responses to temperature, which is one of the most import...

    Authors: Kristin Franke, Isabell Karl, Tonatiuh Pena Centeno, Barbara Feldmeyer, Christian Lassek, Vicencio Oostra, Katharina Riedel, Mario Stanke, Christopher W. Wheat and Klaus Fischer

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:32

    Content type: Research article

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  32. Horizontal gene transfer and gene duplication are two major mechanisms contributing to the evolutionary adaptation of organisms. Previously, polygalacturonase genes (PGs) were independently horizontally transf...

    Authors: Pengjun Xu, Bin Lu, Jinyan Liu, Jiangtao Chao, Philip Donkersley, Robert Holdbrook and Yanhui Lu

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:12

    Content type: Research article

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  33. Adaptive radiations are triggered by ecological opportunity – the access to novel niche domains with abundant available resources that facilitate the formation of new ecologically divergent species. Therefore,...

    Authors: Joshua W. Lambert, Martin Reichard and Daniel Pincheira-Donoso

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2019 19:10

    Content type: Research article

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  34. Social insects are among the most serious invasive pests in the world, particularly successful at monopolizing environmental resources to outcompete native species and achieve ecological dominance. The invasiv...

    Authors: Pierre-André Eyer, Bryant McDowell, Laura N. L. Johnson, Luis A. Calcaterra, Maria Belen Fernandez, DeWayne Shoemaker, Robert T. Puckett and Edward L. Vargo

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:209

    Content type: Research article

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  36. Obligate pollination mutualisms (OPMs) are specialized interactions in which female pollinators transport pollen between the male and female flowers of a single plant species and then lay eggs into those same ...

    Authors: J. T. D. Finch, S. A. Power, J. A. Welbergen and J. M. Cook

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:193

    Content type: Research article

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  38. Adaptive evolution is one of the crucial mechanisms for organisms to survive and thrive in new environments. Recent studies suggest that adaptive evolution could rapidly occur in species to respond to novel en...

    Authors: Yiyong Chen, Noa Shenkar, Ping Ni, Yaping Lin, Shiguo Li and Aibin Zhan

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:187

    Content type: Research article

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  39. Comparing sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in the light of the phylogenetic hypothesis may help to understand the phenotypic evolution associated with sexual selection (size of whole body and of reproduction-relat...

    Authors: Guadalupe López Juri, Margarita Chiaraviglio and Gabriela Cardozo

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:186

    Content type: Research article

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  40. Algal isomorphic biphasic life cycles alternate between free-living diploid (tetrasporophytes) and haploid (dioicious gametophytes) phases and the hypotheses explaining their maintenance are still debated. Cla...

    Authors: Vasco M. N. C. S. Vieira, Aschwin H. Engelen, Oscar R. Huanel and Marie-Laure Guillemin

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:183

    Content type: Research article

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  41. Breeding site choice constitutes an important part of the species niche. Nest predation affects breeding site choice, and has been suggested to drive niche segregation and local coexistence of species. Intersp...

    Authors: Jere Tolvanen, Janne-Tuomas Seppänen, Mikko Mönkkönen, Robert L. Thomson, Hannu Ylönen and Jukka T. Forsman

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:181

    Content type: Research article

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  43. The distinction between lineages of neotropical bats from the Pteronotus parnellii species complex has been previously made according to mitochondrial DNA, and especially morphology and acoustics, in order to sep...

    Authors: Ondine Filippi-Codaccioni, Marie-Pauline Beugin, Damien M. de Vienne, Elodie Portanier, David Fouchet, Cecile Kaerle, Lina Muselet, Guillaume Queney, Eric J. Petit, Corinne Regis, Jean-Baptiste Pons and Dominique Pontier

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:175

    Content type: Research article

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  44. Conditional differentiation is one of the most fundamental drivers of biodiversity. Competitive entities (usually species) differ in environmental or ecological niche enabling them to co-exist. Conditional dif...

    Authors: Vasco M. N. C. S. Vieira, Aschwin H. Engelen, Oscar R. Huanel and Marie-Laure Guillemin

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:174

    Content type: Research article

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  45. Tamquammys has been considered one of the basal ctenodactyloid rodents, which has been documented in the earliest to middle Eocene (~ 56.0–48.5 Ma) in China. It was the most abundant and widespread rodent genus i...

    Authors: Łucja Fostowicz-Frelik, Qian Li and Xijun Ni

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:150

    Content type: Research article

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  46. Adaptation to new hosts in phytophagous insects often involves mechanisms of host recognition by genes of sensory pathways. Most often the molecular evolution of sensory genes has been explained in the context...

    Authors: Fernando Diaz, Carson W. Allan and Luciano M. Matzkin

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:144

    Content type: Research article

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  47. Sexual selection continues after copulation via either sperm competition or cryptic female choice, and favors sperm traits that maximize sperm competitiveness. Both sperm swimming velocity and longevity are im...

    Authors: Alfonso Rojas Mora, Magali Meniri, Sabrina Ciprietti and Fabrice Helfenstein

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:142

    Content type: Research article

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  48. While the communities constituted by phytophageous insects and their parasites may represent half of all terrestrial animal species, understanding their diversification remains a major challenge. A neglected i...

    Authors: Hui Yu, Dan Liang, Enwei Tian, Linna Zheng and Finn Kjellberg

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:134

    Content type: Research article

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  49. The zooplanktonic cladocerans Daphnia, present in a wide range of water bodies, are an important component of freshwater ecosystems. In contrast to their high dispersal capacity through diapausing eggs carried by...

    Authors: Mingbo Yin, Xiaoyu Wang, Xiaolin Ma, Sabine Gießler, Adam Petrusek, Johanna Griebel, Wei Hu and Justyna Wolinska

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:130

    Content type: Research article

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  50. Spatial isolation, diverging environmental conditions and social structures may lead to the differentiation of various traits, e.g. molecules, morphology and behaviour. Bird calls may provide important informa...

    Authors: Jan Christian Habel, Martin Husemann and Werner Ulrich

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2018 18:112

    Content type: Research article

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