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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. Life history theory predicts that during the lifespan of an organism, resources are allocated to either growth, somatic maintenance or reproduction. Resource allocation trade-offs determine the evolution and e...

    Authors: Falk Eckhardt, Angela Pauliny, Nicky Rollings, Frank Mutschmann, Mats Olsson, Cornelia Kraus and Peter M. Kappeler

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:160

    Content type: Research article

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  2. The white-backed planthopper (WBPH), Sogatella furcifera (Horváth) (Hemiptera, Delphacidae), is a migratory pest of rice in Asia. Shandong Province, in northern China, is located on the migration pathway of WBPH ...

    Authors: Nan Yang, Zhaoke Dong, Aidong Chen, Yanqiong Yin, Xiangyong Li and Dong Chu

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:154

    Content type: Research article

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  3. Fruit scent is increasingly recognized as an evolved signal whose function is to attract animal seed dispersers and facilitate plant reproduction. However, like all traits, fruit scent is likely to evolve in r...

    Authors: Omer Nevo, Kim Valenta, Annemarie Kleiner, Diary Razafimandimby, Juan Antonio James Jeffrey, Colin A. Chapman and Manfred Ayasse

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:138

    Content type: Research article

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  4. One hypothesis for the function of sleep is that it serves as a mechanism to conserve energy. Recent studies have suggested that increased sleep can be an adaptive mechanism to improve survival under food depr...

    Authors: Didem P. Sarikaya, Julie Cridland, Adam Tarakji, Hayley Sheehy, Sophia Davis, Ashley Kochummen, Ryan Hatmaker, Nossin Khan, Joanna Chiu and David J. Begun

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:126

    Content type: Research article

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  5. Studies on marine community dynamics and population structures are limited by the lack of exhaustive knowledge on the larval dispersal component of connectivity. Genetic data represents a powerful tool in unde...

    Authors: A. Iannucci, S. Cannicci, I. Caliani, M. Baratti, C. Pretti and S. Fratini

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:108

    Content type: Research article

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  6. Vertebrates exhibit diverse sex determination systems and reptiles stand out by having highly variable sex determinations that include temperature-dependent and genotypic sex determination (TSD and GSD, respec...

    Authors: Paola Cornejo-Páramo, Andrés Lira-Noriega, Ciro Ramírez-Suástegui, Fausto R. Méndez-de-la-Cruz, Tamás Székely, Araxi O. Urrutia and Diego Cortez

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:103

    Content type: Research article

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  7. Women’s morphological femininity is perceived to develop under the influence of sex hormones and to serve as a cue of estradiol level, fertility and health in mating context. However, as the studies on direct ...

    Authors: Agnieszka Żelaźniewicz, Judyta Nowak and Bogusław Pawłowski

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:102

    Content type: Research article

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  8. Under the threat of climate change populations can disperse, acclimatise or evolve in order to avoid fitness loss. In light of this, it is important to understand neutral gene flow patterns as a measure of dis...

    Authors: Anna P. Muir, Stanislas F. Dubois, Rebecca E. Ross, Louise B. Firth, Antony M. Knights, Fernando P. Lima, Rui Seabra, Erwan Corre, Gildas Le Corguillé and Flavia L. D. Nunes

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:100

    Content type: Research article

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  9. The adaptive significance of phenotypic changes elicited by environmental conditions experienced early in life has long attracted attention in evolutionary biology. In this study, we used Drosophila melanogaster ...

    Authors: Peter Klepsatel, Diana Knoblochová, Thirnahalli Nagaraj Girish, Heinrich Dircksen and Martina Gáliková

    Citation: BMC Evolutionary Biology 2020 20:93

    Content type: Research article

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  11. 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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  12. 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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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. 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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  18. 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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  19. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. 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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  27. 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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  28. 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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  29. 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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  31. 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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  32. 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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  33. 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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  34. 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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  35. 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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  37. 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

  38. 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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  39. 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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  40. 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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  41. 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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  42. 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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  43. 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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  44. 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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  46. 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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  48. 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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  49. 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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  50. 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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  • Citation Impact
    3.058 - 2-year Impact Factor
    3.252 - 5-year Impact Factor
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