Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Evolution
Differential effects of steroid hormones on levels of genetic variance in a wild bird: possible mechanism of maternal-effects x genetic variance interaction?
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Genetic variation is one of the key concepts in evolutionary biology and an important prerequisite of evolutionary change. Still, we know very little about processes that modulate its levels in wild populations. In particular – we still are to understand why genetic variances often depend on environmental conditions. One of possible environment-sensitive modulators of observed levels of genetic [...]
Adaptation, Local Frequency-Dependent and Global Frequency-Independent Selection
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology
There is a tension between, on the one hand, the view that natural selection produces adaptations, and on the other hand, the theoretical results showing that the links between natural selection are weakened in different evolutionary scenarios such as situations of (negative) frequency-dependent selection or more generally in situations where fitnesses are not constant. If these results are taken [...]
Evolution, Origins and Diversification of Parasitic Cnidarians
Published: 2020-08-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Parasitism has evolved in cnidarians on multiple occasions but only one clade – the Myxozoa – has undergone substantial radiation. We briefly review minor parasitic clades that exploit pelagic hosts and then focus on the comparative biology and evolution of the highly speciose Myxozoa and its monotypic sister taxon, Polypodium hydriforme, which collectively form the Endocnidozoa. Cnidarian [...]
Evolution in the Courtroom: Using Phylogenetics to Investigate Legal Claims of HIV Transmission
Published: 2020-07-28
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
DNA sequences have become ubiquitous across the biological sciences and are even embedded in the public psyche, perhaps most famously in the context of forensic science. A human being’s DNA changes very little over his or her lifetime, and this inherent stability lends itself well to positively identifying individuals using DNA samples. However, not all genomes are so stable, even over short [...]
Segmentation, body symmetry and the organization of the central nervous system in echinoderms
Published: 2020-07-25
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The organization of the echinoderm central nervous system (CNS) is striking because it varies widely from that of other bilaterians; however, the basis for this is unknown. In the present paper, I identify echinoderms as compound and I show that this is the basis for their radial symmetry and the organization of their CNS. The asteroids, as I show, comprise of bilaterally symmetrical zooids [...]
Historical comparisons show evolutionary changes in drought responses in European plant species after two decades of climate change
Published: 2020-07-21
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Plant populations must continuously adapt to ongoing global climate change, including warmer temperatures and more extreme weather events. One way to detect such evolutionary changes within plant populations is through historical comparisons where plants grown from seeds collected in the past (“ancestors”) are compared to freshly collected seeds from the same populations (“descendants”) in common [...]
The Diverse Applications of Tree Set Visualization and Exploration
Published: 2020-07-17
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
All phylogenetic studies are built around sets of trees. Tree sets carry different kinds of information depending on the data and approaches used to generate them, but ultimately the variation they contain and their structure is what drives new phylogenetic insights. In order to better understand the variation in and structure of phylogenetic tree sets, we need tools that are generic, flexible, [...]
New approaches for inferring phylogenies in the presence of paralogs
Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The availability of whole genome sequences was expected to supply essentially unlimited data for phylogenetics. However, strict reliance on single-copy genes for this purpose has drastically limited the amount of data that can be used. Here, we review several approaches for increasing the amount of data used for phylogenetic inference, focusing on methods that allow for the inclusion of [...]
Life in fluctuating environments
Published: 2020-07-04
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Variability in the environment defines the structure and dynamics of all living systems. Organisms have evolved traits and strategies that allow them to detect, exploit and predict the changing environment. Organisms maintain steady internal conditions required for physiological functioning through feedback mechanisms that allow internal conditions to remain at or near a set point despite a [...]
Fossil Constraints on the Timescale of Parasitic Helminth Evolution
Published: 2020-06-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
The fossil record of parasitic helminths is often stated to be severely limited. Many studies have therefore used host constraints to constrain molecular divergence time estimates of helminths. Here we review direct fossil evidence for several of these parasitic lineages belong to various phyla (Acanthocephala, Annelida, Arthropoda, Nematoda, Nematomorpha, Pentastomida, Platyhelminthes). Our [...]
Climate change as a catalyst of social evolution
Published: 2020-05-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Anthropogenic climatic change will be a major factor shaping natural populations over the foreseeable future. The scope of this issue has spawned the integrative field of global change biology, which is chiefly concerned with identifying vulnerabilities of natural systems to climate change and integrating these into models of biodiversity loss. Meanwhile, there remains considerable latitude for [...]
Mapping the past, present and future research landscape of paternal effects
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Physiology
Although in all sexually reproducing organisms, an individual has a mother and a father, non-genetic inheritance has been predominantly studied in mothers. Paternal effects have been far less frequently studied, until recently. In the last five years, research on environmentally induced paternal effects has grown rapidly in the number of publications and diversity of topics. Motivations for [...]
Understanding Non-genetic Inheritance: Insights from Molecular-Evolutionary Crosstalk
Published: 2020-05-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Understanding the evolutionary and ecological roles of non-genetic inheritance is daunting due to the complexity and diversity of epigenetic mechanisms. We draw on precise insights from molecular structures and events to identify three general features of non-genetic inheritance systems that are central to broader investigations: (i) they are functionally interdependent with, rather than separate [...]
Interpopulation differences in developmental plasticity of carnivores determine the emergence of a trophic interaction
Published: 2020-04-16
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Population Biology
1. Through its influence on trait expression, phenotypic plasticity can shape variation in strengths of interspecific interactions across environmental gradients. If species exhibit interpopulation differences in phenotypic plasticity, their genotypes and environmental conditions may jointly determine the strength of interspecific interactions. 2. To examine this prediction, we experimentally [...]
The genomic revolution and species delimitation in birds (and other organisms): gene flow matters, but what about other evolutionary forces?
Published: 2020-04-09
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
Given the notion that species are population-level lineages and the availability of genomic data to identify separately evolving populations, researchers usually establish species limits based on gene flow or lack thereof. A strict focus on gene flow as the main –or only– criterion to delimit species involves two main complications in practice. First, approaches often used to apply this criterion [...]